I was a bit nervous about meeting Julia Gillard. I’d still been in high school when she was prime minister of Australia, and I wasn’t exactly reading the papers every day. What I did know about her was that she’s a little bit private.
In the years since, I’ve met half a dozen Australian prime ministers – as the Australian cricket team gets invited to Kirribilli House every year on New Year’s Day – and some others overseas leaders as well, and the first thing I always think about is how much power rests on one person’s shoulders. The second thing I wonder is how they function with so much responsibility in so many areas. How do they manage that from a performance optimisation perspective? Where do they find the space to think, or just be themselves?
It’s always blown me away how many different roles there are that a prime minister takes on. There’s the executive side, making decisions and policy. There’s the public-facing side, making speeches and consulting with the community.
There’s international relations. And, sometimes, there is a symbolic aspect to leadership too.
As captain, a lot of the decision-making of my role is done within and around the team, in selection, and in conversation with coaches, administrators and my fellow players – and, of course, also on the pitch, where I need to make tactical decisions and try to lead by example.
There’s also that public-facing role – the work that I do in front of a camera and microphone, or live before an audience, where I can explain my decisions and thoughts, and where they will be tested and questioned.
As representatives of our nation, there is of course an international relations aspect to being a cricketer.
And then there’s the final role: the influence that leaders wield simply by virtue of their station. This goes beyond decisions that relate to winning and losing, and beyond putting on a public face – it’s about leading by example, and being the kind of person I want to see more of.
There are so many different aspects that are all vital for success. Some days I just want to get out on the pitch and play, but I know there are other important responsibilities to the role, like attending press conferences or dealing with commercial arrangements. Doing the work on the pitch is obviously crucial, but if you can’t explain and articulate that work, then you’ll fail to bring others along with you. If you have a well-explained plan but can’t execute it, you’re a dreamer, not a leader. If you are a good operator and a good communicator but don’t stand for anything, don’t inspire anyone and win only for your own benefit, you’ve also failed as a leader.
This brings me to former Prime Minister Julia Gillard, who, as Australia’s first female prime minister, acquired a more powerfully symbolic role than any other Australian in the top job. In the 2010 federal election, Julia was installed as an elected prime minister but in charge of a minority Labor government that relied on the support of the Greens member and three independents. While minority governments are not unknown in Australian politics, they are unusual, and it was easy for political opponents and the media to characterise the arrangement as unstable. Yet, despite all of this, lead Julia did.
Through internal criticism and leaks, as well as bitter personal and gendered assaults, Australia’s first female prime minister led a minority government that executed policy and changed the country. She did this in public, inspiring Australians (especially women and girls); she did it at her desk, where she seems to have been particularly comfortable; and she did it by knowing exactly what she wanted her government to achieve and how to get it done.
During her political career, Julia Gillard sometimes participated in events at primary schools, where it was common for little girls to approach her and tell her that they wanted to become prime minister one day.
“I wonder where that comes from,” Julia said to me. “Because I was never like that.” She added that she “didn’t grow up in the kind of family or indeed in the kind of era where a child, particularly a young girl, would form a view that they were going to be a leader in any kind of ‘capital L’ sense.”
Julia was born in Wales and migrated to Australia with her parents at age four. Her mother worked as a cook in an aged-care facility, and her father trained and then worked as a psychiatric nurse. She didn’t grow up as someone who would expect to lead anything really, let alone the country. “Primary school, high school, I was never a sporty kid, so the kind of leadership opportunities that come with doing what you do … that was never me,” she said. She might not have been a good athlete, but she was a good and conscientious student. At Unley High, a state school in Adelaide’s south, she was made prefect in “some kind of faux election … from the people the teachers had decided were suitable”. She added, “That’s kind of the entry point [into leadership] for me.”
After graduating from school and starting undergraduate degrees at the University of Adelaide, Julia became interested in and concerned about proposed education cutbacks, joining the student union and then becoming its leader. She was the first student to lead the Adelaide University Union, and she eventually became the vice-president and then the second female president of the Australian Union of Students, a national body. Julia told me that in these leadership roles, “You would have people saying to you that, given you are interested in public policy and leadership, you should think about running for Parliament.”
In 1986, Julia graduated with a Bachelor of Arts and Bachelor of Laws degrees. She then worked as an industrial relations lawyer at the law firm Slater and Gordon. Having worked heavily in unionism, education and industrial relations, Julia thought she could contribute positively to federal policy in each of those areas, so she made an attempt to enter federal Parliament. She said, “It took me more than a decade from the time I decided I’d like to do it to ending up getting an opportunity to do it.”
After attempts at multiple lower-house preselections and one tilt at the Senate, Julia was finally elected to the federal Parliament in 1998. She was thirty-seven.
“If you asked me when I got in on the first day in Parliament [what my ideal career would be], I would have said, ‘If I get to be a minister in a Labor government, if I get to be Minister for Education or maybe Minster for Industrial Relations’ – that was my legal specialty – ‘if I get to do that, that would be the ultimate.’” But for some years that goal was unattainable, as John Howard’s Coalition government had a strong electoral grasp on power. Julia said, “One of the fascinations and one of the frustrations of politics is that it’s not an effort-in, outcomeout kind of pursuit. There are all sorts of random, unpredictable factors. Part of it is the merit of you and your team, and it’s also whether the times suit your brand of politics.”
Excerpted with permission from Tested: Small Decisions. Big Decisions. The Remarkable Power of Resolve, Pat Cummins, HarperCollins India.
