KEY POINTS:
One of the more amusing images during the Australian election campaign was of satirist John Clarke (aka Fred Dagg) impersonating John Howard, impersonating Julia Gillard, Australia's new Deputy Prime Minister.
John Clark-cum-Howard contorted his face and voice into a veritable bogey-man in a television skit repeating her name in a terrifying fashion.
Julia Gillard was a lightning rod for much of the Coalition's scare message over the Labor Party and the unions.
The scare campaign didn't work. She is the first woman Deputy Prime Minister of Australia.
Within a few weeks the 46-year-old redhead will be acting Prime Minister when Kevin Rudd heads of for the United Nations climate change conference in Bali.
She entered Parliament in the same intake as new Prime Minister Kevin Rudd.
She was a lawyer who specialised in industrial law, was a former student leader firebrand before that, and is on the left of the party.
In a factional deal she became deputy to the more moderate Mr Rudd in December last year after Mr Rudd beat Kim Beazley in a leadership ballot 49 votes to 39.
Like Helen Clark, she has been criticised for choosing to be childless.
Her electorate is Lalor in the outer western suburbs of Melbourne.
She will hold the portfolio of Employment and Industrial Relations - one of only two pre-announced by Mr Rudd - and will oversee the repeal of the unpopular Workchoice policy that deregulated the labour market.