JULIA Gillard has been spotted spending her final days at The Lodge with friends and supporters while playing fetch with the first dog, Reuben.

In her first public appearance since Thursday, the dumped prime minister spent some time with former cabinet colleague and close supporter Craig Emerson in the grounds of the Canberra residence.

Mr Emerson was spotted throwing a tennis ball for the cavoodle while a media pack waited outside.

media_camera Former Prime Minister Julia Gillard and Craig Emerson MP at the Lodge in Canberra. Picture: Gary Ramage

Photos of Ms Gillard and Mr Emerson come after her former top spin doctor claimed her downfall as Prime Minister was due to a misogynistic culture in Australia that is 30 years behind the UK.

media_camera Former Prime Minister Julia Gillard and Craig Emerson MP at the Lodge in Canberra. Picture: Gary Ramage

Former director of communications John McTernan, a Scotsman, has written an opinion piece in a top UK newspaper claiming the recent Howard Sattler interview and restaurant menu controversies were evidence of the old-school thinking.

"Gillard has faced serial abuse as a woman on a scale I believe is unprecedented in modern politics," Mr McTernan wrote in the UK Daily Telegraph.

"That negative, corrosive, anti-woman rhetoric that Gillard endured for so long has damaged Australian politics, and public opinion.

"The belief that everyone should be given a 'fair go' runs deep, but at the same time there exists a very powerful sense of mateship, of male values and a male-inscribed culture.

"And it is the tension between these two characteristics of Australian life that is the backdrop to the abrupt end this week to Julia Gillard's prime ministership."

media_camera John McTernan in his role as Communications Director for then Prime Minister Julia Gillard.

Mr McTernan said that Ms Gillard was the best parliamentary performer of her generation who was "more than a match for the men around her", despite being a "lightning rod" for "deep-rooted misogynist forces in society".

"If Sir Alex Ferguson was picking a team of premier league world politicians, she would be there in the starting line-up," he said.

"The most remarkable thing about Gillard, though, was that, in the face of this serial abuse, her sense of self, of calm, was never rocked or rattled.

"This is a woman who believes above all in the power of a rational argument.

"If you counter prejudice and ignorance with reason and logic, you can, she still holds, change the world."

Ms Gillard came under heavy criticism over her gender wars after singling out Tony Abbott as a misogynist in a speech that went viral around the world.

When she was dumped last week, she said her gender was part of her story as PM but not all of it.

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Originally published as Gillard's final days at The Lodge