A kingmaker legislator has warned Australia's ruling party that it could lose control of the government if it dumps the prime minister in the face of disastrous opinion polls, a news report said Sunday.
Independent lawmaker Rob Oakeshott spoke out as speculation mounts that Prime Minister Julia Gillard's job is under threat a year after she overthrew her predecessor, Kevin Rudd, in an internal Labor Party coup.
Center-left Labor holds a single-seat majority in the parliament with the support of Oakeshott, another two independents and a member of the minor Greens party.
"If the Labor Party organization wants to mess with Julia Gillard, the Labor Party organization is messing with people such as myself," Oakeshott told The Sunday Telegraph newspaper. He could not be immediately contacted for comment.
For the first time Saturday, Gillard publicly attacked Rudd in a move some analysts say is proof that her job is under threat.
The attack came days after Rudd, now foreign minister, denied a newspaper report that he was plotting a return to power as Gillard's government tanks in opinion polls.
Gillard, in an interview published in News Corp. newspapers on Saturday, said her party "lost a sense of purpose and plan for the future" under Rudd.
Gillard had been Rudd's deputy before she challenged for the leadership in a ballot of lawmakers as opinion polls showed Labor was facing defeat at looming elections.
When he became aware of Gillard's overwhelming support, Rudd quit without a vote on June 24. Under Gillard, Labor scraped through elections in August to form a minority government.
Gillard previously was coy about her reasons for toppling Rudd, saying only that "a good government had lost its way." But with her first anniversary as Australia's first woman prime minister approaching and a new poll showing that twice as many voters prefer Rudd to her, Gillard has become more scathing.
Nick Economou, a Monash University political scientist, said Gillard's comments were evidence that her colleagues are considering replacing her.
"They're gone unless something absolutely spectacular happens," Economou said of the government's prospects at 2013 elections.
"Whether bringing back Rudd is that spectacular thing, I don't think it would be," he said. "But there's still two years to go until the next election and anything is possible and they have to do something because if they don't, they'll be absolutely wiped out."
The latest disastrous poll for the government, published in The Sydney Morning Herald on Saturday, showed support for Labor was down to 27 percent - its lowest level in almost 40 years.
The poll by market researcher Nielsen found that 60 percent of respondents preferred Rudd as leader and only 31 percent chose Gillard.
The poll was a random nationwide telephone survey of 1,400 voters this week. It has a 2.6 percent margin of error.
Gillard did not accept the poll as a gauge for how she was performing in her job.
"I don't judge by the opinion polls, I judge by how I'm pursuing my plan for the nation," she told reporters.
Polls show Gillard's government is being weighed down by her plan to make major polluters such as power generators pay for every ton of carbon gas they produce with a tax that would drive up household electricity bills.
Rudd, the first Labor prime minister in Australian history to be dumped by his own colleagues in his first three-year term in office, said in an interview published in the Herald on Saturday that he had learned from his mistakes.
Media reports said Rudd plans to hold a party at his Canberra mansion on the anniversary of his dumping on Friday.
According to the reports, Rudd has promised to jump fully clothed into his swimming pool as he did a year earlier at a similar party for his staff after his overthrow. Temperatures fall below freezing on June nights in Canberra.
