Australia’s great leap forward:Julia Gillard

Today, Australia will get its first female Prime Minister, when the government caucus votes Julia Gillard to replace Kevin Rudd as its leader.

That’s by no means a global precedent. Nor is it a precedent that she’ll be sworn in by a female Governor General (Australia’s first).


But it is a milestone. One that is necessary to a sophisticated society, and one that is overdue, in world terms. Although history suggests it can make little practical difference, nevertheless it remains a meaningful symbolism.

The nature of the leadership change demonstrates one very real point of difference between a parliamentary and a (typical) presidential system. In other respects, Australia’s political processes have come to represent a de facto presidency inasmuch as a large proportion of attention is focused on the leader, at least informally.

In that sense, Australia was moving towards an election with both leadership options – Kevin Rudd and Tony Abbott – facing significant public disapproval. Rudd in particular seems to have lost much of his expected support base due to delaying the implementation of an emission trading scheme, despite his own characterisation of climate change as the “most significant moral issue of our time”. In likelihood, part of the erosion of support would have been due to the intrinsic outcome, and part would have rested with the obvious gap between his words and his actions.

Broadcasts of parliamentary proceedings clearly demonstrate Gillard’s ability in that setting. How she will manage the transition to full-fledged leadership – and how the votiung public will react on a gut level – is something that has historically proven very hard to predict. Although Gillard had been a core part of the Rudd administration’s decisionmaking processes, leadership is another matter.