Staff and agencies guardian.co.uk, Friday 22 March 2013 06.59 GMT

Reverberations continue from failed attempt to replace Australian prime minister with an unwilling Kevin Rudd

Julia Gillard and her supporters arrive for the meeting of the Labor caucus where no one rose to challenge the Australian prime minister for her job. Photograph: Penny Bradfield for the Guardian

Three ministers have quit Julia Gillard's Australian government and rival Kevin Rudd has declared he will never take up the leadership of the Labor party again after an abortive attempt to replace the prime minister a day earlier.

Senior party figures forced Gillard to throw her job open to contest on Thursday, inviting a challenge by Rudd, whom Gillard ousted in 2010 via a party room coup. But Rudd refused, saying he was sticking by a promise never again to mount a direct challenge to Gillard, and she was re-elected unopposed by the party caucus.

The drama immediately claimed the scalp of Simon Crean, the senior Labor government minister who on Thursday said Gillard should either call a "spill" of the leadership or be forced into it on the floor of the party room. Gillard promptly sacked him from the cabinet while calling a leadership election.

On Friday as the reverberations from Gillard's victory continued, the resources minister, Martin Ferguson, said he would step down, joining departing cabinet colleagues Crean and Chris Bowen, as well as junior minister Kim Carr.

All had considered Kevin Rudd the party's best hope to reverse polls pointing to a thrashing by conservative opponents at the 14 September elections. But none of them got the chance to vote for him, leading to a situation where ministers were resigning over how they might have voted, rather than what they had actually done.

The resignations come ahead of a cabinet reshuffle by Gillard that has been made inevitable given the challenge to her authority.

"I have a view it's the only honourable thing to do. I would have voted for Kevin Rudd yesterday and Simon Crean [who wanted to stand as Rudd's deputy] to try and give this party a fresh start," an emotional Martin Ferguson told reporters at parliament in Canberra.

Gillard stamped her authority on Labor by being re-elected unopposed after Rudd conceded he did not have the numbers to topple her after a tumultuous day of backroom plotting.
The treasurer, Wayne Swan – widely derided by voters despite having steered the G20 member through the last financial downturn with 5.4% unemployment and a 21st year of unbroken economic growth – was re-elected as Gillard's deputy.

Rudd said on Friday he would never again run for the leadership. "I don't think it's worth raking over the coals. What's done is done and let's get on with the future," Rudd said. "It's really important that we bind together and that's what the Australian people expect of us."

Bowen, one of Rudd's key backers and a former immigration minister, said he would also quit, stripping Gillard's cabinet of another of its most effective political talents.

Ferguson in particular had been an influential advocate for the country's mining industry and helped broker a 2010 deal with major resource companies including BHP Billiton and Rio Tinto to abandon a damaging campaign against a mining profits tax introduced by Labor and later watered down.

Gillard, the plain-speaking lawyer daughter of Welsh migrants, has consistently failed to arrest a slump in opinion polls, which predict a major defeat in September with Labor losing about 20 seats in the 150-seat parliament.

But she attempted to draw a line under the divisions and concerns about her leadership, extending a press conference at a road construction site north of Sydney on Friday to face down questions from journalists about the government's stability.

"This issue is over and done with. This issue has been resolved for all time and I think Kevin's statement reflects that," she said.

Gillard said she would make changes to her ministry in coming days but faced a headache over who to appoint after the departure of some her most effective talents.

"I'm someone who is made of I think pretty strong stuff and I think that's been on display. Politics is not an easy business," she said.

Three ministers quit Julia Gillard's cabinet after leadership drama | World news | guardian.co.uk