A leadership spill occurred in the Australian Labor Party on 24 June 2010. Kevin Rudd, the prime minister of Australia, was challenged by Julia Gillard, the deputy prime minister of Australia, for the leadership of the Australian Labor Party. Gillard won the election unopposed after Rudd declined to contest, choosing instead to resign. Gillard was duly sworn in as prime minister by Quentin Bryce, the Governor-General, on 24 June 2010 at Government House, becoming Australia's first female prime minister. Gillard was the Deputy Leader of the Labor Party since 4 December 2006, and was appointed Deputy Prime Minister of Australia after Labor's landslide victory in the 2007 federal election. She was also appointed the Minister for Education and Minister for Employment and Workplace Relations. Background Rudd and Gillard became Leader and Deputy Leader of the Australian Labor Party on 4 December 2006, during the fourth and final term of the Howard Government. The pair successfully challenged sitting Leader Kim Beazley and Deputy Leader Jenny Macklin in a joint-ticket leadership election, brought about by opinion polls suggesting that Rudd was far more popular with the public than Beazley. Under the leadership of Rudd and Gillard, Labor defeated the Liberal/National Coalition at the 2007 federal election by a landslide. The Rudd Ministry was sworn in by Governor-General Michael Jeffery on 3 December, with Rudd becoming the first Labor prime minister in over a decade, and Gillard becoming the first-ever female deputy prime minister. Rudd also appointed Gillard as Minister for Education, Employment and Workplace Relations. After an initial long period of popularity, by mid-2010 polls began to detect disaffection both with the direction of the Government and the leadership style of Kevin Rudd; several opinion polls in April and May 2010 suggested that Labor would lose the next election. According to the ABC's 7:30 Report, the seeds for Gillard to challenge Rudd were sown by "Victorian Right factional heavyweights" Bill Shorten MP and Senator David Feeney, who had between them secured the support of "New South Wales power broker" Mark Arbib. Feeney and Arbib discussed the matter of a potential leadership challenge with Gillard on the morning of 23 June and began a numbers count to establish the feasibility of a leadership challenge. The pair found that there was enough support for Gillard for the challenge to proceed. Declining approval for both the Labor Party and Rudd personally were attributed to many