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
Gillard Government Parliamentary member of the ALP Right Faction, nominated the government's handling of the way in which Rudd had "introduced the debate" about the Resource Super Profits Tax as one of the main considerations which had led to a shift in support from Kevin Rudd to Julia Gillard as leader of the party. After becoming Prime Minister, Gillard cancelled the Rudd Government's controversial $40 million advertising campaign supporting its mining super profits tax and called on miners to withdraw their own media campaign against the tax. Gillard pledged to re-negotiate the tax proposal and a revised Minerals Resource Rent Tax was