VICTORIA’S first and only woman premier, Williamstown resident Joan Kirner is disgusted at the treatment of former prime minister Julia Gillard, and says “men can’t cope with a woman in power”.
“I was and am still devastated; one, because, of course, I’ve watched Julia grow from a young woman at university interested in politics to a minister to a deputy to the prime minister and I know how good she is,” Ms Kirner said.
“Who else can you think of would have made that hung parliament work and get 500 acts through, and the policies that they contained?
“Who else could have got the NDIS [National Disability Insurance Scheme] through, for example?”
The Weekly asked Ms Kirner what went wrong – why was Ms Gillard deposed by her own Labor Party colleagues?
“Some of the main men in the media, in the Labor Party, Liberal Party, can’t cope with a woman in power,” Ms Kirner said. “They’ve always been able to cope with a woman being their deputy … that’s their [rightful] position, in their view. But a woman in power …
“I thought when Carmen Lawrence and I finished [politics] – and we copped a fair bit …
“We we weren’t the only ones. But the treatment of Julia has been disgraceful, and disgusting for that matter.”
She said everybody – or nearly everybody – got on with Prime Minister Kevin Rudd.
She tells a story about catching a taxi during a study tour in Edinburgh, Scotland, in 1994. The driver commented that, earlier, he had had another Australian in the cab. After a brief conversation she deduced the passenger was Kevin Rudd.
“‘That’s right,’ he said, ‘And do you know what, he said he was sure he’d be prime minister of Australia’.”
Ms Kirner said she did not believe “arch conservative” opposition leader Tony Abbott was a shoe-in for Australia’s next prime minister.
