Prime Minister Julia Gillard has announced a ballot for the leadership of the Labor party after Kevin Rudd's resignation as Foreign Minister.
"I have decided on 10am (AEDT) Monday morning a ballot for the Labor leadership will be conducted," Ms Gillard told reporters in Adelaide.
"Following Kevin Rudd's resignation yesterday I have formed the view that we need a leadership ballot in order to settle this question once and for all."
Ms Gillard said it was in the interest of the Labor party and the nation for the matter to be settled.
"For far too long we have seen squabbling within the Labor party which has obscured the government's achievements and what we are doing to build a stronger and fairer Australia for the future."
'I EXPECT THE SUPPORT OF MY COLLEAGUES'
Ms Gillard confirmed she would renominate for the leadership.
"I expect to receive the support of my colleagues when I do so," she said.
"But let me be very clear about this: if against my expectation I do not receive the support of my colleagues then I will go to the backbench and I will renounce any further ambition for the Labor leadership.
"This would be in the best interests of the government and the nation."
Ms Gillard called on Mr Rudd to give the same undertaking.
Ms Gillard said she anticipated Mr Rudd would also be a candidate in the leadership ballot.
The PM said she "belives that labor can win the next election under my leadership."
The Prime Minister said she's achieved health reform and passing the minerals tax when Kevin Rudd could not.
'I HAVE MADE MISTAKES'
Ms Gillard acknowledged no government was perfect and she had made mistakes in the past 18 months.
"But ultimately the measure of a government is what the government achieves for the Australian people," she said.
"The measure of a government is not by opinion polls or daily headlines in newspapers."
A Labor government's driving purpose should be ensuring Australia was stronger and fairer in the future than it was today, Ms Gillard said.
The government needed to build the economy's strength so people could get good jobs and families had security.
"Ultimately under my leadership I believe we have been securing the big reforms that will make us stronger and fairer."
Ms Gillard told reporters she could lead Labor to victory at the next election.
"I believe we can win the next election and defeat (Opposition Leader) Tony Abbott," the prime minister said.
"Provided that the Labor party unites and we get on with the job."
Ms Gillard said government was about more than electioneering.
"It's about having the courage to get the big reforms done."
DISCIPLINE AND STRENGTH
Ms Gillard said she had the discipline and personal strength in adversity to stay focused and get things done.
"I have demonstrated those attributes as prime minister," she said.
"I can always keep going no matter how adverse the circumstances."
Ms Gillard said she decided to contest the Labor leadership back in 2010 as the government under the then leadership of Mr Rudd had entered a period of "paralysis".
"Kevin Rudd always had very difficult and very chaotic work patterns," she said.
The prime minister acknowledged Mr Rudd was a very good campaigner but she said a leader required different skills in government.
"Government requires consistency, purpose, method, discipline, inclusion (and) consultation," Ms Gillard said.
"It requires you to lead a big team and lead it well.
"Kevin Rudd as prime minister struggled to do that and by the days of 2010 that struggle had resulted in paralysis in the government."
Ms Gillard said she had tried to give Mr Rudd the benefit of the doubt despite rumours and reports that he had been working to undermine her leadership.
DESTABILISATION CAMPAIGN
Senior ministers have accused Mr Rudd of undermining the government via a series of damaging leaks.
"On each and every occasion I have preferred to think the best of Kevin Rudd and think the best of his conduct," Ms Gillard said on Thursday.
"However it is now evident to me - and I think it is evident to the Australian people - there has been a long-running destabilisation campaign here to get to this point where Kevin Rudd is clearly going to announce that he wants to seek the Labor leadership."
Ms Gillard said she would not dwell on that fact.
"Because our purpose, my purpose, the Labor party purpose is about serving the nation's interests."
Ms Gillard said it was important for the leadership issue to be sorted out quickly.
"I'm not prepared for the nation to go through many days of drift before there is a clear point where this is going to be resolved," she said.
"But if I can make one political comment - I don't think it is fair to (Queensland Premier) Anna Bligh and our colleagues campaigning in Queensland for this to drift on day after day with no resolution in sight."
Ms Gillard said her message to her colleagues was that the party needed to unite after Monday "and get on with the job that Australians expect us to do".
"I expect to win," she said.
"At 10:00AM on Monday a ballot will be called & I will re-nominate for the Labor leadership. I want this issue brought to an end," the PM confirmed in a tweet immediately after her press conference in Adelaide.
