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s and pain we hadn't thought of ourselves as international aid donors before. >> i think the most familiar i'm with is china which certainly has made the shift policy wise and intellectually, and in demeanor from being a country that was an aid recipient with you know hundreds of millions of people living in poverty, to now, feeling itself as a global power, and conducting itself as a former power. >> we're talking to julia gillard. we are talking about how that may increase the supply of women politicians around the globe.

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and make it real. >> you're watching "talk to al jazeera." i'm ray suarez. former prime minister of australia, julia gillard. board chair for. >> you australia while through history and culture has been oriented to western europe. you're very much an asian economy and an asian-oriented

economy. that took a shift in the mind of australia about who you were and where you were on the globe. in yes, it did and it was a shift originally by the governments, prime minister bob hawk and prime minister bob keating. we led to the creation of apec, the community of nations in the asia pacific, coming together to talk about economic questions. and here we are all those years later and under my prime ministership, we had a whole of australia paper, looking across the 100 years to come at the remarkable growth we will see in our region of the world and its rising economic power. so we were very conscious of the shifting economic weight and strategic weight of the world in which we live and australia's

place in that and the great opportunities that can flow from it. >> do you think australia has a lesson to teach to the united states as it talks about tilting towards asia, refocusing not necessarily away from europe but taking a wider view of the world? china is a big player now. and i think america's associations are still very heavily pitched across the atlantic. >> i was very happy as prime minister to welcome president obama to australia. he spoke in our parliament house. and he spoke at the time that the united states was first articulating the doctrine of the pivot or the rebalance, whatever terminology you want to use, towards asia. it seemed to me a very smart move and was followed up by a lot of activity. i mean the u.s. has always been

deeply engaged in our region of the world but it was clearly a conscious foreign policy decision to strengthen that engagement even more. and in my experience that has meant a very deep and sophisticated engagement with china, as china rises in our region, and that starts to shape and change the world's history and the strategic balances in our part of the world. >> was that a process? did that take some time for the average australian to remake their own internal map of the world, the map they carry around in their heads? >> it's been an endeavor over decades, with government leadership. you know, pointing to where our path in the world is going to be. so we, an ally of the united states of america, of course people look to america, travel in america, you know, hollywood, you know, american culture, all

of that. we have our special and historic ties to the united kingdom. we still have convene elizabeth as our head of state. we are not a republic. she is our ultimate head of state. but we've got this clear consciousness of ourselves in our part of the world needing to understand what is happening right across our region. so of course that's about china. but it's also about india and what's happening in south korea. it's been a very long time what's happening in japan now, such a strong trading partner of ours and partner in the region in so many ways. it's what's happening in indonesia. so across all of our region we are deeply engaged and we've got more of a sense of ourselves in that place. than had 20, 30, 40 years ago. >> along with being comfortable with itself as an asian country, does australia have something to say to the west about global

climate change? because it's in a very different place on the globe. are you suffering in ways that are kind of the thin edge of the wedge here? >> i think like the rest of the planet, i accept the science of climate change. i don't think that you can look at any one weather event and say that's climate change. but you can look at the way the patterns, overall, the world is getting warmer and the weather, as a result, more extreme droughts, more extreme flooding, more extremity hurricanes and cyclones. we suffer from these extreme weather events. certainly we've seen extreme heat and flooding, cyclones. so for all of us, whether it's living in australia or any other part of the world, we've got an obligation to make sure we're doing less damage in the world

in which we live and constraining the amount of carbon we generate. under the governmental i led we introduced an emissions trading scheme with a fixed price for the first three years. it was a very controversial policy, and continues to be a very controversial policy. >> you're watching "talk to al jazeera." we'll have more in a minute. shinmarita

this is "talk to al jazeera." i'm ray suarez.

i'm joined by julia gillard. who is the board care of the global partnership for education, after a run of prime minister of australia. we've talked from time to time through this conversation about your time at preements. prime minister. you are at the moment a recovering politician. does it take a while to get used to being a regular again? >> it's got its delights, as well as its regrets, i suppose. there's a lot that's bittersweet about moving out of politics. of course you miss the opportunity that politics gives you and government gives to you make meaningful change, to have the direct power and ability to do that. so of course, there are public policy things i would still have liked to have done in australia and continued in politics to do. but that wasn't to be. and so there is the life beyond. and i'm very much enjoying taking some of the skills and

things i learned from politics into different ways of working, including becoming the chair of the global partnership for education. and it is you know nice to be able to travel in a more informal way and wander down city streets by yourself and some of the things you at any time get to do when you're in politics. >> a lot of countries in the world have had heads of government or heads of state who are women, elected women. we haven't had that yet in the united states. maybe we're a little bit behind the curve. but have you had a chance to think about what it means to be a woman in power, and how so many welcome that, and so many are still a little put off by it? >> i think our, you know, world is undergoing a change about gender equality and more women going into politics. i think it's important we see more women going into politics

for the future. if you believe as i do, merit is equally distributed between the sexes then we should see national leaders being around half men, half women. if we're going to get there we've got to fix a series like girls education. if you don't get that foundation-stone you are not going to get equal outcomes. >> education is changing the nature of who can aspire to political leadership isn't it? >> i think that's true. i think if we look at the poorest countries in the world we're only going to see women come there and take their equal place in business, in politics, in law in every walk of life if we get education. there and equal for girl children. >> so you talked about missing the ability to affect events that way you had when you were

in high elected office. in this new role, can the effect be as measurable? >> yes, absolutely. the aim of the global partnership for education is a very measurable. we can measure the number of children who are getting to go to school who didn't used to go to school. we want to make sure that the coming years that we, through the work we are doing see 24 million more children get into school. there's a focus on learning metrics which is the way in which we measure the quality of learning. so getting not only more children into school, but making sure when they're there, that they are actually learning, and we can measure what is happening with the learning. so if we can be measuring that, the quality of the learning, as well as counting the heads of the number of children going into the school, i think that gives everybody a lot more reassurance that we are achieving what we are setting

out to be achieving for the children of the world which is that they end up with the skills that they need to lead fulfilled and empowered lives. >> julia gillard, thank you very much for being on "talk to al jazeera." >> thank you very much. >> this is "techknow." a show about innovations that can change lives. we're going to explore the intersection of hardware and humanity and doing it in a unique way. this is a show about science by scientists. let's check out our team of hard core nerds. i'm phil torres, i'm an entomologist. tonight the frozen zoo. in a deep freeze, sells from the endangered species ton planet. like the white rhino. dr. shini somara is a mechanical engineer. tonight she's inside a tornado. find o