Will the real Julia please stand up?

Will the real

THE Australian public does not know Julia Gillard, and remains divided and confused about her values, beliefs, journey to power and what she really represents.

They know her red hair, accent, tenacity and ambition. They are aware she is a childless atheist living in a de facto partnership. They know of her commitment to education and the My School website. And they now know that Gillard is hell-bent on pricing carbon.

But this does not constitute a fully formed identity for a prime minister. Indeed, these are disconnected parts of the Gillard persona. That persona is like a jigsaw puzzle about a third put together with most pieces still scattered across the box waiting to be slotted into a bigger portrait that the public recognises, comprehends and to which it can relate. It is easy for political insiders to misjudge the extent of public confusion about Gillard's core identity.

She appears too much as a work in progress. The reason is obvious - Gillard is a Prime Minister under construction. She is engaged in self-discovery, sorting out not just her policy framework but the convictions for which she will live or die. She is not fully formed as a political persona because she got the job too early. By the time Bob Hawke, John Howard and Paul Keating became prime minister the public had a clear view of their political identity. This had its negatives as well as its positives. But as Howard kept saying, "at least the public knows what I stand for".

It is hardly a surprise that people are confused. They saw Gillard as loyal to Kevin Rudd until the evening she knifed him. She warned Rudd against pricing carbon and then seized this policy. She pledged no carbon tax and then embraced a de facto carbon tax. Despite her long and strong origins with the Victorian Left, Gillard has become a champion of Israel, the American alliance and the war in Afghanistan. She campaigned against a Big Australia and then dropped the rhetoric. She partly re-regulated the labour market and then paraded as pro-market reformer. Having declared no passion for foreign affairs she now works to leave her mark on foreign policy.

This list is far from exhaustive but it spells too many switches over too short a time, some understandable, some not. There are several truths behind this. Gillard got the prime ministership before she was fully prepared and long before the Australian people had much of a "fix" on her. Many Labor insiders utterly misread this point.

She ascended under the worst circumstances, as a willing recruit to a leadership assassination that took the public by surprise; justifying it plagued her throughout the election campaign. After her elevation by the caucus Gillard felt a legitimacy problem and dashed off to an election where, mid-campaign, she felt driven to reveal the "real" Julia. Such an identity crisis would have been inconceivable for Hawke, Keating or Howard. Then she became a minority PM where her capacity for bold, defining action was circumscribed by the need to appease the independents and Greens.

From this saga of near disaster Gillard has taken a strategic decision - to operate as a strong policy leader. She has nothing to lose. Remember, she got the top job without any experience at either Treasury or Foreign Affairs. It shows. She has never written a philosophical tract. On becoming PM she has had to explore and formulate the new policy views that will make or break her.

The upshot is that Gillard now gives ringing speeches as a PM with a passion for carbon pricing and for economic reform in the Hawke-Keating tradition. She pledges to the US alliance, operates in lockstep with the Obama administration and speaks to the US congress with a more pro-US line than anything Howard said.

This provokes mixed reactions - confusion, admiration and cynicism. The burning question is apparent: is she credible? How serious is Gillard about her new policy persona? She cannot keep changing. It is time now to define the core policies and fight for them. Gillard needs consistency from this point. She must slay any adviser who tells her to keep spinning. She seems to knows this. But knowing is different from doing.

She has, however, a deeper and sharper problem. Leadership is about values, not just policy. Gillard must project her inner self as a values politician and she needs to do this quickly. She needs to answer the question about the "real" Julia. Belief in hard work and good education is not enough. Today there is confusion in the Labor Party, let alone the public, about Gillard's actual values.

Howard knew values were fundamental to leadership and electoral success. He was a social conservative and cultural traditionalist and such values (that he projected almost daily on radio) helped him steal ALP votes and entrench a Coalition majority in the nation.

In the past Gillard has denounced Howard's social views on many occasions. Her origins on the political Left and her personal life choices led many to assume she was a dedicated social progressive. Yet Gillard backs welfare reform and personal responsibility. More precisely, she opposed a bill of rights, rejects same-sex marriage and opposes euthanasia - the trio of ideas that constitute the gospel for social progressives.

The reaction of many conservative commentators has been to accuse her of hypocrisy. Their message is: she cannot be a conservative, this is another phony Gillard ploy.

In fact, Gillard is stranded. She is a politician belatedly emerging as a cultural traditionalist with the consequence that both Left and Right are deeply suspicious and the public plain confused.

Most Australians are not obsessed about politics but they need a fix on their prime minister. Gillard needs to end the confusion. That means explaining her values within the narrative of her life as she began last weekend. This is integral to letting the Australian public understand who she is, where she comes from and what she stands for. Indeed, this is what the public needs.

For leaders, values are not real unless they are championed. Any leader who tolerates a blank page about her values will find her opponents fill that space with their own demonology. To an extent this fate has befallen Gillard.

An atheist who believes in the value of the Bible is fine. It is not a contradiction and it captures the complexity of modern society. But it does not constitute a cultural position. Having declared herself as a cultural traditionalist, Gillard must fight for this position and such beliefs. This notion will horrify many ALP politicians, who will tell her that would be a disaster.

Let's get real. The disaster for Gillard would be the ongoing failure to explain who she really is to the Australian people and the failure to champion the cultural beliefs she has articulated.