Bad blood between Gillard, Rudd splashed in public view

Julia Gillard. Photo / NZPA

The enmity between Julia Gillard and Kevin Rudd is threatening to spill over, with the Prime Minister's office suspected of leaking a report accusing Rudd of pre-election disloyalty and reports yesterday that Rudd openly mocked Gillard after Labor's national conference.

The Foreign Minister is known to have been infuriated by Gillard's conference speech in which she paid tribute to past Labor prime ministers without mentioning him.

According to the Sunday Telegraph, he later jokingly told journalists in a Sydney bar that her attempt to "airbrush" him out of history reminded him of North Korea, which he had recently visited.

Apparently reckless of the consequences, Rudd also publicly ridiculed the Prime Minister's pledge to delegates that "Labour says 'yes' to the future".

Flipping his middle finger into the air in a rude gesture, he declared "F*** the future!", the paper reported.

The Foreign Minister had himself made a conference speech in which he praised the achievements of his own government, fuelling renewed speculation that he might challenge Gillard for the leadership.

His behaviour that weekend, according to political pundits, so annoyed his Labor foes that a copy of a secret section of an internal review of party strategy in the lead-up to last year's disastrous federal election was leaked to the Sydney Morning Herald .

The "sealed" section, which is locked away at Labor Party headquarters, quotes the review's authors as suggesting that Rudd or his supporters were behind leaks that nearly wrecked Gillard's election campaign.

The Prime Minister's staff are suspected of feeding the information to the Sydney Morning Herald, with or without her knowledge.

In an interview published yesterday, Gillard said the first she knew of the leak was when she read about it in a newspaper.

Although relations between her and Rudd are glacial, Gillard is not expected to sack him when she reshuffles her Cabinet this week - perhaps following the Chinese maxim to "keep your friends close, and your enemies closer".

Asked last week by one journalist whether she liked Rudd, she replied, with a short, hard laugh: "Look, Kevin Rudd and I are working together in the interests of the nation."

The Opposition leader, Tony Abbott, told Sky News yesterday that there was a "poisonous dysfunction" at the heart of government, driven by a Prime Minister and Foreign Minister "who can't stand the sight of each other other, who can't work together".