Mark Kenny analysis: Bill Shorten’s campaign launch emphasises team unity and women’s voice

Nothing in campaign launches is left to chance, no camera shot, no word, nor any strategic juxtaposition of VIPs, Mark Kenny writes.

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There’s no “S” in team, nor a “P” or a “W” for that matter.

Yet these initials somehow became the defining markers of Bill Shorten’s conspicuously “team-based” appeal to voters as he officially launched Labor’s job application to form the next government of Australia. With just 12 days left in a grindingly dull election race, the Labor leader’s pitch from the crucial swing-state of Queensland, appeared to stress the consonant jewels of Labor’s 2019 offering: less emphasis on the “S” for Shorten, and more on the “P” for Plibersek, an enthusiastic “W” for Wong, and even on an F for feminism.

While playing to its strengths, the team approach is an implicit acknowledgment that the would-be PM, is no Bob Hawke or Paul Keating or even a Kevin Rudd or Julia Gillard – all but the first of whom were in attendance (Mr Hawke was unable to travel). Of course, nothing in campaign launches is left to chance, no camera shot, no word, nor any strategic juxtaposition of VIPs.

Former Australian Prime Ministers Kevin Rudd, Julia Gillard and Paul Keating at Bill Shorten’s campaign launch. Picture: AAP / Lukas Coch

All are used to create an image and reinforce it which is why the whole frontbench was seated on the stage.

If a picture is worth a thousand words, the aim in campaign launches is uncannily reversed: to deploy a thousand images in the service of just a few words: vision, unity, competence, success.

Did this event secure these? Of course not, but going into the final fortnight, the ALP remains ahead and has used its launch to fire off its big policy and personality guns. In this, it is aided by the vast fiscal reserves created from closing tax loopholes and concessions, allowing it to spend big on “families”, on workers at the bottom and top of the age-range, and on health and education.

The message to voters running under Labor’s multibillion-dollar spend-a-thon, is multi-pronged but contiguous: we are ready; we have an agreed purpose; we not only “represent” the great sweep of modern Australia, we actually “reflect” it, including most definitively, its women. By the time Shorten addressed the party faithful, no fewer than four powerful female figures had tilled the ground: Queensland Premier Annastacia Palaszczuk; Senate Leader Penny Wong; Deputy Opposition Leader Tanya Plibersek; and finally, the warmly personal Chloe Shorten, who revealed her alternative title among Labor women as “Bill’s feminist conscience”.

Opposition Leader Bill Shorten and Deputy Opposition Leader Tanya Plibersek at the campaign launch. Picture: AAP / Darren England

The attempted contrast with the Coalition was deliberate: non-Anglo names like Plibersek, Palaszczuk, Wong, all popular, all women, against a presidential campaign built around Scott Morrison with other Liberal frontbenchers back-officed. Shorten knows an electoral groundswell based on his personality will not occur.

But in the match-ups around the ground, he believes his established front line identities have a depleted Coalition operation covered.

Increasingly, Labor believes voters want change and will back it “with” its current leader, rather than necessarily “because” of him. The consolation for Shorten is that while there is no “i” in team, there are two in “it’s time”.

Mark Kenny is a Senior Fellow with the ANU’s Australian Studies Institute

 

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Originally published as Mark Kenny analysis: Bill Shorten’s campaign launch emphasises team unity and women’s voice