"The focus of government has to be on delivering each and every day and that will be my message to my colleagues."
Ms Gillard said Monday's ballot would be the final decision by Labor as to who should be leader.
In the meantime the government would continue with its work, she said.
"Let me assure Australians in this period I will continue to do my work as prime minister," she said.
"I was doing that yesterday, I'll do it today and I'll do it in the days to come."
The prime minister said the leadership speculation was a distraction that was obscuring the ability of the government to explain its reform program to Australians.
"And for some in government I believe it is becoming a distraction from their work."
BAD AT 'SELLING REFORMS'
Ms Gillard conceded she had not always been good at selling the reforms Labor made under her leadership.
She said this may have been an overreaction to what happened under her predecessor.
"One of the overriding problems of the government that Kevin Rudd lead is it was very, very focused on the next news cycle, on the next picture opportunity rather than the long term reforms for the nation's interest," she said.
"Maybe I went too much the other way and I said to myself good policy will always speak for itself.
"I've learnt some lessons about making sure that I'm not only in my office making sure we deliver the big reforms for the nation's future, but I'm also out explaining them in a way that helps Australians understand them."
But she said that having been deputy prime minister under Mr Rudd, she took her fair share of the criticisms about that time.
Ms Gillard reminded people that back in June 2010 she asked Mr Rudd to call for a spill.
"And in that leadership ballot Kevin Rudd assessed he had so little support that he did not choose to contest it," the prime minister said.
"That's what motivated me in 2010 - it was about the interests of the nation and providing good government."
Ms Gillard said she was under no illusion about the degree of political difficulty her government was facing.
"I'm also under no illusion why we have those political difficulties - we have worked to secure some big reforms," she said.
Ms Gillard singled out the unpopular carbon tax.
"We were not going to leave reform opportunities by the wayside," she said.
"I was not, because there was a minority government, going to cower and have this nation cower from big reforms."
The prime minister admitted putting a price on carbon had cost her politically.
"Yes it has, but is it absolutely the right thing for the nation? Yes it is," Ms Gillard said.
She said voters had a choice between her big reform with extra money in their pockets and the opposition's chaotic policy.
Ms Gillard also said Mr Rudd's accusation "faceless men" were running the Labor party was "profoundly insulting" to caucus.
"I can tell you about my Labor colleagues, I can tell you about the men and women who make up the Labor parliamentary party. They are people who went into public life because they believe in something, they believe in a Labor vision of the future," she said.
She rejected the notion Labor apparatchiks controlled caucus members.
"They are people of their own mind and own resources and they make up their own mind," Ms Gillard said.
"Any suggestion that they get told by someone else is deeply and personally insulting to each and everyone of them."
ELECTION 'SABOTAGED'
Ms Gillard said she agreed with Treasurer Wayne Swan that Labor's 2010 federal election campaign had been sabotaged, although she did not directly blame Mr Rudd for it.
"The 2010 election was sabotaged," she said.
"We were in a winning position in that campaign until the sabotage that knocked that campaign very, very solidly."
Ms Gillard said it had been left to her to get the campaign back up and running.
Ms Gillard ruled out "100 per cent" that she ever leaked against Mr Rudd.
She challenged reporters to ring any of their colleagues in the federal press gallery and ask whether she had ever made a disloyal comment about the former prime minister.
"To a person they will say no, because I never did," she said.
She said under Mr Rudd, disfunction in the government grew and she did "everything humanly possible" to try and salvage the situation and to make sure the prime minister and the government he led functioned.
"I went to extraordinary lengths ... knocking myself out each and every day in things well beyond my own portfolio responsibilities and going to organisation matters in Mr Rudd's office to try and get the government functioning," she said.
She said colleagues and senior bureaucrats approached her to get the government moving.
"I did that as a loyal deputy," she said.
"I did it to the best of my ability and it became clear to me very shortly before I asked Kevin Rudd for a leadership ballot that no matter what efforts I was prepared to put into it, it was not going to work and that is why I asked him for a leadership ballot."
Ms Gillard clashed with a reporter at the media conference, after he queried her loyalty and ambition to become prime minister in the lead-up to Mr Rudd being toppled.
"I'm not listening to this rudeness," she said.
"I'm not going to have you just speak to me like this - end of sentence."
'GILLARD CAN'T WIN AN ELECTION'
At a press conference in Washington, Kevin Rudd said that he needs to consult with more colleagues, but he does not think Gillard can win an election.
