Julia Eileen Gillard was born on 29 September 1961 in the UK, in the seaside town of Barry in Wales. She grew up in Adelaide, South Australia, where her parents arrived in 1966 as ‘ten pound Poms’ under the assisted immigration programme of that era. Her father, a former miner, worked as a psychiatric nurse and her mother as a cook in a women’s refuge. The warmer climate helped Julia’s health recover from the bronchial problems that had been part of the reason for her parents’ emigration, and she did well at high school, going on to the University of Adelaide as a law and arts student. Involvement in campus politics prompted her move in 1982 to Melbourne, where she became president of the Australian Union of Students the following year. She graduated from the University of Melbourne in 1986 and began work as an industrial lawyer with prominent law firm Slater & Gordon, where she became a partner in 1990.

As an active ALP member in the state of Victoria, she moved into full-time politics from 1996 as chief of staff to the then leader of the opposition in the state parliament. She subsequently secured the party’s nomination to contest a seat in the federal parliament, winning at the third attempt when she was elected to the House of Representatives in 1998 for the safe Labor seat of Lalor, which she has represented ever since.

With the ALP in opposition, Gillard joined the shadow cabinet in 2001, initially working mainly on immigration policy (where she showed a willingness to face down her erstwhile left-wing associates with a tough stance against illegal boat arrivals) and then increasingly on health issues. Although she began to be spoken of as a possible contender for the party leadership, she stayed out of the race for that post in January 2005 (when Kim Beazley was elected unopposed). She then allied herself with Rudd’s challenge to Beazley in December 2006, standing successfully herself for the deputy leadership at this time. She broadened her shadow cabinet role in the subsequent reshuffle, becoming opposition spokesperson on employment, workplace relations and social inclusion.

The landslide ALP electoral victory of December 2007 gave Gillard a senior role in the federal government, combining the deputy premiership with wide-ranging ministerial responsibilities for   education, employment and workplace relations. Despite the resulting tag of “minister for everything”, her reputation benefited from this close involvement with down-to-earth issues, notably including fair pay legislation, as well as from her experience of standing in as premier during Rudd’s quite extensive foreign travels. When she announced her challenge to his leadership, on 23 June 2010, Rudd initially intended to contest it, but withdrew when it became apparent that she enjoyed overwhelming support across the parliamentary caucus, allowing her unopposed election (along with that of fellow government insider Wayne Swan as deputy leader) the following day.

Gillard is the first Australian prime minister not to have been married. Besides maintaining a flat in the federal capital, Canberra (which she said she would retain on becoming premier rather than moving into the official residence at The Lodge), she shares a home in the Melbourne suburb of Altona with her partner, hairdresser Tim Mathieson. She has no children, and once commented in an interview that, despite her admiration for working mothers, she would personally have found it difficult to raise a family alongside “something in me that is focused and single-minded” about her political career.