In an amazing night of drama in the Australian capital city of Canberra, Julia Gillard the now former Prime Minister in an attempt to firm up her position before the upcoming General Election, held a snap leadership vote as one of her aids in the Labor party suddenly switched allegiances to her rival for power, Kevin Rudd. The vote held in the past couple of hours saw Mr Rudd win by 57 votes to 45 and now it is he who becomes Prime Minister and will lead his party into the upcoming election.
Australian politics is seeing an almighty punch up right now as Kevin Rudd, the Australian foreign minister resigned his position to openly challenge Prime Minister Julia Gillard. She in turn did not hang around and promptly called a leadership election of the Aussie Labor party with winner takes all as the prize. There is serious bad blood between the two, as Gillard staged a coup in 2010 to oust Rudd from the Prime Minister’s job. In a swipe at the former Foreign Secretary she said he was “running a dysfunctional and chaotic government when he was Prime Minister”. Sounds fun, doesn’t it?
