Julia Gillard, Kevin Rudd and Tony Abbott star in parade of former PMs

Julia Gillard and Tony Abbott at the former PM’s official portrait unveiling. Picture: Kym Smith

It’s been quite the week in flashback city. In a reversal of the prime ministerial order, Parliament House has had two Julia Gillard appearances, and a Kevin Rudd one in between.

No overlaps, of course. At the unveiling of Gillard’s official portrait today, Rudd was nowhere to be seen - an absence emphatically confirmed by the size of Wayne Swan’s smile.

“I would like to acknowledge former PM Tony Abbott, thank you for joining us,” Gillard said as she got things underway; this at least was going to be a grudge-free blast from the political past. “And future prime minister Bill Shorten.”

As light streamed in through the recently repaired skylight, she gave a shoutout to absent friends, noting that for some “returning to this place in front of the glare of the Canberra press gallery wasn’t exactly their idea of a great day out”.

People do handle returning in different ways. “It’s funny coming back to this place,” Greg Combet once observed. “It reminds me of an internment camp.”

But this was more like a happy family reunion.

Gillard said she’d kept idea of a portrait on a perpetual backburner until this crucial nudge from one of her staff: “You ought to get that portrait done before you look a hell of a lot older than you did when you were PM.”

Decision made, Gillard explained the portrait had to tell one significant story: “That I was different to every other PM who came before me in this place.”

She looked to a future when schoolkids filing through the building would see lots of portraits of female leaders and not see anything remarkable about it.

But for now, she’s the only one. She and artist Vincent Fantauzzo gave the shroud a single downward yank, and it was immediately clear the very different PM had a very different portrait to match: a large and striking exercise in photorealism, her face set in an expression that will create a challenge for the painter of the eventual Rudd portrait.

Then it was photo time. They were joined by Fantauzzo’s wife, actor Asher Keddie. There was a platoon of Gillard’s former staff. There was a conveyor belt of Labor MPs. There was former independent Tony Windsor and departing Liberal Julia Banks. Below in the crowd, Craig Emerson seemed to be everywhere at once.

And there was Abbott and his blue tie, suddenly hovering by the edge of the portrait while Gillard was snapped with a trio of beaming Parliament House cleaners.

And suddenly they were together and there was the tiniest flashback to those long-gone days when something playful, almost flirty crackled between the pair, until it all turned to poison.

Afterwards, a crowd of schoolchildren one floor closer to the skylight pressed against a railing and called out, “Julia!” Gillard beamed up at them, waved, then stepped into the sunshine.