Chris Minns has announced his third bid for the NSW Labor leadership, saying it's time for fresh ideas and generational change.
The 44-year-old Kogarah MP announced on Monday he would formally nominate for the position, after Jodi McKay resigned under pressure on Friday.
Former NSW opposition leader Michael Daley, who led Labor for four months prior to its 2019 election defeat, announced on Sunday he was nominating for the top job.
Mr Daley, 55, also served as a minister between 2008 and 2011 when the party was last in government. Ms McKay is also a former government minister.
But the former frontbencher Mr Minns is arguing the party's leadership needs a complete reset - not recycling - and framed the looming battle as a contest between young and old.
"I'm not a member of the previous Labor government, but I will put to my colleagues that that's a good thing," he told reporters.
"We're in our 10th year of opposition and something has to change.
"That change should be generational.
"We need fresh ideas and a different approach to politics."
If elected as leader, Mr Minns promised to refocus the party on working people and offer solutions and not just criticism.
Mr Minns announcement comes after other party figures accused him of orchestrating Ms McKay's downfall.
He lost out in a contest with Ms McKay in 2019, and her supporters say his camp has been "white-anting" her ever since.
Off the back of disappointing results in the Upper Hunter by-election, in which Labor's first-preference vote dipped from 29 to 21 per cent - the pressure on her leadership became insurmountable.
When announcing her resignation, Ms McKay made it clear she was quitting under duress and accused others of internal "destabilisation".
"It is clear that although I was elected in a democratic ballot there are those within our party that have never accepted the outcome of that process," Ms McKay said.
Mr Daley has since said Ms McKay should never have been "forced out" of the leadership, calling the ordeal shameful.
He said the winner of any Labor leadership ballot must help the party "bury the hatchet" over Ms McKay's departure, and focus minds on the 2023 poll.
"(Members) own the party, not the apparatchiks," Mr Daley said on Sunday.
"Please help me heal our party and win government in 2023."
Since 2013, Labor party rules require that the caucus and the rank-and-file members vote to elect a leader if more than one person contends.
That would likely leave the party in turmoil for weeks, and without a leader when the Berejiklian government hands down its budget in late June.
