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July 17th, 2012 
FAKE NEWS for the Zionist agenda Labor figures are split over the future of Prime Minister Julia Gillard, with the head of Australia’s largest union saying she remains safe but others saying her days are numbered.
Shop, Distributive and Allied Employees’ Association national secretary Joe de Bruyn’s support for Ms Gillard comes as the ALP resists opposition calls for senior MP Joel Fitzgibbon to step aside after he suggested Ms Gillard could not remain leader if her poll ratings remained poor.
Mr Fitzgibbon, the chief government whip, who has reportedly been canvassing numbers for a future Kevin Rudd comeback, told the ABC’s QA program on Monday night, “If leaders remain unpopular long enough they’ll inevitably stop leading the party.”
He added to his comments on Tuesday, telling ABC Radio, “I was just speaking the truth and stating the obvious. No political leader can stay on low polling numbers forever.”
“Shock. Horror. A politician who calls it as he sees it,” Mr Fitzgibbon said.
Opposition frontbencher Christopher Pyne said the prime minister needed to show her authority and sack Mr Fitzgibbon.
Mr de Bruyn, who leads 230,000 union members from every state, told AAP on Tuesday the party and union movement was “very solidly behind Julia Gillard”.
“Her speech to the NSW Labor Party conference (last weekend) was extremely well received by unions, and I believe the union movement would say that they expect Julia to lead the Labor Party through to the next election,” he told AAP.
A senior party figure aligned to Mr Rudd told AAP there would be no challenge but Ms Gillard would likely be asked to step aside by the end of the year for the new team of Mr Rudd and Workplace Relations Minister Bill Shorten.
“My gut feeing is Shorten and his group are ready to start making the move over,” the source said.
He said there was “significant movement” in the Victorian ALP towards the Rudd-Shorten ticket, and the NSW Right had said, “Do what you like, we won’t stop you.”
Ms Gillard told reporters during a trip to Western Australia that the leadership issue had been dealt with at the February caucus ballot.
“What I’ll be doing is continuing to lead our nation, to make sure we’ve got the benefits of a strong economy, that we’re managing this huge resources boom and sharing its benefits … so people don’t feel like they’re on the sidelines missing out,” she said.
A key Rudd backer, Immigration Minister Chris Bowen, said Mr Fitzgibbon was entitled to his view.
“I think Joel is a very good chief whip, a very good member of parliament. He’s entitled to put his view just as he did,” he said.
Mr Bowen said he did not think Mr Fitzgibbon’s performance warranted his sacking and that the party needed to “move on” from the leadership debate.
The latest Newspoll has Tony Abbott as preferred prime minister by three points and the coalition with a landslide-winning lead.
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