Tired PM needs a rest: Gillard

If Julia Gillard was to write Tony Abbott a Christmas card, she would tell him to make sure he takes a break this festive season because he is looking "a bit tired".

Answering a question from the floor at a Women in Leadership event in Perth yesterday about what advice she would offer Mr Abbott, the former prime minister said it was important to take a couple of weeks off at Christmas because it was the only time when it was politically acceptable to have a decent break.

She said the relentlessness of politics seldom provided time to refresh and any problem on the Prime Minister's horizon would seem easier to solve when he returned to work.

"I think, actually, I'd say to him, 'Just stay off the bike, the running track, the swimming in the ocean and wrestling a bear and everything else that he seems to do in the morning'," Ms Gillard said.

"It's good to be physically fit but it can be a bit too much.

"I just think I'd pull back from that and physically rest, as well as emotionally rest."

Ms Gillard, who is in Perth promoting her book, said one reasons she decided to tell her story was her increasing concern that many young women had looked at her experience as prime minister and it had turned them off politics. "I wanted to write the book to unambiguously put the other message, that whatever the trials and tribulations along the way, the opportunities that political leadership gives you to put your values into action and change your nation for the better, that far outweighs any of the stuff that comes with it," she said.

Ms Gillard said she was more optimistic about the future of women in leadership and she believed the next female prime minister would have an easier job.

But the "craziness" of appearance dominating public dialogue had to end for women to be accepted as leaders.

"Even in this great country, clearly in the back of our brains there is a whisper about gender stereotypes that is still colouring how we see leaders," she said.