Gillard speech drafted before Rudd ouster

Julia Gillard's senior staff started drafting her leadership acceptance speech two weeks before her successful coup against then prime minister Kevin Rudd, the ABC reports.

The claim, which has been denied, was aired on Monday's Four Corners program 'The Comeback Kid?' about the 2010 Labor leadership struggle and current tensions between the prime minister and Mr Rudd.

The program said the then deputy prime minister's senior staff had begun work on the speech at least two weeks before she replaced Mr Rudd in June 2010.

Ms Gillard told the program in an interview she "did not ask for the speech to be prepared".

But she also did not find the suggestion surprising.

"I'm not surprised that whether it's people in my office or people more broadly in the government or the Labor Party were casting in their mind where circumstances might get to," Ms Gillard said.

"Political people look at political circumstances and they think about where they might go to."

Just days before the leadership coup, Ms Gillard told reporters she had no intentions of taking the prime ministership.

The program claimed plotters, including current cabinet minister Bill Shorten and Assistant Treasurer Mark Arbib, had initiated internal party research into Mr Rudd and Ms Gillard, which showed her as the more popular of the two.

Ms Gillard told the program she had no specific knowledge of the research, but she admitted she saw party polling "over a long period of time".

US State Department officials in Washington also appeared to have intelligence about the leadership tensions, with diplomatic cables released by WikiLeaks quoting a Labor plotter telling an embassy officer Ms Gillard was "campaigning for the leadership".

The Americans were so interested in the issue that two weeks before the coup, Australia's US ambassador Kim Beazley was called to a meeting with Secretary of State Hilary Clinton to explain what was happening.

The leadership change was finally precipitated by a media report on June 23, 2010, that Mr Rudd's chief of staff Alister Jordan had been canvassing the support of caucus members in the wake of polls showing a decline in Labor's support and Mr Rudd's personal ratings.

Labor strategist Bruce Hawker told the program the report had enhanced tensions between Mr Rudd and Ms Gillard and he had urged senior figures in caucus and the Labor organisation not to let word of the situation get into the public arena.

But minutes after ABC television reported it in the evening, Ms Gillard and Labor stalwart Senator John Faulkner headed to Mr Rudd's office.

Mr Hawker said Mr Rudd suggested to Ms Gillard at the meeting he be given until October 2010 to turn the polls around.

"All I can say is on the basis of what I'm aware of is that the prime minister put a proposal to Julia Gillard that they hold off until October," Mr Hawker said.

"She went out and had a conversation I think with Mark Arbib about that."

Once further word leaked in the media, Ms Gillard returned to Mr Rudd's office and said she could not accept the suggestion.

Mr Rudd announced his resignation the next day.

Ms Gillard now faces her own leadership tensions, with elements of the party backing Mr Rudd and others seeking an alternative if the polls do not improve.

Senior right faction figure, union boss Joe de Bruyn, told Four Corners he believed some MPs had concerns about the merits of the 2010 leadership change.

"Reading between the lines in talking to them ... I do think that some of them have concerns about changing the leader in midstream," he said.

Former Labor minister Con Sciacca said removing Mr Rudd was the right decision.

"Not perhaps for Kevin, because he's still smarting from it," he told the program.

Mr Rudd, who has said he's happy to be foreign minister, declined to be interviewed for the program.