by MICHELLE GRATTAN
Bill Shorten has become opposition leader, with a strong win among Labor MPs comfortably overcoming his defeat in the party’s rank and file vote.
After a month long process in which nearly three-quarters of the party membership voted and the ALP gained thousands of new members, Shorten, from the right, beat Anthony Albanese, from the left, with 52.02% of the combined vote.
In caucus Shorten gained several more votes than expected, 55 to Albanese’s 31, which represented nearly 64% of the parliamentary party. The rank and file voted 59.9% in favour of Albanese compared with 40.1% for Shorten.
Shorten declared this “a brand new day” for the ALP – and promised to be a less “relentlessly negative” opposition leader than Tony Abbott had been.
“I believe it is important to hold the Coalition to account,” he told a news conference. “But what I also believe is that the Labor Party needs to be able to explain to people what it stands for, and I think we can.
“I am sufficiently ambitious for Labor and for Australia that at the next election people will seek the Labor how-to-vote card because we do have the best policies on science, research, innovation and higher education, because people do see our policies as speaking up for those who don’t have a voice in society.”
Governor-General Quentin Bryce, who is Shorten’s mother-in-law, offered her resignation to Prime Minister Tony Abbott to avoid any perception of bias.