The most disappointed person in Australia on Wednesday night with the re-election of Kevin Rudd as leader of the Australian Labor Party (ALP), which also makes him prime minister, is not the loser in the party caucus Julia Gillard but Opposition leader Tony Abbott.

The change in the ALP leadership is a threat to his ambition to become Australia's next prime minister, which was almost in his hands with the dwindling voter support for Ms Gillard, prompting the ALP caucus and leadership change.

Previous surveys had shown that as preferred prime minister, Mr Abbot is more popular than Ms Gillard, but Mr Rudd is more popular than the Coalition leader.

To emphasise his point that he is the better alternative to whoever heads ALP, Mr Abbott was quoted by The Australian as saying, "In 2007 you voted for Kevin and got Julia. In 2010 you voted for Julia and got Kevin. If you vote for the Labor Party in 2013 who knows who you will end up with."

He added, "I believe that all Australians, whatever their politics, want a real choice at this election ... At present, if you talk to them long and hard, they don't feel as if they've got one."

Although there has been talk of Mr Rudd challenging Ms Gillard the past few days, he initially assured her that he will not challenge her leadership. The turn of events in which ALP members voted 57-45 in favour of Mr Rudd pulled the rug under the feet of the Opposition which has been anticipating an easy win on the scheduled Sept 14 election.

Reports said that the Coalition has even produced TV ads that had Ms Gillard, newly resigned Deputy Prime Minister Wayne Swan and other leading ALP members assassinating Mr Rudd's character.

Now, the Coalition would have to make new ads portraying the new ALP leader as the candidate of chaos and incompetence, which was the reason why Ms Gillard became PM in 2010 in a party leadership coup, which repeated itself on Wednesday night.

With the changes, Mr Swan and other supporters of Ms Gillard become back benchers, while Transport Minister Anthony Albanese will become deputy prime minister since he defeated Simon Crean 61-38 on Wednesday night also.

Chris Bowen is speculated to become the treasurer while Penny Wong will be the new Senate leader and MP Jacinta Collins of Victoria her deputy, ensuring that while the country's first female PM is no longer in power, two other women leaders are in control of the upper house of Australia's Parliament.

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