The history of Australian politics will be kinder to Gillard as a PM than her friends.
Now that a most gracious acknowledgement of personal defeat has been given by the first woman to step up to the hardest political job anyone could be asked to do, we must find the time, whatever the outcome of the looming election, to consider and learn from what we have witnessed about how the country is run.
Political leadership in our age of instant polls and opinionated media attention is now a matter of fright and flight. Today, I am particularly sad to participate in not only the funerals of two friends over the next 24 hours, and to acknowledge my profound sorrow at the way parties deal with perceptions of magic. Anyone who knows how it feels to lose a career in mid life will understand how both Gillard and her political friends and colleagues are feeling today. That same media attention shows every human frailty in outsize detail.
Gillard is a strong, articulate woman who comes into her own when she is assailed on every side. That strength was not only clear to all who saw her congratulate the man who sought her destruction, but whenever she spoke in the Parliament. It grieves me that she could not make herself heard when she spoke about her Government's policies, potential and remarkable achievements.
This hung parliament has undertaken some of the most profound changes in social policy since the 1980s, from the beginning of a national disability insurance scheme to a brave new scheme for improving the education of every Australian child, removing discrimination against aged people in need of care who happened to be lesbian, gay, transgender or transsexual, and the implementation of a farsighted attempt to give a far-flung people access to the 21st century means of information and communication.
Gillard did what political leaders have to do: make decisions, some of them wrong but many of them right. She did so in the most toxic environment that could be imagined, under constant sexist attack, as well as criticism from those whose social values she shares.
She could not connect, and it will take time to fathom why, and what that means for the future government of this country. She did not have that magic by which a passive population judges that they are willing to trust and be loyal to the one who speaks for them