Gillard Government also polarised: approval ratings of Gillard and Abbott both improved following the speech. Julia Gillard mounted a leadership challenge against Kevin Rudd as leader of the Australian Labor Party and Prime Minister of Australia in June 2010. Rudd remained within the government, initially as a backbencher. Following the 2010 election, Gillard appointed Rudd as Foreign Minister in her minority government. The unusual circumstances of Rudd's replacement by his own party prior to completion of his first term in office, the subsequent circumstances of Labor operating without an outright Parliamentary majority, persistent two-party-preferred polling results favouring the Liberal-National opposition, and some
Julia Gillard speech, as did the Prime Minister of Denmark, and some other leaders, just casually as I've moved around, have also mentioned it to me." US president Barack Obama reportedly "complimented" Gillard on the speech in a private conversation following his re-election, and his Secretary of State Hillary Clinton praised the speech as "very striking" with Gillard going "chapter and verse". Labor had secured the defection of Slipper from the Liberal National Party of Queensland (LNP) to sit in the Speaker's chair a year earlier, but he was forced to stand aside from his main duties in April 2012 pending the