Mr Rudd said that he had had many conversations with Labor members and ministers since resigning as foreign minister on Wednesday evening.
"I am very pleased and encouraged by the amount of positive support encouraging me to contest the leadership of the Labor party," he told reporters in Washington.
Mr Rudd said he would announce whether he was actually going to run in any ballot, expected to be called by Prime Minister Julia Gillard for Monday, when he returned home.
"I will declare my position on the future of the ALP leadership on my return to Australia," he said.
But in a clear pitch to caucus members, Mr Rudd cited his record as prime minister, declaring the achievements of his government were formidable.
"Remember it's through that period of government when I had the privilege of being prime minister that singly Australia got through the global financial crisis without going into recession and without generating mass unemployment," he said.
"Not only that, we emerged with among the lowest debt and deficit rates of all the developed countries in the world."
Mr Rudd said looking ahead the Australian people and business community needed to have confidence that the government was in strong and stable hands when negotiating very uncertain global financial times.
Mr Rudd told reporters he was keen to stress that he had not made a decision to declare for the position of the leadership - yet.
"I have made it very plain that I need to consult more with colleagues and it's appropriate to make that statement in Australia," Mr Rudd said.
"I do not believe Prime Minister Gillard can lead the Australian Labor Party to success in the next election.
"That is a deep belief and I believe also a view shared right across the Australian community."
Mr Rudd said, however, that he was encouraged by positive support from ministerial and caucus colleagues to contest the leadership.
"I have many more calls to make but their overall argument to me is that they regard me as the best prospect to lead the Australian Labor Party successfully at the next federal elections, to save the Labor party at those elections and to save the country from the ravages of an Abbott government."
The former prime minister, who was rolled by Ms Gillard in June 2010, said he had been "frankly shocked and disappointed" by the tone and content of the personal attacks against him by several senior colleagues overnight.
Deputy Prime Minister Wayne Swan along with senior ministers Simon Crean, Tony Burke, Brendan O'Connor and Stephen Conroy have all made critical comments about Mr Rudd's time as prime minister in the past 24 hours.
"Whatever our differences in politics I do not believe that these sort of vicious personal attacks have a place in professional political life," Mr Rudd said.
"We all have the responsibility to preserve the fabric of decency in our political institutions."
"We are not out of hot water yet when it comes to Europe.
"Therefore in the very difficult period which lies ahead in 2012, experience and confidence and discipline will be needed."
Mr Rudd laid out four key priorities under a government he would lead.
They include restoring business confidence and encouraging small businesses to invest in their future, maintaining a strong manufacturing industry and continuing health and education reform.
"It's fundamental that there is confidence in the business community to invest and to continue to create jobs - that is critical," he said.
He also flagged changes to the way small businesses are dealt with on tax so they can become the big businesses of the future.
On manufacturing, Mr Rudd said he never wants to be the prime minister of a country that doesn't make things.
"That is my enduring passion," he said.
Mr Rudd said he did not back the government's decision to axe support for the auto industry through the green car fund.
On health, he said the current program falls short.
"We squibbed some of the hard decisions in the end," he said.
Mr Rudd also said maths and science students needed to be better supported as he had done as prime minister.
Mr Rudd said he was deeply disappointed the Gillard government had ending the HECS discounts for maths and science students.
"A scheme which I introduced," he said.
"If you look to the data that has come out since then the study of maths and science at senior secondary schools goes down and down and down.
"If we don't get this right, let me just tell you this, folks, we may as well kiss tomorrow goodbye."
Mr Rudd would not speculate whether he had the numbers in the caucus to topple Ms Gillard.
"Anyone is a mug who believes in circulated lists of numbers at this stage of a possible ballot process," he said.
"There is a huge doctrine of enlightened self-interest at work when people put out one list or another in terms of how many numbers people have."
Mr Rudd said whatever the differences in political views there was a place for civility in conducting a debate on a vision for the nation.
"Sure there are tough questions about individuals but, you know, hooking into one another in highly vicious personalised attacks I don't think is Australian and I don't think we should be part of that," he said.
Then, with a gesture highly reminiscent of his time as prime minister, Mr Rudd ended the press conference to head for the airport for the trip back to Australia.
"Folks, as they say in the classics, I've gotta zip."
RUDD IS NO MESSIAH: ROXON
Labor MPs need to get over the idea that Kevin Rudd is the messiah who could win the next election, Attorney-General Nicola Roxon says.
