Rudd refuses to rule out leadership bid Kevin Rudd has refused to say whether he will stand against Julia Gillard, Australia's prime minister, in next week's Labor party leadership ballot as he returned to the country on Friday morning. Shortly after landing at Brisbane airport, the former foreign minister, who dramatically resigned while in Washington this week, told reporters he would make a "definitive" statement about his leadership ambitions later on Friday. But in a clear indication that he will run, Mr Rudd urged parliamentary colleagues to think very carefully about who was best placed to defeat opposition leader Tony Abbott at the next election. In politics, trust and confidence is everything. It is critical that whoever leads our party has the trust and confidence of Australia's people. If you don't have that, you can't do anything else. The core question for my parliamentary colleagues is who is best to defeat Mr Abbott at the upcoming election. Ms Gillard called the leadership ballot on Thursday, vowing to settle once and for all the question of who leads the Labor party and bring to an end the squabbling that had "obscured " the government's achievements. However, the move has split the cabinet and plunged the Labor party, which is languishing in the polls, into its biggest crisis in decades. Four ministers have already declared their support for Mr Rudd, who in turn has been portrayed by supporters of Ms Gillard as a deeply flawed individual who could not work with others. On Thursday, Ms Gillard attacked Mr Rudd's "chaotic" leadership style and claimed the government had entered a period of paralysis shortly before the former prime minister was deposed in June 2010. Mr Rudd hit back at the claims on Friday morning, telling reporters they were "fundamentally untrue" and he appealed to the public to ignore the personal attacks that had been lodged against him. It's quite plain to me that what I see from the faceless men is the same shock-and-awe tactics that I seem to remember being deployed during the leadership coup during June 2010. When everyone gets bamboozled by the shock-and-awe tactics, wow, there's another avalanche of attacks, Kevin Rudd is the Antichrist and, if not the son of Satan, then at least the grandson of Satan, just have a little pause for thought. It may not quite be like that. There might even be a vested interest at play in putting those views forward. Mr Rudd also challenged Ms Gillard to guarantee that any sitting member of parliament would be guaranteed of their preselection, regardless of who they voted for. Ms Gillard refused to be drawn on that question before she boarded a flight in Adelaide on Friday morning. The choice that my colleagues will make on Monday is about who should be prime minister of this nation. It is a choice about who's got the strength, the temperament, the character, the courage to lead this nation, who's got the ability to get things done even in the face of adversity. This is not an episode of Celebrity Big Br other. This is about who should be prime minister.