Julia Gillard day as prime minister, Gillard reassured US president Barack Obama of Australia's continuing support for the military campaign in Afghanistan, which was then in its ninth year of operation. She visited Afghanistan on 2 October 2010, meeting with members of the Australian Defence Force in Tarinkot, and President Hamid Karzai in Kabul. The visit marked her first foreign trip as prime minister. Following the visit, A parliamentary debate was conducted for four sitting weeks of parliament in November 2010, with the agreement between Gillard and Abbott that it would be necessary for Australian soldiers to stay in Afghanistan and prevent
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