Ms Gillard has become Australia's first female prime minister after Kevin Rudd stood aside at the last minute before this morning's historic leadership ballot.
She was elected unopposed, making her the nation's 27th prime minister and its first female leader. She has chosen Treasurer Wayne Swan to be her Deputy Prime Minister.
It is an astonishing fall from grace for Mr Rudd, who has been through a rollercoaster of highs and lows during only one term in office.
He took a dramatic dive in the polls two months ago, dragging Labor's support down with him.
So yeah, the party had some disputes and now Gillard is the first female PM of Australia (although not elected by the people) and the red haired jokes have been exploding through the internet and such facebook groups like "I'm gonna be PM in the morning, LOL JKS I'm Kevin Rudd" etc etc.
Pretty crazy 12 hours or so, saw it as breaking news last night while watching England vs Slovenia.
On June 24 2010 13:52 Subversion wrote: How is she going to rule a country from the kitchen?
this is honestly not cool... especially because there are a lot of woman on this site. Ban?
Yeah but the truth is there are going to be sooo many of these jokes this week + big nose jokes + ranga jokes. I'm just surprised out of all the ones I've heard, I hadn't heard that one yet.
On June 24 2010 14:12 theron[wdt] wrote: She was unelected unopposed?
lol, fixed that, I copied it straight from the article. And yeah, Rudd didn't even end up running in the ballot this morning, so she had to win unopposed, it's kind of misleading.
On June 24 2010 14:12 theron[wdt] wrote: She was unelected unopposed?
lol, fixed that, I copied it straight from the article. And yeah, Rudd didn't even end up running in the ballot this morning, so she had to win unopposed, it's kind of misleading.
On June 24 2010 14:12 theron[wdt] wrote: She was unelected unopposed?
lol, fixed that, I copied it straight from the article. And yeah, Rudd didn't even end up running in the ballot this morning, so she had to win unopposed, it's kind of misleading.
why was that? and what was the ballot for?
Well it was planned that Rudd (ex-PM) and Gillard (new PM) would be in the ballot to choose who would be the new leader of the Labor party (party in power). This morning when it actually happened, Rudd chose not to be entered in the ballot, so Gillard was the only option to vote for.
She seemed so cool, collected and confident during her press conference and right throughout Question Time today. It was a really smart move to axe Rudd at this stage now that the Coalition is seriously gaining ground on Labor. They can now dump all the shit that has happened in the past and move on to comfortably secure a win in this year's election.
I really like her as a leader, and I definitely want to see Labor triumph over Liberal at the upcoming election if for nothing else but to see Abbot and his extreme-right buddies (who want to cut health, education and infrastructure spending (INCLUDING AUSTRALIA's National Broadband fibre optic network) get crushed.
In response to Masamune's question, no she won't be attending the G20, she is sending the deputy Prime Minister Wayne Swan (treasurer).