00:00I think the misogyny speech was the perfect core to the play about Julia
00:07because it's still so pertinent to so many women and a lot of the women coming
00:12to the play are kind of slightly ashamed that they didn't respond at the time
00:21with more sympathy towards her and now with the benefit of time passing
00:25realised that what she went through and the stamina she had to have to get through it
00:31and really how Australia changed in the wake of that speech.
00:36Yeah, I agree.
00:37I also, when I sat in that audience and watched Justine perform that speech,
00:45tears just rolled down my face and it was many things.
00:49It was the fact that Julia had to say those words.
00:52She had to speak those words.
00:55That was so heartbreaking that somebody had to do that
00:58but it was also heartbreaking that 10 years on nothing seems to have changed.
01:02I don't feel it has changed and I have a daughter and I don't feel it's changed for her
01:07and I worry about that but I do see other young women see that it has changed
01:16so that I'm really grateful that Julia did speak those words so that we can have the change.
01:22I think it has made a significant difference in terms of what people can get away with in public life.
01:30I think that our media, particularly the right-wing media, has to control itself more
01:36and keep the discourse more civilised than it was at that time.
01:42So I do think it's had an effect in that way.
01:45I mean, kind of wonderfully, my daughter who was in boarding school until recently,
01:50her Year 12 girls, her cohort, all could recite chunks of the misogyny speech.
01:58So the speech had transcended national politics
02:01and become a bit of a sort of iconic speech about we're just not going to take it anymore.
02:07Yes.
02:07And that gives me hope.
02:08Yes, true.
02:09Yeah.
02:10I think that making the Julia story live on for younger generations of women is important
02:19because history is the way that we learn what we've come from
02:23and how we want to change the kind of world that we want.
02:27And there are young women coming who were only very, very young when she gave that speech.
02:32So I'm kind of thrilled that older women are bringing younger women to the play
02:36and a lot of men are bringing younger women as well
02:38as a kind of, I guess, clarion call to when you should stand up for yourself
02:45and when you need to let the world know that your standards are higher
02:52than the standards that the national culture is delivering.
02:54I'm thrilled that Julia is coming to Wollongong
02:58and the thing that I'm most pleased with in terms of the play
03:05is not just that it gives the audience an opportunity
03:09to experience Julia Gillard's leadership from inside her head
03:16but also that it reflects her humour.
03:21She's a very funny person.
03:22I interviewed her for a couple of hours while I was writing it
03:26and that was the great surprise for me
03:28is that I hadn't really seen how funny she was in public life
03:32but she has a fantastic sense of irony and really made me laugh a lot
03:37and there are a lot of laughs in Julia.
03:39There are tears but there's also a lot of humour.
03:43So I think people coming and think it's going to be a very sober political experience
03:47walk away saying, oh, that actually was an entertainment.
03:51Yes.
03:52It wasn't a lecture.
03:53Yes.
03:53Yes.
03:55Yeah.
03:56You
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