The Stupid Question: Is New PM Julia Gillard Really The First…?

Probably our first PM to stand in front of a purple shed. Image: Robin Sellick

We generally try to steer clear of politics at The Enthusiast, because political enthusiasm falls under many undesirable categories — fanaticism, wonkishness, shameless self-interest, behaving like a total LaRouchebag.

Yet the nation’s collective mind has boggled about the leadership switch that has led Julia Gillard (or Tilda Swinton, as the rest of the world’s internet commentators have been calling her) to the prime minister’s office.

We’ve been going through the Stages of Grief pretty quickly, briefly visiting denial (“Can they actually do that in office?”), dwelling on anger and bargaining (“I voted for the Kevin ’07 T-shirt, this isn’t fair!”), skipping through depression (“Shit, this is the kind of party disunity that resulted in Tony Abbott on my TV more often”) and arriving at acceptance by lunchtime.

Acceptance has been in the form of cheering historic landmarks, morning show puppets beaming about the first female prime minister of Australia. But a lot of other amazing appellations the MSM and the public have accepted about this event are quickly proving to be wrong.

Wonks in the tweet-osphere-iverse provided a few interesting notes. Gillard was born in Wales and lived there until the age of five, but she’s not the First Foreign-born Prime Minister. Our third through seventh prime ministers were all immigrants. Labor party founder Chris Watson (prime minister for four months in 1904) was born in Chile, George Reid (1904-05) and Andrew Fisher (three weird terms between 1908 and 1915) were born in Scotland, and Joseph Cook (1913-14) and William Morris Hughes (1915-23) were Poms.

There’s a good argument that she’s not even the First Redhead Prime Minister. During her first speech, Gillard joked about it, noting that since most of the photos were black and white it’s hard to tell how many bloodnuts have held our highest political office. But Jim Scullen (1929-32) looks pretty rusty.

Is she the First Atheist Prime Minister? Kinda. She slagged Tony Abbott and John Anderson in 2005 for hiding behind their faith and said she was a non-practising Baptist and “not religious” through a spokesperson late last year. So as good as. Trouble is, Bob Hawke, Gough, John Curtin and John Gorton were all listed as agnostics so she’s in good non-believer company.

At 48 years old, she assumed the position younger than most prime ministers but it’s likely no one will ever beat Chris Watson who got the top job at 37 years. But she’s certainly the first prime minister without a ring on the finger (well, not a wedding ring anyway).

So is Julia Gillard really Australia’s first foreign-born, unmarried, atheist, ranga, female Prime Minister? Nope. But two out of five ain’t bad.

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