Prime Minister Julia Gillard could soon have a wedding ring on her finger if boyfriend Tim Mathieson gets his way, although Australia’s first female leader played down the suggestions on Sunday.
Mr Mathieson, a former hairdresser who is known as Australia’s “First Bloke”, said he would like to tie the knot one day with the 49-year-old.
“I would like to ask her,” the 54-year-old, who has three children from a previous marriage, told the Sydney Sunday Telegraph.
“At the moment I’m really quite happy with our relationship the way it is. “Like Julia, I don’t think we need to be cemented in any other way.
“We’re just happy with the way we are, but I would hope if I did ask her that, of course, she would say yes. Absolutely.”
Mr Mathieson and Ms Gillard, who has never married before and has no children, have been an item for nearly five years.
An anonymous source close to Ms Gillard told the newspaper that rumours of an upcoming wedding were “probably right”, adding that the pair had planned to marry before she became Prime Minister last year.
Ms Gillard though played down talk of an imminent wedding.
“There is no rock on the finger, so I think everybody can say we’re a happy couple and that’s a good thing,” she told ABC Television.
If Mr Mathieson does propose, it is unlikely they would marry in a church, given the Welsh-born Prime Minister is an atheist.
No Australian Prime Minister has ever married while in office.
Meanwhile support for Ms Gillard has plunged to record lows, according to poll results out yesterday, with the opposition saying it proved she has stopped listening to the electorate.
Two separate post-budget polls pointed to slumping support for the country’s first female leader, who has been in power for less than a year.
A Nielsen poll of 1,400 voters in Fairfax newspapers saw Ms Gillard’s approval rating fall two points to a record low of 43 pe cent, while the Labour leader’s disapproval rating was up two points to 52 per cent, also a record for her.
For the first time, conservative opposition leader Tony Abbott has a higher approval rating than the Prime Minister at 45 per cent.
In a Newspoll of 1,201 people for the The Australian newspaper, satisfaction with Ms Gillard dropped to a record low of 34 per cent and dissatisfaction climbed to 55 per cent.
Given a choice between the two main parties, 54 per cent said they would vote for Mr Abbott’s coalition against 46 per cent for Labour.
The polls followed last week’s unpopular belt-tightening federal budget in which cuts of $23.7 billion were announced to counter natural disasters and revenue falls.