Jessica Wright
September 4, 2011
Follow the leader ... Ban Ki-Moon meets Ms Gillard at Parliament House. Photo: Andrew Meares
JULIA GILLARD will have to be ''bombed out'' of the Labor leadership, say her staunchest cabinet supporters. And that is an option, say a growing number of MPs who have lost faith in the Prime Minister's ability to resurrect the government.
Ms Gillard was defiant yesterday as she fronted the media in a joint press conference with the UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon, who, only minutes earlier, had morning tea at the Canberra residence of the ousted prime minister and now Foreign Affairs Minister, Kevin Rudd.
The Prime Minister declared she would be the only person to lead the Labor Party into the next federal election, which would not be before 2013.
Serious questions about whether Ms Gillard can hold on to the Labor leadership have occupied the government's focus for the past week. Spooked Labor MPs have rushed to consider a list of possible leadership contenders in the event of a challenge or - some consider more likely - an attempt at a seamless transition if Ms Gillard is forced to step down for the good of the party.
The Defence Minister, Stephen Smith, former party leader Simon Crean, Climate Change Minister Greg Combet and Assistant Treasurer Bill Shorten have all been mentioned as front runners for ''Plan B''. But none has the numbers to mount a successful challenge.
Senior members of Ms Gillard's cabinet publicly circled the wagons around the Prime Minister over the weekend. Her deputy, the Treasurer, Wayne Swan, said his boss was ''as tough as nails''. A close cabinet colleague said Ms Gillard would ''need to be bombed out of the chair'' before she would consider stepping down. Another MP, however, said: ''They way things are going, it might have to come to that.''
Mr Smith's name has led internal chatter as the ''most sensible option'' - his most attractive quality being that he has no real factional association, and he was far enough removed from the Rudd-Gillard battle to give Labor a clean slate in the eyes of voters.
The spectre of a return to Mr Rudd - who may be popular with voters but is bereft of caucus support - was dismissed by one member of the Right as being ''as likely as Hawkey and Keating standing on a joint ticket''.
But spooked MPs and Senators told The Sun-Herald Ms Gillard had ''lost a lot of skin'' over the High Court's rejection of her attempt to send boat people to Malaysia. One said the mood within the party was ''almost fatally depressed.'' Another senior Caucus member and staunch supporter of Ms Gillard said any leadership change ''would have to be with a gentle nudge and not the knife''.
''We've learnt our lesson, that's for bloody sure,'' the source said. ''If things get so bad that it is clear we are going over the cliff, then we would need to get serious about Julia standing down so there is at least a faint hope for the rest of us. The problem is if she won't go - and I'm telling you she won't - there isn't many of us who want to go down in the same burning heap [that] the polls are telling us we are in.''
The Opposition Leader, Tony Abbott, said Australia's prime ministership should be decided at an election and not by faceless men in the Labor Party.
Mr Abbott said Labor was consumed with indecision and riven with factions.
