Rocky week awaits PM Julia Gillard

Prime Minister Julia Gillard will have her hands full when parliament resumes this week, fending off fresh leadership speculation, facing a potentially heated caucus meeting and bracing for a new opinion poll.

Newspapers said on Sunday that Joel Fitzgibbon, the government’s chief whip, was openly canvassing caucus for votes to return Kevin Rudd to the top job.

Ms Gillard is likely to use the caucus meeting on Tuesday to shore up support and quiet the ongoing rumblings in her party.

She’s also likely to come up against Labor Senator Doug Cameron, who said he was “gobsmacked” by the government’s plan to allow 1700 foreign workers to be brought in for a major mining project in Western Australia, announced on Friday.

Senator Cameron said the caucus meeting would be “extremely robust”.

But the dramas won’t end there.

Craig Thomson, accused of misusing union funds while at the Health Services Union, will be in the parliament, despite reports that he was planning to take time off.

Parliament’s privileges committee is currently considering whether Mr Thomson misled the lower house in his hour-long address last week.

Mr Thomson, national secretary of the Health Services Union from 2002 to his election as a federal Labor MP in 2007, defended himself on Monday against a Fair Work Australia (FWA) investigation that found he misused union funds.

The opposition says he deliberately misled parliament in his speech.

Representatives from FWA will front a Senate estimates hearing on workplace relations on Monday.

Coalition senators will no doubt use the hearing as an opportunity to grill FWA for taking too long to investigate the allegations against Mr Thomson.

Labor will also nervously await Tuesday’s Newspoll, hoping to build on a lift in its primary vote earlier this month.

The Newspoll published in mid May showed Labor’s primary vote had risen three points to 30 per cent.

Meanwhile, Ms Gillard will welcome the distraction of a visit from Thailand’s Prime Minister Yingluck Shinawatra on Monday.

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