Shorten QUITS as Labor leader within days after 2019 Federal Election loss

Shorten QUITS as Labor leader within days after 2019 Federal Election loss
Shorten QUITS as Labor leader within days after 2019 Federal Election loss

I want to say beyond this room to Australians who supported Labor: I know that you're all hurting and I am too. And without wanting to hold out any false hope, while there are still

millions of votes to count and important seats yet to be finalised, it is obvious that Labor will not be able to form the next government.

And so, in the national interest, a short while ago, I called Scott Morrison to congratulate him and I wish Jenny and their daughters all the very best and, above all, I wished Scott Morrison good fortune and good courage in the service of our great nation. The national interest required no less.

This has been a tough campaign. Toxic at times. But now that the contest is over, all of us have a responsibility to respect the result, respect the wishes of the Australian people and to bring our nation together. 

However that task will be one for the next leader of the Labor Party because while I intend to continue to serve as the member for Maribyrnong, I will not be a candidate in the next Labor leadership ballot.

Along with my family, my precious family, the Labor Party and the trade union movement, it's my life. To be able to have served as leader of the Labor Party for 5.5 years is a greater honour than anyone in my family before me, or I could have dreamed of when I joined the local branch 35 years ago.

What I have always loved about the Labor Party, and I still do, is the ideas that we champion, the people we empower, the people who count upon us, the people who need good, strong, reforming Labor governments.

Gee I wish we could have formed a government for these Australians on this evening. I wish we could have won for the true believers, for our brothers and sisters in the mighty trade union movement.

I wish we could have done it for Bob.

But it was not to be. Labor's next victory will belong to our next leader and I'm confident that victory will come at the next election.

Friends, the test even beyond victory, which I set myself in the lead-up to this election, was that at 6:00pm when the polls closed, when the final votes were cast, I wanted to be able to look at myself in the mirror and say there was nothing more that I could have done. No more ideas that we should have expressed.

I want to say to our Labor movement and our Labor Party, all of you can say this: We worked incredibly hard. We advanced ideas. We campaigned on a positive vision. We were up-front and clear about the reforms that both sides of politics have ignored for decades. We have said loud and clear that Australia needs and needed to take real action on climate change.

Clearly on climate action, amongst others, parts of our nation remain deeply divided. For the sake of the next generation, Australia must find a way forward on climate change. Clearly the Coalition's arrangements with One Nation and Clive Palmer have

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