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Just a few days old, Ruby is now as big as an average three-month old baby.

Weighing in at a whopping 5.4kg - or 11 pounds 14 ounces - and measuring 59cm when she was born on December 6, Ruby has continued to grow since going home from Victoria's Frankston Hospital on Friday.

Proud father Luke Forsyth says his not-so-little girl also has a larger than life personality.

"She's already put on 200g - the midwife tells us that's the sort of growth they expect to see in the first few weeks, not a couple of days," he said.

"Kate's first baby - Jack - was just over nine pounds so the whole way through this pregnancy Kate was saying she didn't want another nine-pounder. Well she didn't. She got one much bigger!

"They've told us that if we have another baby it could be as big as 14 pounds."

Mr Forsyth said Ruby's older brother Jack, 4, was besotted with the new addition, but could only hold her for a few seconds before complaining "she's too heavy".

Kate Forsyth admitted Ruby's size was a shock.

She had been told most of the weight she was carrying during the pregnancy was fluid and her daughter would be about 3.6kg (eight pounds) at birth.

But once her waters broke, the doctors found a very different story and after 12 hours of labour, decided to opt for an emergency caesarean section.

"When she came out, the doctors said she was big, but I had no idea just how big she was until later when ... I saw her next to another newborn," Mrs Forsyth said.

"I was shocked."

Mrs Forsyth says they've had to buy bigger clothes for Ruby because she didn't fit into the tiny ones they had bought before her birth.

But in a blow to her authority, Ms Gillard was blocked  from dumping Schools Minister Peter Garrett and Attorney-General Robert McClelland when NSW Right bosses stepped in to save them.

When Ms Gillard told Mr Garrett and Mr McClelland she wanted them to resign from Cabinet to pave the way for new blood, Mr Garrett threatened to resign from parliament. Mr McClelland also refused to step aside. The pair were backed by other NSW ministers.

"It was a widely expressed view to her that it would be a mistake," a senior NSW Labor source said.

Another senior government insider said: "She was told, 'you can't sack McClelland and keep Joe Ludwig in there'."

But Ms Gillard succeeded in what sources claimed was an attempt to shore up her own support base by rewarding the two key players behind the coup last year that delivered her the leadership.

Assistant Treasurer Bill Shorten will be promoted into Cabinet as the new Workplace Relations Minister. Sports Minister Mark Arbib will become Assistant Treasurer.

The reshuffle, to be announced today, had threatened to spark a war between the dominant Victorian and NSW Right-wing factions, with both wanting promotions from their own ranks.

In a compromise deal, Ms Gillard was forced to expand her cabinet by one, to 21, to keep Mr McClelland in Cabinet. However, he will be moved aside into a new ministry of national security.

Health Minister Nicola Roxon, from the Victorian Right, will become the country's first female Attorney-General. Human Services Minister Tanya Plibersek, from the NSW Left, will be promoted into Cabinet to take health.

Chris Evans will lose Workplace Relations following criticism of his handling of the Qantas dispute but will remain as senate leader, which requires him to also stay in Cabinet.

In a further attempt to curry favour with the NSW Right and bring in new talent, western Sydney MP Jason Clare will move up the ranks from Defence Procurement into Home Affairs.

Immigration Minister Chris Bowen, also from the NSW Right, knocked back an offer of promotion after requesting to stay in his portfolio to "finish the job".

Former prime minister Kevin Rudd will stay in Foreign Affairs despite pressure within some senior circles to act against him. But Mr Rudd's backers claimed the reshuffle was about trying to further isolate him and consolidate the Prime Minister's own supporters with promotions.

One minister said the strategy would prove Ms Gillard was prepared "to shoot people" and stamp her authority over a divided Cabinet at a time of leadership unrest and a narrow parliamentary lead.

But it was also seen as recognition there was a desperate need for people "on the frontline" who could sell the government's economic message.

Senator Carr has been named by the Right as a key player in support of a Rudd comeback.

Charred bodies lay amid the twisted wreckage of burned slum homes as firefighters cleared away blackened sheets of corrugated iron.

The plane burst into flames after hitting the school, said Mayor Florencio Bernabe of suburban Paranaque city in the Philippines.

No classes were in session when the plane hit, but officials were determining how many on the ground were injured or killed, he said.

Firefighters reported that the bodies were charred and that the dead included the pilot and the co-pilot - the only two people on the plane, Bernabe said.

Police Senior Inspector Dennis Sirilan said the fire spread rapidly to nearby shanties that surround the school after the twin-engine plane crashed.

Sirilan said he saw the aircraft "twirling" in the air before it slammed into the F. Serrano Elementary School, which was severely damaged by the fire.

Firefighters were hampered in quickly reaching the scene by the narrow streets in the community. The area was still smouldering after the fire was brought under control about three hours later.

Police chief inspector Enrique Sy said many of the fatalities were residents of the shanty town.

"The plane struck one house but the others also went up in flames. These are informal settlers, packed into rows of houses," Sy told reporters.

Philippine Red Cross Secretary General Gwen Pang said the dead included an infant and a child.

The blaze engulfed a nearby elementary school, but Pang said it was empty at the time because it was a weekend.

She said at least 10 people were brought to a hospital, including five with major burns.

Civil Aviation Authority chief Ramon Gutierrez said the six-to-eight-seat Beechcraft Queen Air plane sent out a distress call shortly after taking off from Manila for Mindoro Island. The plane crashed before it was able to return to the airport.

Rogen Rodriguez, a police officer detailed at Manila airport, rushed home to help rescue neighbours from the fire, unaware that his sister, Maricel Garado, was among the dead.

"She had just stepped out of her house to look for her child outside. Part of the wreckage from the exploding plane struck her (the mother) and she was killed," Rodriguez told AFP.

"People first noticed the plane circling overhead. Then there was an explosion, it veered to one side and crashed," Rodriguez's bus driver brother-in-law Manuel Boton told AFP.

Resident Maribel Savedoria tearfully recounted on local radio how her husband perished in the blaze after pushing her and their four children out through the window of their rented room.

"He pushed all of us out to save us, but he did not make it. There was an explosion and all my children sustained burns," she told DZBB radio.

Florencio Bernabe, the mayor of Paranaque district where the crash occurred, said that at least 50 shanties burned down and at least 20 other injured victims had been taken to hospital.

An AFP photographer on the scene said the fire gutted a 2,000-square-metre (half-acre) section of the slum that stood either side of an open sewer.

Ramon Gutierrez, head of the Civil Aviation Authority of the Philippines, told DZBB radio that the pilot had asked to be allowed to make an emergency landing back at Manila airport shortly after take-off.

"Unfortunately, the plane did not make it," he said, adding that the cause of the crash was not immediately known.

He said the plane, scheduled to pick up cargo from the nearby island of Mindoro, would have been carrying a full tank of fuel when it crashed.

Deadly slum fires are common in the Philippines, where years of unabated migration from rural areas has led to the proliferation of sprawling shanty towns.

More than 2.5 million people - nearly a quarter of Manila's population - now live in slums, according to the government's Metropolitan Manila Development Authority.

Firefighting in the warren of tiny alleyways that make up many slums is hampered by difficult access.

Up to 30,000 people lost their homes in successive slum fires in Manila in February, while in January, 12 people, most of them children, were killed when a fire razed an impoverished coastal area.