Australian Prime Minister Julia Gillard has called for a leadership ballot as her party faces the growing prospect of a sound election defeat later this year.
She said the ballot of a leader and deputy leader of the Labour Party would be held hours after a senior minister called on her to hold a vote.
Minister Simon Crean said he would nominate as the deputy and wanted former prime minister Kevin Rudd to stand as the candidate for the top post. Earlier this year she surprised Australians by announcing a general election for September 14.
"In the meantime, take your best shot," Ms Gillard told opposition leader Tony Abbott.
The latest development came after Ms Gillard delivered a historic national apology in parliament to the thousands of unwed mothers who were forced by government policies to give up their babies for adoption over several decades. More than 800 people, many of them in tears, heard the apology and responded with a standing ovation.
"Today this parliament on behalf of the Australian people takes responsibility and apologises for the policies and practices that forced the separation of mothers from their babies, which created a lifelong legacy of pain and suffering," she told the audience. "We acknowledge the profound effects of these policies and practices on fathers and we recognise the hurt these actions caused to brothers and sisters, grandparents, partners and extended family members. We deplore the shameful practices that denied you, the mothers, your fundamental rights and responsibilities to love and care for your children."
Ms Gillard committed five million Australian dollars (£3.3 million) to support services for affected families and to help biological families reunite.
A national apology was recommended a year ago by a senate committee that investigated the impacts of the now-discredited policies.
Unwed mothers were pressured, deceived and threatened into giving up their babies from the Second World War until the early 1970s so they could be adopted by married couples, which was perceived to be in the children's best interests, the senate committee report found.
The committee began investigating the government's role in forced adoption in 2010 after the Western Australian state parliament apologised to mothers and children for the flawed practices in that state from the 1940s until the 1980s.
