Julia Gillard breaks her silence Portrait of former Prime Minister Julia Gillard. Photo: Nic Walker & Louie Douvis During the seemingly endless oration from the ousted Labor prime minister Kevin Rudd, and the triumphant speech of election winner Tony Abbott, neither man spared a word for the woman who had led the country for three of the past six years. Former prime minister Julia Gillard was invisible in these moments. But Ms Gillard, who kept a low profile throughout the campaign, surfaced briefly on social media on Saturday to congratulate her successor, the winners and the losers. After almost two full months of social media silence, Ms Gillard sent a first tweet of the night to congratulate the new Labor member in her former seat. Two hours later, Ms Gillard returned to the microblogging site with a message of support for her former colleagues, making particular mention of Rudd and Anthony Albanese, the leadership team who had deposed her only months earlier, and George Wright, the party's national secretary. Soon after that, she also offered congratulations to the government elect. Ms Gillard's forays were greeted warmly on the social media site, with praise for her grace and dignity. Some other Labor figures did pay tribute to Gillard on election night. "No prime minister has operated in more difficult parliamentary circumstances than she did, and when you look at it she got a lot of runs on the board and in my judgment a lot of good runs," former prime minister Bob Hawke said on Sky News.