Party rifts threaten Gillard's gains

Kevin Rudd. Photo / Greg Bowker

The closing days of Prime Minister Julia Gillard's political year are turning from triumph to dust as the threat of a leadership challenge again rumbles through Labor and the party splits on uranium sales to India.

New speculation of a challenge by Foreign Minister Kevin Rudd emerged from the weekend's federal Labor conference, when tensions between Gillard and the former Prime Minister were fuelled by snubs, backbiting and the leaking of a report pointing to Rudd as the source of earlier leaks that almost cost the Government power.

Gillard's successful push for party backing on Indian uranium contracts has infuriated the left, which has vowed to continue fighting exports to a country that refuses to sign the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty.

The thunderheads now gathering above Gillard have clouded what had seemed like a glowing end to an otherwise appalling year for the fragile Labor minority Government.

Gillard had pushed through her divisive carbon and mining taxes, Opposition Leader Tony Abbott's run in the sun was faltering, and while the Government would still face a crushing landslide in an election now, Labor was starting to inch back.

At the conference, Gillard's win on uranium was matched by a face-saving compromise on same-sex marriages that overruled her view of wedlock as a union of man and woman, giving Labor MPs a conscience vote on the issue.

Gillard's position was also bolstered by the defection of Liberal MP Peter Slipper, installed by Labor as Speaker of the House, and the return to Government benches of former speaker Harry Jenkins, handing the Government a crucial two-vote buffer.

A poll by Newspoll in the Australian yesterday - the last for this year - said while the Coalition still held a 54 to 46 per cent lead in the two-party preferred vote that decides Australian elections, satisfaction with Gillard increased to 36 per cent, 3 points ahead of Abbott.

She extended her lead over Abbott as preferred prime minister for the second consecutive poll, rising from 40 to 43 per cent, seven points ahead of Abbott and her best figure since May.

But Gillard's gains are again being overshadowed by Rudd, the leader she ousted by coup in June last year.

The Opposition had thrived on speculation of a new challenge by Rudd.

The leadership had faded as an issue, however, as Gillard won her carbon and mining taxes, and as Abbott's negativity and declining poll appeal began to shift attention to murmurs within his own ranks.

But at the conference, Rudd and supporters were angered by exclusion of the former leader from tributes to past Labor prime ministers by Gillard, which they saw as a deliberate snub.

Opponents of Rudd were furious when the former leader told Brisbane's Courier-Mail the conference had been a failure for sidelining proposals on party reform.

Rudd was also reported to have been overheard mocking Gillard's speech.

Yesterday, the Sydney Morning Herald published excerpts from a confidential section of a review of the party's performance in last year's elections, critical of the "drift and complacency" of the Rudd Government.

More telling, the report identified Rudd or his supporters as the source of the series of highly damaging leaks that pulled the wheels from Labor's election campaign and almost propelled it from office.

"The difficulties faced by a change in leadership so close to an election were fanned by some who opposed the change and some who wanted to continue a fight against a losing side," the SMH cited the report as saying.

"The review committee is unanimous ... that these events were designed to cause damage to Labor's election chances and those involved should be condemned by the party."

Meanwhile, the left and a number of key members of the right remain furious at the sale of uranium to India, which will now go ahead when agreements to safeguard exports from military use have been negotiated.

Warning that the fight was not over, left faction convenor Senator Doug Cameron said the decision was one of the worst Labor had ever made.

Welcomed by India and the uranium industry, the decision has been slammed by conservation groups, and Pakistan's Ambassador to Canberra, Abdul Malik Abdullah, told ABC radio his country would now expect equal treatment.