Julia Gillard has staved off a challenge from Kevin Rudd, winning the leadership ballot 71-31 to retain the prime ministership.

Returning officer and the member for Fowler, Chris Hayes, said there was no recount and that the mood in the party room meeting was "reasonably tense".

Mr Rudd has said that after ballot he will be working for a unified Labor team, according to Mr Hayes.

He also said that there was relief on the faces of some senators and MPs after the result and some clapping.

Mr Rudd is reported to have reacted well to the result.

"He seemed fine," Mr Hayes said.

A prominent state Liberal MP has been accused of misusing his position while campaigning against a wind farm that is to be built next to his property in western Victoria.

Kevin Rudd’s advisers were all smiles as they arrived at the Rudd family home this morning.

It was a marked difference from yesterday when there was still uncertainty as to whether Mr Rudd would be challenging Prime Minister Julia Gillard’s leadership

from Crikey ......

Crikey Canberra correspondent Bernard Keane writes:

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In a major victory for public health and what will hopefully lead to other nations taking action, a French court decided today that GMO crops monster Monsanto is guilty of chemically poisoning a French farmer. The grain grower, Paul Francois, says he developed neurological problems such as memory loss and headaches after being exposed to Monsanto’s Lasso weedkiller back in 2004. The monumental case paves the way for legal action against Monsanto’s Roundup and other harmful herbicides and pesticides made by other manufacturers.

What is loyalty in politics? Whatever you want it to be, if you're in the Labor Party. Ministers and other MPs working to keep Julia Gillard as Prime Minister have this week launched a sustained attack on Kevin Rudd for what they say is his disloyalty.

Minister and former leader Simon Crean is making a habit of castigating Rudd in public. His mini blitz of the media on Monday morning, in which he urged Gillard to sack Rudd, was a remarkable intervention. Here is one member of the cabinet publicly denigrating a fellow cabinet member comprehensively and with purpose - repeatedly. It is the public nature of it that is so breathtaking.

The Gonski report on school funding is excellent. But better outcomes depend less on money, ideology and theory than political courage and love of learning.

Poor old David Gonski, chairman of the committee advising government on school funding, who has had the cheek to think that first principles and common sense might be a good starting point in trying to unpick what Emma Macdonald described yesterday as ''Australia's decrepit, illogical and ad hoc school funding system''.

Former federal politicians have threatened to launch court action to prevent the federal government from reining in their taxpayer-funded travel entitlements and from blocking ''windfall'' pension increases to retired MPs and senators.

The Association of Former Members of the Parliament of Australia has attacked plans to impose new limits on the number of free air and rail journeys taken by former politicians and their spouses.

Australia's education sector has become a two-tier system of advantage and disadvantage, the Gonski review into schools funding shows.

In a recent article, Barbra Streisand asked: Where is the Fourth Estate when you need them?

Church leaders, health and charity groups have joined the federal government in condemning claims that conditions for asylum seekers living in flats and houses as part of community detention are ''luxurious''.

Kevin Rudd will become the leader, not because he's made a compelling case but because Julia Gillard cannot hold the confidence of her caucus….

Qantas has signalled that the total job losses over the coming months will be significantly higher than the 500 positions it confirmed yesterday.

The latest redundancies will take the number of jobs Qantas has announced to be axed over the past four years to nearly 5000.