Peter Hartcher, Mark Kenny
June 10, 2013
Crucial player: Bill Shorten is said to be committed to supporting Gillard. Photo: Andrew Meares
Labor powerbroker Bill Shorten - widely considered pivotal to Julia Gillard's retaining her grip on the prime ministership - remains committed to her continuing as leader, despite the urgings of panicked colleagues for a switch to Kevin Rudd.
In the face of dire polling and Mr Rudd's widely publicised emergence on the hustings for marginal seat holders, Labor MPs are canvassing a return to the former prime minister just 96 days before the election scheduled for September 14.
On Friday Mr Shorten conceded Labor was heading for a ''landslide'' defeat, fuelling speculation that he might consider switching camps, as more and more Labor MPs are advocating.
Independent Tony Windsor: says deal will be "null and void" if Julia Gillard goes. Photo: Alex Ellinghausen
Mr Shorten was not commenting on Sunday but senior figures from the Rudd and Gillard camps said he had intimated he would stick by Ms Gillard.
The Victorian MP - often touted as the man most likely to lead Labor should it lose this year's poll - urged colleagues to focus on the campaign to expose Tony Abbott's weaknesses rather than on a Labor leadership change.
Mr Shorten was a key backer of Ms Gillard in the 2010 toppling of Mr Rudd and his defection would sound the death knell for Ms Gillard's troubled prime ministership.
Sources in the left and right factions of the ALP concede the movement of the influential Mr Shorten would be crucial, and carry about seven votes from the Labor caucus.
''If Bill's gone, she's gone,'' conceded one Gillard backer.
Meanwhile, key independent Tony Windsor confirmed on Monday that if Labor changed leaders, the arrangement he had with the Prime Minister would be ''null and void''.
Mr Windsor, whose support was critical to Labor forming government in 2010, stressed that the deal he made was with Ms Gillard.
''The arrangement is with her, if she disappears for some reason, there is no arrangement, that's the sum total of it,'' he told ABC Radio.
''If the Labor party make changes to their arrangements. They can't assume any pre-existing arrangement with me. All that would be null and void.''
Immigration Minister Brendan O'Connor on Monday urged his colleagues not to focus on leadership issues.
''We've got a good record. But nobody of course wants to see a government talking about itself. And that’s why we've got to focus on the issues that matter,'' he told Channel Seven.
A Fairfax ReachTEL Poll published on Sunday showed at least three ministers faced losing their seats but would probably hang on if Mr Rudd were returned to the top job.
Parliament has only two sitting weeks left before the election and, while many MPs thought that period represented the biggest danger to Ms Gillard, it is now possible she could decide to withdraw even before then.
It is widely perceived that the only way a leadership change could take place would be if Ms Gillard agreed to step down, either voluntarily or after urgings from her senior supporters. The ReachTEL Poll found Labor's vote would be more than 6 percentage points higher under Mr Rudd than by sticking with Ms Gillard. If so, that would be the difference between survival as a government on the one hand, and potential decimation as a party on the other, unless things suddenly improved.
Mr Rudd has recently stepped up his public presence in a move interpreted as ''hanging out his shingle'' for another crack at the leadership. But he insists he will not challenge, leaving the government gridlocked with the only options being maintenance of the status quo, or a voluntary withdrawal by the Prime Minister.
Given her refusal to yield to bad polls and consistent destabilising, the withdrawal of key factional protections is seen as perhaps the only way to break that gridlock in a bid to repair the party's standing with voters.
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