Post date: Feb 27, 2012 1:40:27 AM
CANBERRA, AUSTRALIA (FEBRUARY 27, 2012) (CH 10) - Australian Prime Minister Julia Gillard won a leadership showdown with party rival Kevin Rudd with strong backing from her party on Monday (February 27), but now faces a mammoth task to rebuild support for her divided and unpopular minority government.
Australian Prime Minister Julia Gillard has convincingly beat off a party leadership challenge from ex-premier Kevin Rudd.
Gillard won the ballot of ruling-party lawmakers, 71 votes to 31, in a convincing victory, ending Rudd's hopes of returning as prime minister any time before the next election, due in late 2013.
Rudd's supporters earlier put Gillard on notice that whatever the leadership result, she must lift the government's standing in opinion polls or she could still be dumped as prime minister before the next election.
"The ballot has now taken place and Julia Gillard has won the ballot 71 votes to 31. I've just formally declared Julia is reelected as the leader of the parliamentary Labor Party," a spokesman for the ruling party, Chris Hayes, told reporters after what he described as an intense meeting of Labor lawmakers at parliament house.
Former Labor Party leader Mark Latham said the vote was an overwhelming vote of support for Gillard, and Rudd would be unable to mount a second challenge on the back of the result.
The leadership vote has exposed deep divisions within the unpopular government, which opinion polls show would lose an election by a landslide.
A Newspoll on Monday showed Labor's primary support had risen to a 12-month high despite the leadership turmoil, with two-party support for the government up two points to 47 percent compared with 53 percent for the opposition, down two points.
Rudd was preferred to Gillard as prime minister by 53 percent to 34 percent.
Gillard had called for the leadership vote to stamp her authority over the governing Labor Party after Rudd suddenly quit as foreign minister in Washington last week after weeks of mounting infighting between the two camps.
The two have had a strained relationship since Gillard engineered a party coup to replace Rudd as prime minister in June 2010.