Former prime minister Kevin Rudd will contest the Australian Labor party leadership in a ballot on Monday
Australia's former prime minister, Kevin Rudd, will challenge Julia Gillard for the leadership of the Labor party and the country amid an increasingly bitter power struggle.
"Rightly or wrongly, Julia has lost the trust of the Australian people. That's why I've decided to contest the leadership," Rudd told a news conference in Brisbane.
Unless there was a change, he said, Labor would lose the next election, due in 2013. "All indications are that we are heading to the rocks," he said.
The leadership ballot will take place on Monday morning after Gillard called it in an attempt to settle the party's top job once and for all. Questions over her leadership have dogged her prime ministership since she removed Rudd from office in 2010 in an internal party coup. The centre-left Labor party scraped through elections later that year to lead a minority government in a hung parliament.
In a no-holes-barred press conference on Friday, Gillard accused Rudd of running a dysfunctional and chaotic government when he was prime minister. She added that over the past year he has been deliberately destabilising her government.
"What shouldn't happen in politics is you shouldn't be dragged down by someone who is on your own side," she said.
"When asked whether he had been involved in conversations undermining the Labor party and undermining the government, he refused to answer," she added.
Gillard also accused him of trying to turn the leadership battle into a personality contest.
"This is not an episode of Celebrity Big Brother, this is about who should be prime minister," she said.
She said as prime minster, she had achieved major reforms that had languished under Rudd, including putting a price on carbon, a tax on the mining and resources industry, a national broadband network and health reform. Ironically there are very few policy differences on these issues between the two candidates.
Current estimates put Gillard well ahead in the leadership contest, with about two thirds of the parliamentary Labor party thought to be backing her.
Rudd resigned as foreign minister during a trip to the US earlier this week, saying he could not continue in his role without the support of the prime minister.
On Friday he said if he did not win Monday's vote, he would return to the backbench and not challenge a second time. During his press conference he said wanted to continue the work he had done as prime minister.
"I want to finish the job the Australian people elected me to do when I was elected by them to become prime minister," he said.
"The government's problems as they have accumulated are of their own makings," he said, adding that during his time as prime minister, his opinion poll ratings only once fell below 50%. The current government's primary vote is languishing at around 30%.
Author and political analyst from Monash University, Nick Dyrenfurth, says Rudd's challenge is about vanity.
"He's consumed by anger at what happened in 2010 when he was toppled by his colleagues without any reference to the voters," he said.
Gillard supporters have continued to attack Rudd and some cabinet ministers have openly said they would not serve under him.
"I doubt I would be asked, but I wouldn't accept if I was," said attorney general, Nicola Roxon.
"I don't believe he will win on Monday. I don't believe I will be a member of his team if he did," said environment and sustainability minister, Tony Burke.
One Gillard supporter accused Rudd of using Tea Party tactics by appealing to the electorate to use their power in the leadership contest after he urged people to ring their local MPs and speak to the media.
Three ministers have come out in support of Rudd publicly. The now housing minister and former attorney general under Rudd, Robert McClelland, said people just needed to look at Kevin Rudd's standing in the polls to see who was best placed to win the next election.
"The reality is that we have been effectively flat-lining in support [under Gillard]" he said.
Analysts say whoever wins the vote on Monday, the Labor party is heading for electoral oblivion.
"The damage to brand Labor is cataclysmic," said political analyst Nick Dyrenfurth.
"What's unprecedented is the openness of the personal attacks and bloodletting," he said.
"It adds up to the Australian Labor party being wiped out for an entire generation."
The conservative opposition has called for a general election.
Source: http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2012/feb/24/kevin-rudd-challenge-julia-gillard-australian-leadership
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