Shorten’s ruthless lunge for power has been laid bare

Bill Shorten claims to want to be the Prime Minister of all Australians, unless you’re the poor soul who dares challenge him on tax issues when a camera crew is nearby, writes Miranda Devine.

Two aspects of this election campaign flesh out Labor’s ruthless lunge for power and illuminate what a Shorten government would mean.

First is the Gladstone worker who lost his job after embarrassing Bill Shorten with an inconvenient question, and second is Labor’s astonishing largesse of uncapped visas for the elderly parents of migrants which is being narrowcast into ethnic marginal seats.

The first reflects Shorten’s true relationship with the workers he feigns to champion, as well as a frightening intolerance of “wrongthink”; the second reveals the “whatever it takes” mentality of Labor taken to new lows and don’t you dare complain about paying for it.

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Gladtsone in central Queensland, is heavily unionised and the shabby treatment meted out to the worker who asked Shorten about tax rates three weeks ago has been the talk of the town.

It’s taken a fair amount of courage for the unnamed 39-year-old father of three to withstand the fallout.

When the Opposition Leader visited his workplace three weeks ago, he thought nothing of their interaction. It was Shorten who approached him, TV cameras in tow.

So, he said what was on his mind: “It would be good to see higher wage income earners give a tax break because a lot of the guys here do overtime. They earn $250,000 a year because they work nights,” the electrical engineer told Shorten.

Opposition Leader Bill Shorten was asked questions about tax breaks by a worker at Gladstone Port in Queensland, who has since been suspended. Picture: Kym Smith

“Well, we’re going to look at that,” replied Shorten which, as everyone knows, was a complete sham.

If he wins office on Saturday, within six weeks, the top marginal income tax rate will go up two points to 49 cents in the dollar, one of the highest rates in the world, kicking in at $180,000. It’s a disincentive to work harder, take extra shifts or work nights.

It was Shorten who caused himself political damage by denying the truth of his own policy.

But it was the worker who was punished.

First time he knew something was wrong was when he showed up at work the next day, April 24, to find his pass didn’t work. He was told he was “suspended” and then his personal belongings were packed up and sent to his home.

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“When my pass was cancelled at the port, and my personal items returned to me last Thursday, I did not believe that I was likely to have my contract renewed at the port,” he said in a statement on Monday.

“I have not performed any work whatsoever for the port in the last three weeks.”

Shorten has denied knowledge of any retribution against the worker meted out on his behalf.

But the Labor state government which owns the port yesterday admitted the man was suspended “after the Port raised concerns about his conduct onsite during a media visit”.

Shorten has denied any knowledge of what has transpired for the worker who simply asked him some questions. Picture: supplied

Queensland Labor minister Mark Bailey confirmed the Port also suspended a contract with contractor Welcon Technologies which employed the worker. That’s quite some punishment.

No wonder Shorten gets the cold shoulder when he dons the high-viz and tours workplaces across the country.

His record speaks for itself, from his days at the AWU when he negotiated enterprise agreements which dudded workers while filling the coffers of the union. There was the Chiquita Mushrooms deal which saw mushroom pickers get lower wages in return for the company making unusual payments to the AWU.

Another AWU deal revealed in the trade unions royal commission saw Cleanevent keep casual cleaners on lower rates of pay, saving the company $1.5 million. In return Cleanevent paid the union $25,000 a year.

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Even Shorten’s altercation over a microwaved pie in a Melbourne milk bar in 2012 showed a decided lack of concern for people trying to make an honest living. After Shorten stormed out of her shop (he said later it was a misunderstanding) Annie Huang told Melbourne radio she was “really, really scared because he say to me, ‘you lost business’.

“What mean this, the lost business?”

Bill Shorten’s treatment of worker rights has come under fire after an engineer who asked Bill Shorten about high income tax reliefwas suspended from his job. Picture: Kym Smith

We’ll all find out soon enough what it means if Labor wins.

We’ll also find out how quickly Labor can squander the extra taxes it plans to gouge from us.

Of all the wasteful, cynical policies, it’s hard to go past Shorten’s uncapped visa scheme for elderly parents of migrants.

The Productivity Commission has estimated the visas would cost as much as $410 000 per parent. With a backlog of 100,000 parents, mainly from China, already waiting in the visa queue, that’s a lot of money.

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And it’s uncapped! Talk about a honey pot to lure chancers from around the world to take advantage of our generous Medicare system. Elderly parents from less developed countries are bound to have complex health issues, and it’s not as if hospital emergency rooms can turn them away, despite the fact they won’t have paid a cent of tax in this country.

It’s so expensive that New Zealand froze a similar scheme in 2016.

We have always been told we need high levels of migration because our ageing population requires more young taxpayers. This scheme flies in the face of that justification.

Ultimately it will bankrupt us.

But in Shorten’s brave new world, woe betide any taxpayer who complains. You’ll just have to shut up and cop it sweet or you won’t have a job.