The years 2010 to 2013 saw a remarkable period in Australian history: Julia Gillard became the first female prime minister in Australia after she successfully staged a surprise leadership challenge against the sitting prime minister Kevin Rudd. A few months later she led her party to the 2010 federal election, and subsequently steered through eighteen days of negotiation with the three independent members to successfully form her second government. Yet, three years and three days after her coup, she was overthrown by the very man she originally dethroned.
In this book, expert contributors consider the Gillard Government's policy, institutional and political legacy. The Government embarked on an ambitious program of change, and the book looks at the successful and not-so-successful policies, from far-reaching reforms to education to failed attempts to regulate the inflow of asylum seekers to Australia. It also examines how the government was thwarted by a range of factors, not the least being Gillard's failure to regain the trust of the electorate after her implementation of the carbon tax. Gillard ultimately faced many distractions which prevented her and Labor from gaining traction during her terms in office, and the book gives particular attention to Gillard as Australia's first female prime minister and the relentless campaign of denigration that pursued her, drawing conclusions about the fate of manywomen who assume positions of significant power in the Australian community.
The Gillard Governments has been produced by the ANZSOG Institute for Governance at the University of Canberra. It is the eleventh in a series of books on successive Commonwealth administrations. Each volume has provided a chronicle and commentary of major events, policies and issues that have dominated successive administrations since 1983.
