Bill Shorten just a blast from Labor’s past

LABOR strategists trying to promote their current leader Bill Shorten should note that the public didn’t warm to the story of convicted drug smuggler Schapelle Corby.

Despite her natural good looks, the heavy promotion, the pages in women’s magazines and the adoration of rusted-on fans convinced of her innocence, Corby no longer excites the national audience. Shorten doesn’t have half Corby’s attributes and any natural appeal he may have garnered from pushing himself into the media spotlight during the Beaconsfield mine disaster has long dissipated. He is now just another union hack who has emerged at the top of Labor’s garbage pile by natural attrition and he has shown he has no understanding of the national mood that delivered Coalition leader Tony Abbott an electoral landslide last September. Prime Minister Abbott heads a majority government because the electorate was sick of the pathetic Labor/Green/independent minority government which presided over the dissipation of the nation’s wealth as it pandered to tiny tribes, extremist environmentalists, the same-sex marriage lobby, the open borders lobby, and the free hand-out lobby. Shorten is stuck in a ’50s mindset and seems to believe that all workers should be trade unionists. He can’t recognise that the AWU, the union which he used to head, is now seen as part of the problem, not the solution, as much as the current AWU head Paul Howes, who tries to change tack and appear conciliatory to the employers Shorten routinely denigrates. Shorten is not representative of Labor’s latest incarnation as embodied by media-friendly Howes. Shorten is old class-warrior boss-hating Labor more closely aligned with historically corrupt unions like the wharfies, who did so much damage to the national interest during World War II and beyond. His pathetic performance as Opposition Leader in the first week of the new session of federal parliament has ensured that his use-by date will be sooner rather than later. Shorten was famously one of the right-wing Labor warriors responsible for installing the hopelessly underwhelming Julia Gillard as Australia’s first female prime minister. While the sisterhood may still muster a cheer for Gillard, her record of disaster is on a par with that of Kevin Rudd, who she succeeded, and who, in turn, the ALP reinstalled in a hapless attempt to salvage something from the wreckage created after six years of Labor government. Shorten was there to knife Gillard at the last moment. Not a good look for someone seeking the trust of the nation. Nor is it a good look for Shorten now to argue against the royal commission into the union movement. Gillard championed former MP and Health Services Union boss Craig Thomson even as Labor’s toothless inquiries permitted their investigations to drag on and provide him with temporary cover. Not until he joined the crossbenches did the party start to look askance at his unusual treatment of official union credit card privileges. By then, the former national president of the ALP and former HSU boss Michael Williamson was in the dock and other union scandals, particularly in the corruption-wracked construction industry, were erupting. Shorten was part of the government that had weakened the laws against corrupt practices in the building industry and saw standover tactics and intimidation again become the norm. He had his chance to speak out then, but he didn’t take it. With the last car manufacturer throwing in the towel, Shorten is still on the wrong side of reality. He claims that the Australian public should have given even more money to the most highly subsidised car workers in the world to keep them in employment. On Labor’s watch, the pattern for the dissolution of car manufacturing in Australia was established. No amount of money was enough to keep Holden, and no amount of money could keep Ford, or now Toyota. The AWU, Shorten’s old union, was so determined to kill the car industry that it even prevented its own members from voting on whether it was worth sacrificing a few of their generous benefits to give Toyota some sort of a lifeline. Shorten has become an asset to the Coalition. The public knows it will have to pay for Labor’s follies because the toxic debt legacy of the Rudd-Gillard-Rudd governments will impact heavily on this and future generations. Every time Shorten stands up in parliament he is an embarrassing reminder that the nation could be already addressing some of the problems and removing some of the impediments to restructuring the economy, if Labor acknowledged the mandate delivered to the Coalition at the last election. But he’s still there fighting for failed policies that cost Australian jobs, that sent Australian manufacturing offshore, that saw corruption bloom in the trade union movement. If he doesn’t get with the program, Shorten will be wasting time until the new senators take their seats in July. It’s his choice, or it’s his stupidity.