Thank you for gathering. My fellow Australians. My fellow members of the Australian Parliamentary Labor Party. Today I am announcing that I will be a candidate for the position of Leader of the Parliamentary Labor Party. I am advised that the Chair of the Parliamentary Labor Party has been collecting a petition of members, about a third in number, which requested that a meeting of the Party be held to resolve the question of the Party’s leadership. Of course, Julia’s statement of half an hour or so agoX removes the need for such a petition. The truth is, many, many MP’s have requested me for a long, long time to contest the leadership of the Party because of the parlour circumstances we now face. And perhaps less politely, various Ministers have been free and frank in their public advice to me as to the desirability to contest the leadership in recent days. For the nation’s sake, I believe it’s time for this matter to be resolved. The second and more important reason for contesting the leadership is the tens and thousands of ordinary Australians, members of the Australian public who have been asking me to do this for a very long time. And it’s your voices, the voices of the Australian people; it’s those voices that have had a huge effect on me. More so than the voices I happen to hear around the corridors of this building. What literally thousands of Australians have said to me over the last year or so is that they are genuinely fearful of what Mr Abbott could do to them