Monday morning when the former Queensland Labor Premier, Peter Beattie, publicly urged the Prime Minister to hold a leadership ballot. The Queensland band of brothers -- Rudd, Beattie and Bruce Hawker -- succeeded, finally, in flushing out publicly the Prime Minister's senior ministerial supporters to concede that which they have been careful for weeks not to: Gillard's leadership is under siege from within her own Cabinet and party room. Tactically the day was a victory for Rudd; the leadership issue was out in public and now, sooner or later, it will have to be confronted. There is anxiety and uncertainty on both sides over whether they have the numbers. Gillard is not going to a ballot, yet, and behaves as if life is business as usual in her dealings with the man she calls her foreign minister, usually -LRB- and unusually -RRB- not by his name. And Rudd is in the Mexican resort city of Los Cabos at a G20 meeting and will not return to Australia until the weekend. Will he force a challenge when parliament returns on February 27 ? Bruce Hawker -- a man who might know -- offers this: I think, nevertheless, once Rudd is back in town, there is going to be another buildup of pressure for this matter to be resolved once and for all. Should Rudd force a ballot ? I do n't know exactly how this is going to be played out. There are various scenarios but one thing that seems