Julia Gillard has revealed that her next Labor cabinet will include a Minister for Procrastination, with the job of ensuring that nothing controversial or unpopular actually happens over the life of the new government.

In a stinging repudiation of the frantic policy activism of her predecessor, the Prime Minister wants it known there will be no more of Kevin Rudd's great moral challenges of our time. ''People are tired of being told they should worry about the so-called big issues of climate change, or immigration, or the global financial crisis,'' Ms Gillard told an election rally of photogenic kindergarten children at Innisfail, in northern Queensland, yesterday.

''As I travel around the country, I find it's the simple things that concern hard-working Australian families: how to stop your bearnaise separating, or where to buy genuine truffes du Perigord.''

To prove her point, the Prime Minister spent time at the kindergarten comforting four-year-old Shianne Bogan, who was in tears after her twice-baked souffle of four cheeses collapsed in front of the hovering media pack.

Ms Gillard was clearly moved. ''Don't worry, darl,'' she said. ''Just plate it up. That's all I do for Tim at home and he always says it tastes lovely.''

Later she told a news conference the Procrastination Minister would have a whole-of-government brief to dispatch difficult policy decisions to the too-hard basket. ''Why do today what can be put off until tomorrow?'' she said.

''The last thing Labor wants are policies which frighten those much-loved equine quadrupeds that so many Australians - and I am one of them - like to think of as horses.''

Asked by journalists to name the new minister, Ms Gillard said no decision had been taken and would not be for some time. Focus groups would have to be consulted before a working party could be formed to discuss strategies for establishing a taskforce that would go forward towards selecting a peoples' deliberative assembly to lead a three-year enquiry into a suite of recommendations to be put before a cabinet subcommittee of senior ministers. As one Labor insider put it: ''Inertia will be the new black.''

Mike Carlton