The moment Bill Shorten knew he would never be PM, and why he doesn’t mind

Bill Shorten only became certain he would never become prime minister when legislation to future-proof the NDIS, his brainchild, passed parliament on a Wednesday in late August.

He put in his application for a lucrative job leading the University of Canberra that same afternoon.

“There was a symmetry there,” he told this masthead on Friday.

Bill Shorten with his wife Chloe and daughter Clementine at Parliament House on Thursday.Credit: AAP

Charming in front of a crowd and wily in backrooms, Shorten was the ultimate political animal, with tabloid instincts, a close relationship with the media and a set of loyal staff always on the hunt for a new angle to attack his opponents. He represented the Labor Right tradition of support for the US alliance and became almost a lone voice in cabinet backing Israel amid its war in Gaza, meeting with the Israeli ambassador in his ministerial suite just last month.

The 57-year-old says he has matured since his surprise 2019 loss to Scott Morrison that shattered him and his allies, who were sure he had one hand on the keys to the Lodge.

“They say in the wound lies the gift, and in losing there were gifts. One of which is the knowledge that you don’t have to be the leader to be a leader. It’s what you get done, who have you actually helped. Power itself is not an outcome.”

Shorten’s reflections on his lofty ideals reveal a paradox at the heart of his legacy and influence on modern Labor. On the one hand, he is arguably Labor’s sharpest pragmatist who has warned against giving in to activist demands on gambling ads and pro-Palestinian protests or shifting too quickly away from gas as an energy source.

Yet his progressive 2019 agenda still hangs over the party as a warning of the political costs of an ambitious agenda.

The manifesto’s key elements, such as ending property investor tax breaks, hover in the background as options for a cautious government searching for a 2025 election pitch.

Shorten’s resignation put a full stop on the political career of one of Labor’s biggest characters, who believed he was destined for the prime ministership since his days marauding through Young Labor with Jesuit-educated ally Luke Donnellan.

A backlash against Labor’s tax-and-spend agenda was partly to blame for Morrison’s 2019 victory. But voters’ perceptions of Shorten’s personality played a role, too. The Australian National University’s trusted election survey found he was the least popular party leader since 1990.

A long career in the media spotlight means everyone knows who Shorten is. He is the equal-second most well-known Labor MP after Prime Minister Anthony Albanese, according to the Resolve Political Monitor.

In his loyal backers’ eyes, Shorten was the chosen one whose only natural place was in the land’s highest office.

His critics, particularly his most trenchant factional opponents, regard him as a Machiavellian schemer exemplified by famous claims he switched footy teams – a cardinal sin in AFL-mad Victoria.

Bill Shorten with first wife Deborah Beale at the launch of his campaign as a Labor candidate in 2007. Credit: Simon Schluter

Bursting onto the political scene as a union hero during the 2006 Beaconsfield mine collapse, Shorten’s 2009 marriage to former governor-general Quentin Bryce’s daughter Chloe, for whom he left Liberal blue blood Debbie Beale, was a tabloid sensation.

Beale and Shorten were hardly low profile. The pair had made use of packaging king Richard Pratt’s private jet for a holiday, creating an image of the union leader as a Labor player who hobnobbed with the top end of town like his idol Bob Hawke.

This perception fed Malcolm Turnbull’s withering 2017 attack: “Never a union leader in Melbourne that tucked his knees under more billionaires’ tables”.

His role as a factional player in the coups of both Kevin Rudd and Julia Gillard cast him as a pantomime factional villain.

Shorten became known for cringey zingers during his time as opposition leader at a moment when internet memes were still mostly wholesome.

Powerbrokers in the dominant Victorian Right faction, in which Shorten has lost most of his influence, wanted Shorten to retire sooner. They spoke privately about denying him a cabinet spot after the election.

But the Labor veteran turned down ambassador roles offered by Prime Minister Anthony Albanese, who is not an ally of Shorten and who works closely with the Victorian Right faction led by deputy prime minister Richard Marles that opposes Shorten.

It’s clear Shorten did not leave for any one reason. Some close to him believed he was going to stay around for a second term in the hope of a more senior ministry, possibly as foreign minister, if Albanese was toppled by another MP next term.

But it wasn’t to be.

Unionist Bill Kelty, a key player in the Hawke-Keating era, recalls sitting with Shorten shortly after Rudd handed him a junior ministry role leading disability policy.

“He said one day, ‘I hope to create a national disability insurance program’. And that’s the first time I’d ever heard it. So if he did nothing more in life, nothing more in life, this is a magnificent contribution,” Kelty said.

Kelty said Shorten’s political skills improved as he relaxed after the 2019 loss, citing a recent ABC Insiders interview during a moment when Shorten was leading the government’s public arguments on monetary policy, Gaza visas and gambling. “He’s bloody good mate, and getting better,” Kelty said.

Shorten argues his legacy goes beyond the NDIS.

The party may not have reunited if he was not leader after the 2013 election drubbing, he claimed. He questions whether a banking royal commission would have occurred without his pressure. Or if the cut-heavy 2014 Abbott budget would have been dismantled if he had not rejected calls to back the austerity program for political expediency.

The departing minister backs his tax-and-spend 2019 agenda but regrets he did not offer personal income tax cuts as an offset.

“What I should have done was to say every cent raised would go to income tax cuts,” Shorten said.

Cut through the noise of federal politics with news, views and expert analysis. Subscribers can sign up to our weekly Inside Politics newsletter.