page_title: Kevin Rudd
section_title: February 2012 spill
hierarchical_section_title: Kevin Rudd / Leadership tensions / February 2012 spill
caption_attribution_description: DAVOS/SWITZERLAND, 26JAN13 - Kevin Rudd, Member of Parliament, Australia, former Prime Minister and former Foreign Minister; Global Agenda Council on Fragile States, speaks during the Session 'China's Next Global Agenda' at the Annual Meeting 2013 of the World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland, January 26, 2013.. . Copyright by World Economic Forum. . swiss-image.ch/Photo Monika Flueckiger
context_page_description: Kevin Michael Rudd AC is an Australian former politician who was the 26th Prime Minister of Australia, serving from December 2007 to June 2010 and again from June to September 2013. He held office as the leader of the Australian Labor Party.
  Rudd was born in Nambour, Queensland. He has a degree in Chinese studies from the Australian National University, and is fluent in Mandarin. Before entering politics, he worked as a diplomat, political staffer, and public servant. Rudd was elected to the House of Representatives at the 1998 election, running in the Division of Griffith. He was promoted to the Shadow Cabinet in 2001 as Shadow Minister for Foreign Affairs. In December 2006, he successfully challenged Kim Beazley to become the Leader of the Labor Party. Under Rudd, Labor overtook the incumbent Coalition government led by John Howard in the polls, making a number of policy announcements in education, health, industrial relations, and climate change.
  Labor won the 2007 election by a landslide, with a 23-seat swing in its favour. The Rudd Government's first acts included signing the Kyoto Protocol and delivering an apology to Indigenous Australians for the Stolen Generations.
context_section_description: Speculation regarding Rudd's desire to challenge Gillard to regain the leadership of the Labor Party—and hence the Prime Ministership—became a near constant feature of media commentary on the Gillard Government. In October 2011, Queensland MP Graham Perrett, the member for the marginal Brisbane-area seat of Moreton, announced that if Labor replaced Gillard with Rudd, he would resign and force a by-election—a move that would likely cost Labor its majority. In her speech to Labor's 2011 Conference, Prime Minister Gillard mentioned every Labor Prime Minister since World War II with the exception of Kevin Rudd. The speech was widely reported as a snub to Rudd. In early 2012, Labor MPs began to openly discuss the issue of leadership. Simon Crean told Radio 3AW, "[Rudd] can't be leader again...people will not elect as leaders those they don't perceive as team players".
  Following a Four Corners program that revisited Gillard's role in Rudd's downfall as prime minister, a breakdown in party discipline saw Labor MP Darren Cheeseman call on Gillard to resign, while his colleague Steve Gibbons called Rudd a "psychopath with a giant ego". Amidst the controversy, an expletive-laden video of out-takes of an intemperate Kevin Rudd attempting to record a Chinese language message during his time as prime minister was released anonymously on YouTube, apparently aimed at discrediting his push for the leadership. While Rudd said publicly only that he was "happy as Foreign Minister", media commentators widely declared that a leadership challenge was "on".
  When Rudd resigned on 22 February 2012, Deputy Prime Minister Wayne Swan lambasted Rudd as "dysfunctional". His Cabinet colleague Tony Burke also spoke against Rudd, saying of his time in office that "the stories that were around of the chaos, of the temperament, of the inability to have decisions made, they are not stories.". Labor Senator Doug Cameron came out in support of Rudd and called on his colleagues to show him respect.
  Later that day, Rudd said that he did not think Gillard could defeat the Coalition at the next election and that, since his resignation, he had received encouragement from Labor MPs to contest the leadership. Gillard responded to these developments by announcing a leadership election for the morning of 27 February 2012, and stating that she would be a candidate. Two days later, Rudd announced his own candidacy. Before the vote, Rudd promised that he would not initiate any further leadership challenges against Gillard should he lose, but he did not rule out becoming Leader again at a later date.
  Gillard won the leadership election comfortably with 71 votes to Rudd's 31. Following the result Rudd returned to the backbenches, reiterating that he would not mount any further leadership challenges against Gillard, and stating that he would support her in any further leadership elections.
caption: Rudd at the 2013 meeting of the World Economic Forum
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