Dear Prime Minister Gillard,   I want to apologise to you for the poor treatment you continue to receive by your fellow Australians.   To be clear: I did not vote you into office and I don't yet know if I will vote for you in the September election, but I do believe that irrespective of whether or not we agree with you, your party, or your policies, there is a basic courtesy which you are due from your fellow citizens. Even more so, considering that you hold the highest office of public service in Australia.   I commend you for your grace and courage in the face of relentless abuse, innuendo and disrespect. I guess you could adopt Margaret Thatcher's stance: if they attack you personally, it means they have not a single political argument left. But the campaign of abuse has seeped out of the political arena and smeared public discourse, staining it with disgrace, so that on a school visit even a child hurled their disrepect at you in the form of a tomato and salami sandwich.   You were good natured about the incident, laughing it off, but surely such an intentional display of disrespect from a child is a measure of how poorly we as a society are teaching our children the basic tenet that all people are deserving of respect.   We can't place the blame solely at the feet of parents, when there are almost weekly reports in the media of adults aiming to publicly shame you, by insulting your father's memory, criticising your outfits, and even your body shape. You have endured public interrogation about your partner, Tim Mathieson's, sexual orientation and you have been made the most appalling sexist, misogynistic joke at an opposition party's fundraising event. There is more, so much more. And I am sorry.   One of the reasons I am sorry, is because we can't even excuse the avalanche of disrepect that has fallen on you as par for the course of politics, because the same thing is not happening to men in politics.   When you became the first female Prime Minister of Australia, I had mixed feelings because of the manner in which it came about. Although I was proud to tell my daughters it was momentous in the history of Australia and for all women everywhere, I am too embarrassed of Australia's…

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