In her first major interview since her time in office, Julia Gillard has addressed issues including her relationship with Kevin Rudd, her fraught prime ministership and the impact of Alan Jones' comments about her father.
In an interview that aired tonight on Channel Nine, Ms Gillard said she had cried after reading that Kevin Rudd had lost trust in her shortly before her leadership tilt.
"I'd felt like I’d done everything I possibly could to help and support and prop Kevin up and there had already in the days before been some signs that, you know, now I was being viewed with suspicion and I just cried," she said. "I felt it was just so unfair."
But she told journalist Ray Martin that she had no choice but to overthrow Kevin Rudd, who was by then operating a dysfunctional government.
"I asked Kevin for a ballot," she said.
"By the time I got back to my office it was filling with supporters and that, I'd have to say, just had the sense of kind of, you know, almost uprising about it. People, people wanted change."
When asked about broadcaster Alan Jones' comments that her father had "died of shame," she said they were "unforgivable."
"There's nothing I can say that would be kind about Mr Jones," she said. "He intruded on my family's grief when we lost our father."
She said Mr Jones' apology was "mealy-mouthed in the extreme" and came after he had been put under commercial pressure.
She said she now accepted that legalising gay marriage was probably inevitable, despite her own position on the issue.
Julia Gillard's book 'My Story' will be published on October 1.
In her own words
Agreeing with Tony Abbott on gay marriage
"We're in the same place but for an entirely different set of reasons."
Definition of misogyny
"Conduct that shows a hatred of women… that confines them to lesser positions."
Having staff in the Lodge
"I'd had no life experience that prepared me for having staff around you in that close intimate sense that staff in the Lodge or Kirribilli are."
Losing Kevin Rudd's trust
"I cried because I felt it was so unfair."
Overthrowing Kevin Rudd
"I still, even with the benifit of hindsight, don't see an alternative to what I did that day."
Criticism of the Canberra press gallery
"Some [journalists] during my period as prime minister, they became activists in the leadership contest and yes, I am very critical of that because that's not their job as journalists."
Whether young women should enter politics
"If you've got a driving sense of purpose…then politics is absolutely for you."
Choosing not to marry
"I am an atheist, I'm not a person of faith so I don’t think about marriage in that religious sense."
