Politics
Introduced to politics in her second year at the University of Adelaide by the daughter of a State Labor Minister, Gillard joined the Labor Club and became involved in a campaign to fight federal education budget cuts.
After moving to Melbourne, in 1983 Gillard became the second woman to lead the Australian Union of Students. She was also formerly the secretary of the left-wing organisation, Socialist Forum.
In 1995, Gillard took leave from her legal firm to contest the 1996 federal election as a Senate candidate, standing third on the ALP's ticket, although she was unsuccessful.
One year later in 1996, Gillard resigned from her position with Slater & Gordon in order to become the Chief of Staff to John Brumby, at that time the Leader of the Opposition in Victoria. She was responsible for drafting the affirmative-action rules within the Labor Party in Victoria that set the target of pre-selecting women for 35 per cent of "winnable seats". She also played a role in the foundation of EMILY's List, the pro-choice fund-raising and support network for Labor women.
The Welsh Labour politician Aneurin Bevan remains one of her political heroes.
Read more about this topic: Julia Gillard
Famous quotes containing the word politics:
“I have come to the conclusion that the closer people are to what may be called the front lines of government ... the easier it is to see the immediate underbrush, the individual tree trunks of the moment, and to forget the nobility the usefulness and the wide extent of the forest itself.... They forget that politics after all is only an instrument through which to achieve Government.”
—Franklin D. Roosevelt (1882–1945)
“The Germans—once they were called the nation of thinkers: do they still think at all? Nowadays the Germans are bored with intellect, the Germans distrust intellect, politics devours all seriousness for really intellectual things—Deutschland, Deutschland Über alles was, I fear, the end of German philosophy.”
—Friedrich Nietzsche (1844–1900)
“Man made one grave mistake: in answer to vaguely reformist and humanitarian agitation he admitted women to politics and the professions. The conservatives who saw this as the undermining of our civilization and the end of the state and marriage were right after all; it is time for the demolition to begin.”
—Germaine Greer (b. 1939)