Besieged Australian Prime Minister Malcolm Turnbull has threatened to quit politics if he loses the Liberal Party leadership and called for a party meeting tomorrow over the issue.
Mr Turnbull has said that if enough party members sign a petition calling for a leadership ballot, he will treat that as a vote of no confidence and not contest the vote.
Three of his senior ministers this morning announced they had tendered their resignations and called for another leadership vote.
The ministers, who supported Mr Turnbull in a leadership ballot on Tuesday against former home affairs minister Peter Dutton, said they had changed their position and now backed Mr Dutton.
Mr Turnbull only won Tuesday's contest by seven votes.
Treasurer Scott Morrison has also said he will contest the leadership of the Liberal Party, the senior partner in the Australian coalition government.
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Finance Minister Mathias Cormann - a key Turnbull supporter - said Mr Turnbull no longer had majority party support and that Mr Dutton was now the best person to lead the conservative government to the next election, due by May 2019.
The leadership crisis saw the government adjourn parliament today until September.
Mr Turnbull said if he received a letter requesting a fresh vote with the signatures of 43 Liberal Party MPs, he would call a party meeting for midday tomorrow. If a leadership spill motion was then passed, he would not stand in the vote.
Whoever emerges as Australia's next prime minister, they will become the country's sixth prime minister in less than a decade. None of those, which includes two stints for former Labor leader Kevin Rudd, have served a full term in office.
"Australians will be rightly appalled by what they are witnessing in their parliament," Mr Turnbull told reporters in Canberra.
He said the leadership crisis was an "internal insurgency" to move the Liberal party to the far right.
Mr Turnbull came to power in a party-room coup in September 2015.
A social liberal and multi-millionaire former merchant banker, he has struggled to appeal to conservative voters and only narrowly won an election in 2016.
The ruling Liberal-National coalition government has consistently trailed the opposition Labor party in opinion polls, but Mr Turnbull has remained the voters' preferred prime minister over Labor leader Bill Shorten.
Mr Shorten said the "cannibalistic behaviour" over the Liberal leadership was eating the government alive.
"Australia no longer has a functioning government," he told parliament.
