ALP must show purpose via leader: Gillard Labor needs to use the leadership contest between Anthony Albanese and Bill Shorten to remake itself from a poll-driven party to one of purpose, former prime minister Julia Gillard believes. Ms Gillard says the new rules for electing leaders, pushed through caucus by Kevin Rudd after he toppled her, are "a clumsy attempt to hold power." Under the new rules, Labor can only change leaders when the former leader resigns, the party loses an election, or three-quarters of the caucus votes no confidence in the leader. Caucus and party members get to vote for the new leader. "These rules protect an unsupported, poorly performing, incumbent rather than ensuring that the best person gets chosen and supported for the best reasons," Ms Gillard writes on Saturday in an essay for The Guardian Australia online. These rules literally mean that a person could hang on as Labor leader and as prime minister even if every member of cabinet ... has decided that person was no longer capable of functioning as prime minister. She noted the irony of opposing rules that would have allowed her to take power from Mr Rudd in 2010 but not let him take back the mantle in June as he did. Ms Gillard says Mr Shorten and Mr Albanese are both worthy candidates for leader. But the party needs to seize the opportunity of the contest to start demonstrating Labor's purpose again. Through returning Mr Rudd to the leadership, the party had "unambiguously sent a very clear message that it cared about nothing other than the prospects of survival of its members of parliament at the polls." This new contest should be one where the candidates articulated why they wanted to lead Labor rather than just why they could win. "Caucus and party members should use this contest to show that Labor has moved on from its leadership being determined on the basis of opinion polls, or the number of positive media profiles, or the amount of time spent schmoozing media owners and editors, or the frippery of selfies and content-less social media," Ms Gillard writes. She hoped whoever won would serve as Labor leader for a long time, well into government. "Achieving that requires much more than a ballot," she writes. It requires a true acceptance by all of the result of the ballot. Solidarity, not destabilisation. This is where Labor has failed.