Event and Ticketing Details
Dates & Times
Tuesday 07 October
7:15 PM - 8:15 PM
Julia Gillard was Australia’s first female prime minister. Much has been said and written (already) about her three years at the top, but now she’s telling her side of the tale.
Her leadership was tumultuous, action-packed and controversial. But as notable as the controversy was her management of a hung parliament and the record amount of legislation passed during her term.
Gillard will tell her story – without shying away from her mistakes or misjudgements. Gillard has always been driven by a sense of purpose: her policy achievements included major education reform and ensuring a dignified future for Australians with disabilities. But that purpose wasn’t always reflected in her policy decisions. She cut funds to education despite her championing of it, refused to budge on gay marriage, and slashed Newstart payments to single parents. And despite leading the way in carbon pricing reform, she failed to sell her scheme to the public.
This is your chance to hear the former prime minister open up about her experiences, with the distance that makes for insightful reflection – and candour. In Melbourne, Gillard will be in conversation with broadcaster Kate Langbroek.
Presented in partnership with Readings.
Featuring
Kate Langbroek
Kate has become one of Australia’s most influential media personalities. Her career has spanned popular prime-time TV shows, top-rating breakfast radio, acting, as well as a host of writing credits.
Celebrated for her original style, wit and free spirit, she never treads the expected path and somehow manages to juggle a frenetic work career, busy social life and motherhood.
Kate helped change the Australian breakfast radio landscape with her unique and very personal conversational style for 12 years at Nova 100 Melbourne with Dave Hughes finishing up an amazing run at the end of 2013. She has since presented a series of special programmes for NOVA FM for the Melbourne International Comedy Festival.
Kate is enjoying staying up past her previous breakfast radio bedtime to appear on television shows such as Have You Been Paying Attention, The Today Show, Studio 10 and co-hosting The Project.
Kate shares her witty and insightful look at the world with audiences through her weekly column in News Ltd’s national Sunday Style magazine.
Julia Gillard
Julia Gillard was sworn in as the 27th Prime Minister of Australia on 24 June 2010 and served in that office until June 2013. She is the first woman to ever serve as Australia’s Prime Minister or Deputy Prime Minister.
Her memoirs, My Story, were published by Random House in September 2014.
As Prime Minister and in her previous role as Deputy Prime Minister, Gillard delivered nation-changing policies including reforming Australian education at every level from early childhood to university education, creating an emissions trading scheme to combat climate change, improving health care, commencing the nation’s first ever national scheme to care for people with disabilities, addressing the gender pay gap for social and community sector workers and delivering an apology to all those who had suffered through the practice of forced adoptions.
In October 2012, she received worldwide attention for her speech in Parliament on the treatment of women in professional and public life. She currently serves as the inaugural Chair of the Global Institute for Women’s Leadership at Kings College in London, which through research, practice and advocacy, is addressing women’s under-representation in leadership.
Julia Gillard is the Chair of Beyond Blue, one of Australia’s leading mental health awareness bodies; is Chair of global funding body for education in developing countries, the Global Partnership for Education; and is Patron of the Campaign for Female Education.