Governor-General Quentin Bryce, Mr Shorten's mother-in law, offered to resign her office to avoid any perceptions of bias but Prime Minister Tony Abbott has refused to accept her resignation. Addressing the media after his win, Mr Shorten said he hoped Tanya Plibersek would be his deputy but that would be a matter for Caucus. He paid tribute to Mr Albanese and said he had let no one down. "He is a decent, determined, notable Labor warrior," he said. He has the ferocious capacity to apply considerable intellect to holding the Coalition to account, both in government and I have no doubt going forward in opposition. He said the result of the ballot showed there were still things for him to learn, having failed to win the majority of membership support. "And I certainly look forward to working with Anthony Albanese to understand some of those lessons," he said. Anthony Albanese congratulates Bill Shorten following the announcement of the Labor leadership ballot, and announces his resignation as deputy leader of the ALP. He said he understood rebuilding the Labor Party would be hard and would need a team effort. "I'm confident that the Labor Party has the skills within its parliamentary ranks and also beyond its parliamentary ranks to be up to this task," he said. I believe that the best days of Labor are yet to come. Questioned on environmental policy, he said he personally believed it was important to have a price on carbon. Mr Shorten said he was not in a position to set out his policies today because he was interested in listening to his colleagues first. But he still believed in the national broadband network, the national disability insurance scheme, putting a price on carbon and the importance of giving school children the best education, he said. He said he did have the experience for the job, despite having been in parliament for a shorter time than Mr Albanese. He said he would take some lessons from how Tony Abbott had conducted himself as opposition leader. "I note that when he became leader of the opposition he won by one vote," he said. He still managed to go on and unite the party and indeed convince the majority of Australians to vote for him. What I would say about Mr Abbott's style is, I don't believe, as Opposition Leader, that I would be as relentlessly negative as him. Mr Albanese congratulated his winning colleague, and paid tribute to the overall spirit of the leadership contest as he thanked those who had cast their vote for him. "Throughout all of it, it has been conducted in a spirit which shows that you can actually have a democratic process in this great Australian Labor Party without having personal rancour involved," he said. He also hailed the job Chris Bowen had done as acting leader. "I have no doubt that he will continue to serve very well indeed as the Shadow Treasurer," he said. He said the party would now unite behind Mr Shorten between now and the 2016 election. "I said at the outset of this campaign that it wasn't a lifetime ambition to lead the Australian Labor Party," Mr Albanese said. That it was something that I had only considered in recent times, that I had always thought I would be a team player - that was the contribution that I would make rather than be the leader. I will be back to being a team player again. In an email to party members, Mr Bowen revealed Mr Shorten had won 63.95 per cent of the Caucus vote and 40.08 per cent of the membership vote, meaning he had won 52.02 per cent of the total vote.