THREE years after being unceremoniously ousted from the state’s top job, former Premier Anna Bligh still knows how to engage a crowd.
Bligh was in Cleveland on Wednesday to speak with the party faithful and launch her book, a political memoir.
Through the Wall – Reflections on Leadership, Love and Survival, does not take the “Mark Latham” approach and dish the dirt.
Instead, Bligh is more introspect and presents a “softly-softly” approach to those who betrayed her or conspired against her government.
Taking the podium at Cleveland’s Grand View Hotel, Bligh showed no signs of her battle scars – either political or health-wise.
The 55-year-old, diagnosed with non-Hodgkin lymphoma in 2013, smiled as she spoke of the “heartbreak” landslide defeat when Campbell Newman rolled her from office in 2012.
She resisted gloating when she reiterated claims made during the week that “nobody within the ALP” thought Newman would be a one-term government.
Even though hubris and arrogance were blamed, Bligh, who spent 17 years in Parliament and was the first woman elected premier decided not to dwell on losses.
She focussed much of her address on women and their role in politics and society.
Queensland's first female premier reflected on the "hole in the wall" she pushed through and the "constant stream of women pushing through it" in her wake.
"...Newman also lost his own seat of Ashgrove, defeated after just one term by the talented and energetic Kate Jones, the former environment minister in my government.
"Annastacia Palaszczuk, my former minister for transport, looks set to become Queensland's second female premier and the first Australian woman to lead her party from opposition to government,
"And Leeanne Enoch has become the first Aboriginal woman to be elected to the Queensland government. Along with other strong, capable women such as Jackie Trad, who won my own seat of South Brisbane after I retired and worked tirelessly to help secure this astonishing victory, they have all jumped through the wall.
"It fills me with renewed hope and joy that the wall is tumbling down at last."
Not one to stay silent, Campbell Newman, the man bookended by female Labor premiers, is also planning a book.
Plans for his memoir hit a snag when University of Queensland Press rejected a proposal citing Mr Newman's decision to axe the state's literary awards.
