Julia Gillard become chief of staff to John Brumby, the leader of the Labor Party in Victoria. This preceded her own entry into federal politics. Gillard was first elected to the House of Representatives at the 1998 federal election for the seat of Lalor. Following the 2001 election, she was elected to Shadow Cabinet. When Kevin Rudd was elected as party leader and Leader of the Opposition in December 2006, Gillard was elected unopposed as his deputy. Upon Labor's victory at the 2007 election, she became the first female Deputy Prime Minister of Australia, and was made Minister for Education, Minister for
Julia Gillard Governor-General Quentin Bryce, with Swan being sworn in as Deputy Prime Minister. The members of the Rudd Ministry, with the exception of Rudd himself who returned to the backbenches, subsequently became the members of the First Gillard Ministry. Later that day, in her first press conference as Prime Minister, Gillard said that at times the Rudd Government "went off the tracks", and "[I] came to the view that a good Government was losing its way". Gillard offered wider explanation of her motivations for replacing Rudd during the 2012 Labor leadership spill in which Rudd challenged Gillard to regain the Labor