This article is more than 1 year old

This article is more than 1 year old

Anthony Albanese is making a concerted play for the Labor leadership, declaring the party’s policy direction needs to change but signalling he would promote progressive values, as the count continues after Saturday night’s election.

The high-profile New South Wales leftwinger began his public courtship of colleagues on Sunday, and has the backing of some players in the right faction.

But other players remain on the field, including fellow leftwinger and deputy leader, Tanya Plibersek, the rightwing shadow treasurer, Chris Bowen, and Queensland rightwinger Jim Chalmers, in the event Bowen forms the view his candidacy isn’t viable. Victorian rightwinger Richard Marles is also being touted as a potential running mate for Plibersek.

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Bowen is canvassing colleagues but there is a view in some quarters that he is too tied to unpopular campaign tax measures to be viable as leader post-Bill Shorten, and Chalmers in combination with Albanese would be a hat tip to Queensland, where Labor performed poorly. In the Senate, the likely leadership ticket is Penny Wong and Kristina Keneally.

While recriminations play out within Labor ranks as the party reconciles itself to spending a third term in opposition, Scott Morrison, who chalked up a self-described “miracle” comeback on Saturday night, will also face pressure from conservatives in NSW for representation within the ministry following the defeat on Saturday night of Tony Abbott in Warringah.

Conservatives in the state were unhappy with the support given to Abbott during his tough fight in the seat, and some say they will look to Morrison to unify the fractious state division – which is code for promoting conservatives when he recalibrates the government after the count concludes.

Senior Nationals are also rallying around the party leader, Michael McCormack, in anticipation of trouble from the outspoken former leader Barnaby Joyce.

Shorten on Sunday confirmed he would remain in parliament and stay on as interim leader while the ALP sorted out who would succeed him in the top job. The party’s national executive is due to meet on Monday to begin making arrangements for the ballot and the post-election postmortem.

While telling reporters on Sunday he had no criticism of Shorten as Labor leader, Albanese was candid about the weekend rout, noting Saturday night was a “devastating result for the Australian Labor party”.

His pitch for the party leadership was that he was a known quantity with Australian voters and would take the political fight up to Morrison in a “vigorous fashion”. But he said also he was prepared to look for common ground with his opponents in an effort to “bring the nation together”.

Albanese said Labor needed to pursue “a fairer agenda, a more inclusive agenda, an agenda that brings the nation together on economic, social and environmental policies so that we can meet the challenges of the future”.

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He signalled it would be back to the drawing board in a policy sense if he secured the party leadership, putting an obvious question mark over the most contentious revenue measures of the campaign – like dividend imputation and negative gearing.

There was also a hat tip to voters in outer metropolitan areas and the regions, places where Labor significantly underperformed on Saturday.

Albanese said Labor needed to articulate an agenda for economic growth, not just talk about how it was prepared to redistribute wealth – an implicit criticism of Shorten and Bowen’s campaign agenda.

Albanese said Labor needed to acknowledge it had now lost three elections in a row, and its supporters needed to be reassured that Saturday’s result would not be repeated at the next federal election.

He said the task now was to respect the election outcome, “go back, talk to people and do better, because our people need us to be in government. I think Australia needs a Labor government.”

The Coalition leads the count with 76 seats. Labor is currently on 69.