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Nick Squires

She has been accused of being a communist, derided for being 'deliberately barren' and mocked for her nasal drone.
But Julia Gillard,  a Welsh-born former union lawyer, had the last laugh this week after becoming the most powerful woman in Australian political history.
Ms Gillard, 46,  on Monday will become Australia's first female deputy prime minister after the Labor Party  swept to victory in last Saturday's election, consigning veteran leader John Howard to political oblivion after 11 years in office.
She will lead the country next week,  standing  in for prime minister-elect Kevin Rudd during his trip to Bali to attend the United Nations meeting on climate change.
Ms Gillard will do the same thing  when he  visits Washington to meet President W. Bush,  early next year.  One day,  pundits say, she could  be prime minister in her own right.
She has the task of delivering the reform promises  that propelled Labor to victory, including watering down  the Howard government's unpopular workplace relations laws and delivering what Mr Rudd calls an 'education revolution'.
On Thursday, Mr Rudd raised her profile even higher, giving her responsibility for a so-called 'super ministry', which includes education as well as workplace relations and employment. He described her this week as 'a first-class human being with a first-class mind'.
Ms Gillard, who was born in Barry,  South Wales,  has come a long way since she arrived  in Australia as a child with her 'Ten Pound Pom'  parents more than 40 years ago. She went to school in Adelaide, South Australia, and  university in Melbourne.
She qualified as a lawyer and became a partner in a firm  specialising in class actions and personal injury cases.
A keen political activist, she joined the Labor Party and was elected MP for a seat in Melbourne in 1998. 'If anybody had suggested to my parents when we migrated to this country that something like this was possible, they would have taken their temperature and said they needed to go to bed,'  Ms Gillard said.
Hours after Labor's historic victory,  Ms Gillard said the prospect of becoming the country's first female deputy prime minister was 'humbling'.
Her ascent to the second most powerful job in Australia was not easy - she was subjected to personal and often sexist jibes by the conservative coalition government.
In remarks  that provoked outrage, government senator and Howard ally Bill Heffernan  described her as 'deliberately barren' because she had decided not to have children.
The comments did more harm to Senator Heffernan than they did to his target, and he was forced to issue a grovelling apology.
Former health minister Tony Abbott  said she lacked 'life experience' because she had neither married nor had children.
But she has shown that she is no shrinking violet.  Last year she was ejected from Parliament for calling a government minister 'a snivelling grub'.
She has been criticised for her auburn hair, her sharp features and her broad, nasal accent, described by one columnist as a 'Fountain Lakes twang' - a reference to the Australian comedy series Kath and Kim,  about life in suburban Melbourne.
'I think the amount of scrutiny on women in politics is tough, particularly in relation to appearance,' Ms Gillard told the Sun Herald   newspaper.
'I talk to female colleagues across the political divide, and we all agree there is almost no right answer for us. If we don't have children and aren't married, you are subject to the Tony Abbott-type criticisms that you don't have 'real life experiences'.
'If you are married and do have children, the criticism is: 'Who is looking after them while you're doing this'?'
During the heat of the  campaign she was called a communist by the then treasurer, Peter Costello.
The remark was part of the government's tactic of undermining public support for Mr Rudd by pointing out that many of his closest supporters came from a far-left background.
Questions remain as to exactly how left-wing  Ms Gillard really is. She has consistently dodged the question, even when it was revealed that as a young lawyer she was a member of the Socialist Forum.
She describes it as a 'debating society'  but her political opponents say it was an extreme left-wing group with links to the  Communist Party of Australia.
Asked if she was a communist, Ms Gillard said, 'no, of course not ... despite Peter Costello's obsessive and silly fantasy'.
Political writer Nicholas Stuart,  the author of a recent biography of Kevin Rudd, said there was nothing militant about the Socialist Forum and there were more radical student organisations that Ms Gillard could have joined.
'Her ideals are keenly tempered by her personal ambition,' he said. 'Her desire for power is stronger than her desire to implement a left-wing agenda. I think she'll have no problem containing her leftist leanings. She will also be circumscribed by Kevin Rudd. He is not going to do anything too hasty or controversial.'
The fact that Ms Gillard developed such a broad Australian accent, despite being born in Britain, is a key to her personality.
'She's a survivor; she survives by fitting in,'  Stuart said. 'She did it as a child with her accent, and in the same style she'll adopt the language of economic rationalism as deputy leader.'
Ms Gillard has said the encouragement she receives from ordinary women  is compensation for the rough and tumble way of Australian politics.
'There's been this real sort of 'go girl' factor. I have people come up to me to have a photo taken with their daughters. It's part of proving to their daughters that there's this world of options, and I think that's terrific.'



From derision to deputy PM - the way to go girl!