SYDNEY (AFP) – Australia's ex-prime minister Kevin Rudd has again batted away suggestions he wants to retake the leadership, as his successor Julia Gillard flails in opinion polls a year after taking power.
Labor Party figures are reportedly furious that Rudd, who was brutally ousted by his then deputy Gillard in an internal coup, has given a series of interviews ahead of the one year anniversary of his dumping.
But asked whether he was plotting a comeback, Rudd, now foreign minister, told The Sun-Herald: "Nice try."
"I am set on being the best foreign minister I can be. But nice try."
Gillard led a backroom coup which removed Rudd in June 2010, and shortly afterwards called national elections which resulted in a hung parliament, losing Labor its clear majority.
After narrowly scraping back into power by securing the support of several independents and a Greens MP following 17 days of negotiations, Gillard named Rudd as her foreign minister.
Gillard said Saturday she felt "very secure" in her position, but the nation's first woman prime minister has experienced an unprecedented slump in the polls while Rudd remains popular with the public.
A Nielsen poll published Saturday put support for Labor at 27 percent -- the lowest first-preference share for a major party in the poll's 39-year history -- while dissatisfaction with the prime minister hit 59 percent.
Asked who they preferred as Labor leader, the survey of 1,400 voters overwhelmingly preferred Rudd, who scored 60 percent to Gillard's 31 percent.
But independent lawmaker Rob Oakeshott, whose support is crucial to Gillard's fragile hold on power, said there was no evidence that Rudd would make a leadership comeback.
"Kevin Rudd hasn't been on the phone to me, nor has anyone else," he said.
Oakeshott said Gillard had won his support and that of fellow independents during the long days of negotiations that followed the deadlocked polls and he would not guarantee Labor's hold on power if she was removed.
"My agreement at the time was with the chief negotiator who was left to negotiate by everyone in the Labor Party on her own essentially -- she successfully did that, and my handshake is with her," he told Channel Ten.
"If there is any move to change that, then quite rightly I, and I think the other crossbenchers as well, have the right to consider our options."
Labor Senator Doug Cameron denied tensions within the party, saying the prominence of Rudd, who swept to power in a 2007 landslide which ended more than a decade of conservative rule, was understandable given his position.
"If you're the Foreign Minister of Australia you will have a high profile," he told Sky News. "He's a man of ideas and he'll continue to have a high profile. I just don't think that will go away."
The conservative opposition seized on the reports of Labor divisions, suggesting in a new political advertisement that Rudd wants his old job back.
Opposition MP Christopher Pyne said the Queenslander's media prominence was no accident.
"I've been in this business for long enough to know that when a putative candidate for leader is constantly in the press they are doing everything they can to remove the current person in the job, not making their life easier," he said.
"The only thing Kevin Rudd hasn't done is ride a unicycle into Question Time blowing on a vuvuzela, demanding the leadership back."
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