Caucus support seals Bill Shorten leadership, after party members backed Anthony Albanese
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BILL Shorten has clinched the Labor leadership by a razor-thin majority after a historic ballot in which he gained enough support from caucus colleagues to offset a loss to rival Anthony Albanese among the party's branch members.
Mr Shorten, 46, from the party's right, is the first Labor leader to be elected under rules in which a ballot of party members is weighted equally against a ballot of MPs.
The result was determined by a handful of MPs, as Mr Shorten won 55 of the 86 votes in the parliamentary party, slightly better than some of his own allies thought when caucus votes were cast last Thursday.
Mr Shorten's lead in the caucus meant that Mr Albanese needed votes from more than 65 per cent of the more than 30,000 branch members who sent in postal ballots.
Instead, Mr Albanese secured just over 60 per cent of the branch membership vote.
“Together we've chosen a new Labor Leader,” interim Labor leader Chris Bowen said an email to members.
“With a caucus vote of 63.95 per cent and a membership vote of 40.08 per cent which totals 52.02 per cent, the new leader is Bill Shorten.”
Mr Bowen said there were 30,426 votes cast from Labor members, a 74 per cent turnout in the first vote of its kind.
Mr Albanese attracted 18,230 rank-and-file votes to Mr Shorten's 12,196.
The new rules count against any change of leader before the next election, because they require 60 per cent of MPs to petition for a leadership ballot.
Mr Bowen predicted Mr Shorten would go on to become the next Labor prime minister of Australia.
“Bill Shorten is a man who has dedicated his working life to representing vulnerable people and to representing this nation,” he told reporters in Canberra.
Mr Bowen also paid tribute to Mr Albanese, saying he still had a “significant contribution” to make in parliament.
Mr Bowen said since the leadership campaign began a month ago, more than 4,500 people had said they wanted to join Labor.
“Both Anthony Albanese and Bill Shorten campaigned hard and campaigned with respect for each other and a firm commitment to the Labor Party.
“Today we start the work of holding the Abbott government to account and showing we are a better and fairer alternative for Australia's future.”
While caucus members voted on the leadership in Canberra on Thursday, the ballot box was sealed and the votes only counted today when the wider membership ballot was known.
Because each bloc made up 50 per cent of the outcome, each caucus vote was worth about 354 membership votes.
Mr Albanese gained 59.92 per cent of the membership votes, which meant that he would have needed at least 35 caucus votes, or 40.7 per cent of the 86 members, to secure the leadership.
The Australian was told last Thursday by members of both camps that Mr Shorten had gained at least 50 caucus votes, but there was no suggestion he had won as many as 55.
Mr Bowen fended off the suggestion that the new leader did not have the support of many of his own party colleagues, telling reporters that the party was “more than the sum of its parts”.
“Yes, the branch members will be disappointed that their candidate didn't win. But I think they'll be grateful that they've had a say in the party's future,” he told a press conference soon after the caucus meeting.
Mr Bowen, who was interim leader until the ballot's conclusion and is expected to be treasury spokesman in the new team, said the open ballot was “here to stay” regardless of the concerns about it.
The Australian has been told that some members of caucus, in particular some of those in the Right who are closely aligned to major unions, hold out the hope of overturning the new process because they believe it dilutes union influence.
Mr Bowen insisted there was no chance of that happening and predicted the Liberal Party would follow Labor within 15 years by also allowing party members to have a say in the leadership.
ALP president Jenny McAllister, who announced the outcome with Mr Bowen at a press conference, said the result demonstrated the success of opening the decision on the leadership to the wider membership.
Julia Gillard was quick to acclaim the outcome, despite Mr Shorten's role in helping Mr Rudd take the Labor leadership 10 weeks before the federal election.
“Congratulations to Bill Shorten on becoming Labor leader. A great honour! I wish Bill all the best,” Ms Gillard tweeted.
Labor strategist Bruce Hawker says, in time, Labor should adopt a system where the exclusive power to choose the leader is given to party members.
He said this morning the new system was “a good start” on democratising the party, but the reform should be taken further in the future.
“We've got a 50-50 system and I think that's a good start. I think over time we should move further to a full rank and file selection of the leader,” Mr Hawker told Network Ten.
The reforms were introduced by Kevin Rudd when he reclaimed the Labor leadership before the election.
Mr Hawker said he expected them to be confirmed by Labor's next national conference.
“Once this genie's out of the bottle it's very hard to put it back in. I think we're going to find that people are going to be demanding more reform inside the Labor Party rather than less,” he said.
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