Ms Roxon, a strong supporter of Prime Minister Julia Gillard, says Mr Rudd has many strengths and achievements but his recent conduct has been extremely unhelpful.
"We need to get out of this idea that Kevin is a messiah who will deliver an election back to us. That is just, I think, fanciful," she told ABC television.
It wouldn't be good for the country to have Mr Rudd as prime minister again, Ms Roxon said.
"He was very difficult to work with. There were a lot of challenges," she said, referring to Mr Rudd's time in the top job and his rolling by Ms Gillard 20 months ago.
"People might say that we were too polite ultimately abut the way we did it. We didn't air all our dirty linen. I don't really want to air it now, but the truth is that decision was made for very strongly-held reasons that are just as important now.
"Government has to be able to function properly so we can deliver for the community."
Ms Roxon said a leadership vote, most likely to be held on Monday, should bring an end to the saga that reached fever pitch on Wednesday night when Mr Rudd announced in Washington he was quitting as foreign minister and returning to Brisbane to discuss his future with his family.
Ms Roxon said Mr Rudd's supporters claim 40 votes in the 103-member caucus.
"But I frankly would be surprised if that's the case. Ultimately this is now the way to test that. We have to put this issue to bed," she said.
It would be a disaster if Mr Rudd lost the ballot and then went to the backbench to continue destabilising the government even further.
"We have got to be mature. There's a vote. Someone will win the vote and then we need to get on with doing our good job in government," Ms Roxon said.
'SIGH OF RELIEF'
Labor MPs were breathing a "sigh of relief" that Kevin Rudd has announced his resignation as foreign minister, Communications Minister and Julia Gillard backer Stephen Conroy says.
"I think there's a great sigh of relief in the caucus that we're finally going to resolve all this," Mr Conroy said on the Nine Network.
"This sniping that's been going on behind the scenes, this constant undermining that's been going on by the Rudd camp over many months."
Mr Conroy hinted that Mr Rudd may have narrowly avoided being sacked by the prime minister, saying it would have been "unAustralian" to sack him while he was overseas.
"Sacking someone overseas would have been very, very rude," he said.
In an open attack on Mr Rudd and his backers, Mr Conroy accused them of putting Mr Rudd's interests ahead of the party's and of trying to sabotage the Labor government during and since the last election.
"There's no question that the constant undermining, the constant leaking, the constant publication of lists claiming to be Rudd supporters is damaging the government," he said.
He said he was confident Ms Gillard would win any leadership ballot overwhelmingly.
"Julia Gillard has and continues to have the overwhelming support of the parliamentary Labor Party," he said.
RUDD 'UNDERMINED' GOVERNMENT
Mr Rudd has been undermining the federal government for more than a year, Environment Minister Tony Burke says.
He says the government made the mistake of not explaining to the Australian people "the difference between the Kevin Rudd they saw on their TV screens and how he could actually come to be the micro-manager, the chaotic manager he had become".
"There's no doubt Kevin has been undermining the government for more than a year now," Mr Burke told the Seven Network on Thursday.
"It became chaotic, the chaos, the undermining, the temperament that started to develop, the micro-management where no one other than the prime minister could make a decision.
"We came to office with so much hope from people, and people wanting to believe in us.
"And Kevin as leader became someone who through his complex became increasingly impossible to work with and as a government we simply weren't delivering the way we should have been able to."
Mr Burke said allegations Mr Rudd promised to overturn poker machines reforms if he regained the Labor leadership were "breathtaking".
"If that's true, then we have yet another example of one face being shown to the Australian people but a very different man in private," he said.
Mr Rudd has denied the allegations.
Mr Rudd is expected to challenge, largely based on his remarks that caucus colleagues must decide who's best placed to defeat Opposition Leader Tony Abbott at the next election.
On current numbers Mr Rudd is likely to lose the ballot and be banished to the backbench.
His other option is to vacate his seat, which would bring Labor an unwelcome by-election in his Queensland seat of Griffith.
Last night Ms Gillard said she was disappointed Mr Rudd didn't raise his concerns with her.
Deputy Prime Minister and Treasurer Wayne Swan says Mr Rudd has put his self interest ahead of the party and the broader Labor movement, accusing Mr Rudd of undermining the government at every turn.
As of last night, it's understood Mr Rudd could bank on the support of between 30 and 35 caucus members in a ballot, while Ms Gillard had about two-thirds on her side.
Mr Abbott says the farce shows Labor is unworthy to hold office.
