After three years of instability in the Labor leadership in which four leadership spills were held between Kevin Rudd and Julia Gillard, this contest featured neither. Gillard retired from parliament at the election, while Rudd announced on election night that he would step down as Labor leader and return to the backbench in his concession speech at the Gabba in Brisbane following Labor's defeat. Earlier in the year the ALP caucus approved changes to the way the federal parliamentary leader is chosen. The new rules make it more difficult to change leaders and require a ballot of the party membership on contested leadership spills. The new rules encourage the parliamentary party to only nominate one candidate, to avoid a month-long ballot of the general party membership. The new rules are controversial, however, and have been publicly criticised by ALP Senator Stephen Conroy and former Prime Minister Julia Gillard. Nominations opened at a parliamentary party meeting on Friday 13 September 2013, and remained open for a week. Anthony Albanese and Bill Shorten formally nominated. As there was more than one nomination, a ballot of the parliamentary party and another of the organisational party were required. The ballot of the organisational party lasted for two weeks.
Process
Under the new Labor rules, nominations were open for one week beginning 13 September 2013. In order to be a nominated candidate, a nominee must receive the support of 20% of caucus. After the conclusion of nominations, ballots were sent to grassroots party members, who had two weeks to return their ballots. On 10 October 2013, the caucus cast their vote for leader and the grassroots ballots were counted. The two voting pools were weighted 50/50 and the leader declared elected accordingly. Historically, the ALP have determined the members of cabinet in caucus, with the leader assigning portfolios. This is unchanged, and the parliamentary caucus of Labor elected the executive at the same time they cast voters for leader. Only the election for the parliamentary leader involved the votes of grassroots party members. Originally only members of two years' standing were eligible to vote, but this was later widened to all ALP party members who were financial as of 7 September 2013.
Aftermath
With the leadership decided, caucus elections were held to determine the shadow ministry. In a return to ALP tradition, the shadow ministry were elected by caucus, with portfolio responsibilities to be assigned by the leader. Anna Burke, Warren Snowdon and Laurie Ferguson complained publicly about the process.
