Did we actually listen to Julia Gillard's misogyny speech?

It was the 15-minutes of fury heard around the world but we've done little more than remix it for TikTok.

It was the 15-minutes of fury heard around the world but we've done little more than remix it for TikTok.

This is an opinion piece.

It's been 10 years since former Prime Minister Julia Gillard dropped mic and delivered her now infamous "misogyny speech".

It was 15-minutes of fury that was heard around the world that's been labelled everything from a war cry to a convenient political distraction and mere performance art.

It went viral. Hillary Clinton (retrospectively) credited it as the beginning of the #MeToo movement and it's now found a new life and fans on TikTok being remixed to Doja Cat's Boss Bitch and being cited on Instagram as "a comfort show".

However the speech wasn't just about the Opposition Leader Tony Abbott needling her in Question Time. Something he did well. She was a leader under immense pressure and he knew all the buttons to push.

While dealing with internal issues, she was also having her every outfit, hair style and even her reading glasses critiqued on top of managing a hung parliament and a party going MAFS dinner party feral behind-the-scenes.

In 2012, a man called Peter Slipper defected from the Liberals to serve as Speaker.

This gave Gillard an extra one-vote margin on the floor of the House of Representatives (the green room).

His time in the Speaker's chair was plagued by controversy. There were claims of sexual harassment lodged against him by a former staffer and then an AFP investigation into claims of CabCharge fraud.

The Federal Court dismissed the sexual harassment charges after taking extensive evidence.

He tearily addressed the parliament saying he regretted the events, which played out publicly for about six months.

The Opposition had been demanding Slipper resign for weeks following revelations he used offensive language to describe female genitalia in text messages to his former staffer James Ashby, who is now Pauline Hanson's right hand man.

Alas, the day of The Speech™ was a busy one in #auspol.

Slipper resigned as Speaker, just hours after a Bill to have him removed from the job was narrowly defeated.

A motion Gillard opposed.

That's what The Speech™ was about.

At least on the surface anyway.

It clocked up more than 2 million views in a matter of hours. 

Finally the op-eds about her jackets were replaced with analysis of "the real Julia" - something she promised to show during her stage-managed election campaign in 2010.

Despite politics at the time leaving a foul taste in the mouths of the Australian electorate, Gillard's soliloquy was a palate cleanser for the political class and stirred an awakening in women who'd tuned out or failed to ever engage with public life before. 

Some women fist pumped, others abhorred what she was saying. Either way, lightning struck and it electrified a generation of women to speak up and out. It's hard to imagine the March4Justice some years later being as well-attended without Gillard's blueprint.

However, as our first female PM said when she was ousted by Kevin Rudd in 2013, "gender doesn’t explain everything, it doesn’t explain nothing, it explains some things." 

Gender was big on the legislative agenda that particular day. 

Also on the day Gillard roared about misogyny her government passed legislation that further disadvantaged single mums.

Gillard's most controversial policy (even more so than the mining tax she promised would never happen) happened when the cut-off age for all recipients of the parenting payment was lowered.

Originally it was cut from when the youngest kid turned 16. On that day 10 years ago it was agreed that it should be dropped to when they turn eight instead.

The policy left single mothers between $60 and $100 a week worse off by shifting them off parenting payments and onto what we now know as "Newstart".

In 2018 the Australian Council of Social Service and the University of New South Wales released The Poverty in Australia report. It drew links between Gillard's policy and the increase in poverty experienced by single-mother families around the country.

The report revealed a "sharp rise in poverty among households with sole parents who were unable to find or secure paid work", from 35% in 2013 to 59% in 2015.

When she was deposed by Rudd in 2013. Gillard delivered a calm and dignified farewell speech congratulating Rudd, outlining her key policy achievements (Newstart cut offs didn't make the highlights reel) and declaring she believes it’ll be “easier” for our next female PM. 

Gillard did make it easier. Easier for women to speak out when angry and call out bad behaviour. She now keeps a graceful distance from domestic politics, instead preferring to focus on helping young women harness their potential and aspire to be future leaders.

But talking is easy. It's the action part that's a little more labor intensive and also Labor focused. The party which ate itself during the Rudd-Gillard-Rudd years seems to have course-corrected, even though it took a decade. We're seeing it now just start to filter through. As new MP Tracey Roberts said on the campaign trail in the seat of Pearce in WA - an electorate held by former Attorney-General Christian Porter - "It's important that when we get to the top of the tree that we don't pull the ladder up for other women". 

However while our first female PM cracked the glass ceiling it's going to be interesting to see what our first PM who was raised by a single mother, and had a front row seat to The Speech™, can go on to achieve in these coming years.

The general public - and our debutante MPs - seemed to have learned something on this day 10 years ago, but did the wider political class? The proof will be in the policy.