Australia's PM Rudd calls leadership vote
By ROD McGUIRK (AP) 1 hour ago
CANBERRA, Australia A surprise revolt forced Australian Prime Minister Kevin Rudd on Wednesday to call a party leadership vote that he will struggle to win just months away from national elections. It marks a dramatic reversal in fortunes for the wonkish premier and could give the country its first woman leader.
Rudd had ridden high in opinion polls as one of the most popular Australian prime ministers of modern times until he made major policy backflips including a decision in April to shelve plans to make Australia's worst polluters pay for their carbon gas emissions.
A leadership change is unlikely to alter Australia's key policy positions, such as its troop commitment to Afghanistan.
However it will determine who heads the ruling Labor Party in elections expected late this year. Despite Australia's weathering the global downturn, recent polling puts his center-left government neck-and-neck with the conservative opposition. One poll earlier this month showed Labor trailing the opposition for the first time in more than four years.
Rudd called a late-night news conference to announce Thursday's vote of Labor lawmakers after Deputy Prime Minister Julia Gillard said she would challenge him for the leadership.
She had been approached by key factional power brokers in the party who told her that they had abandoned Rudd to support her, Australian Associated Press and Nine Network television reported, without citing sources.
Their support is important and would weigh in Gilliard's favor, but it remains unclear how individual lawmakers will vote.
Rudd is due to fly to a summit of Group of 20 major economies in Canada hours after the ballot. It is unclear who will represent Australia if he loses.
Rudd said he was confident of victory and railed against the factional power brokers whom he said had plotted against him for weeks amid the government's setbacks in the opinion polls.
"We've gone into some heavy weather of late, and a few people have become a little squeamish at that," he told reporters.
"I am not for getting squeamish about those things; I am for continuing the business of reform and providing strong, proper government for the people of Australia," he said.
Gillard confirmed she would run against Rudd in the leadership vote but said little else on the subject.
While Australia's military contribution in Afghanistan is a sensitive topic here underscored by the deaths of five Australian troops in recent weeks the deployment has cross-party support and is not considered an issue on which Rudd's leadership hangs.
Rudd, 52, a Mandarin-speaking former diplomat to China and son of a dairy farmer, came to power in 2007 after a landslide election victory against a coalition government that had ruled for 11 years. He promised to reinvigorate Australia's role in the United Nations and global politics.
But his political standing took a hit when he backtracked on a promise to introduce an emissions trading scheme in which major polluters would paid for and trade permits to emit a ton of carbon. That has left supporters wondering what he stands for. Opinion polls have shown the government's support bleeding to a minor party, the Australian Greens.
The popularity of Gillard has endured despite the government's declining ratings. The 48-year old former lawyer is most closely associated with key domestic issues such education reform and fair pay for workers. Her profile was boosted by overturning the previous government's employer-friendly industrial laws.
Welsh-born Gilliard, with her broad Australian accent, is viewed as among the most effective communicators of government policy, while Rudd is ridiculed for his embrace of bureaucratic jargon and has been branded a "toxic bore" by the opposition.
Both Rudd and Gilliard were first elected to Parliament in 1998. They formed an alliance in 2006 to oust the then-Labor Party and opposition leader Kim Beazley, who is now Australian ambassador to Washington. Within a year, the party won a general election, and Rudd became prime minister and Gillard his deputy.
Copyright © 2010 The Associated Press. All rights reserved.
Wow, that sounds like a painful slide into disgrace. What do you Aussies think of this?