Fans mob Gillard in western Sydney Prime Minister Julia Gillard has been mobbed by admirers at a jobs expo in Sydney's southwest. Hundreds of job seekers created a crush around the prime minister as she toured the expo in Liverpool flanked by media and security officers on Thursday morning. The pro-Gillard crowd held up mobile phones to snap photos of her as she chatted with job hunters. Around 1200 jobs were on offer at the expo in the Whitlam Leisure Centre, named after former Labor prime minister Gough Whitlam. Ms Gillard pinned a notice to the board advertising for an apprentice pastry chef. In a speech, she announced funding for research into making Liverpool part of planned new innovation precincts to create jobs in the area. After snapping a photo of the prime minister, English language student and Iraqi refugee migrant Furdaws Katea said Ms Gillard had given her and her family a chance to start over again. I love her so much, she saved my life. I lost everything in my country. I was waiting six years in Syria before I came to Australia," Ms Katea said. She said she may put her photo of Ms Gillard on the wall of her room. Recent Indian migrant Sita Pai, 29, said she was trying to find work to match her finance skills but jobs were hard to find. "I'm not a political person but I think she's doing a pretty good job," she said of the prime minister. Ms Gillard has been on a five-day tour of Sydney's west, widely seen as a bid to shore up Labor support in the area where opinion polls indicate the party is in trouble. Meanwhile, at Mulgoa preschool in Sydney's west, Opposition Leader Tony Abbott said he didn't need to make a big deal about his visits because he knew the area so well. "The people of western Sydney want a plan, they just don't want a visit," Mr Abbott told reporters. This is not foreign country as far as I'm concerned. They want a constructive engagement that doesn't just start on Sunday and end on Thursday.