Australian Defence Minister John Faulkner will announce that he will quit his job in the ministry after the next national elections, which Prime Minister Julia Gillard would likely call by year's end.

Faulkner is the second Cabinet member to announce plans to step aside since former leader Kevin Rudd was deposed June 24 to make way for Gillard. Finance Minister Lindsay Tanner announced on the day of Rudd's downfall that he wouldn't contest the next election. Faulkner will hold a media conference at 11:30 a.m. in Canberra, according to an e-mail from his office.

The first Nielsen opinion poll after Gillard replaced Rudd gave her a 10 percentage point lead over Tony Abbott's Liberal- National coalition, at 55 percent to 45 percent, according to the telephone survey of 1,000 voters published June 26 in the Sydney Morning Herald. That poll also gave her a 21-point lead over Abbott as preferred leader.