At a stark airport hotel in Essendon, a shell-shocked Bill Shorten stared into a stunned, sometimes-weeping crowd and a bristling wall of cameras to announce that he had failed. His was an inspirational concession, showing the best side of himself. But he would not be prime minister and Labor had not won government. They had launched a thousand policies. They had flown close to the sun. And they had fallen.

Shorten had watched the votes come through in the hours before, in a room at the Hyatt in Melbourne together with his family and closest advisers: chief of staff Ryan Liddell, speechwriter James Newton and advisers Sharon McCrohan and Peter Barron (a veteran of the great Hawke days). They were shattered. If there was a moment when the water turned to ice, it was now.