Julia Gillard has some words of wisdom about being prime minister: Stay in front of the tsunami.
"I used to joke about being prime minister that it's a lot like running in front of a tsunami: It's OK as long as you don't lose your footing and you don't look back," Ms Gillard said.
"You've just got to keep out in front before it swamps you."
Ms Gillard, the board chair of the Global Partnership for Education, questioned how many Australian children don't get a good quality education simply because they come from more impoverished areas.
"Without wanting to get too political, there is a key choice that Australians must make soon and the difference in education outcomes for our children is very embedded in that key choice," Ms Gillard said on Friday.
"We want to make sure every child has a chance."
It was the only reference to the federal election at a women's leadership forum in Melbourne run by the Layne Beachley Foundation, of which Ms Gillard is patron.
Ms Gillard said she was taken aback when gender discrimination "raised its very ugly head" when she was prime minister.
She joked about talking about shades of grey when she said being the first female to lead Australia didn't explain everything, nor nothing, about her prime ministership, after she lost the Labor party leadership to Kevin Rudd in 2013.
"Given everything that's happened since with the book and the movie, I've had plenty of time to wish I'd used another term than shades of grey," she quipped, in a reference to Fifty Shades of Grey.
Ms Gillard also revealed a sense of humour as prime minister. She employed a "cone of silence" in the spirit of the 1960s TV comedy Get Smart when she carved out thinking time.
"I would announce to my office that I was going into the cone of silence, because every high-functioning team needs to use words from Get Smart periodically."
