Why Bill Shorten embodies the best, and worst, of Australian politics

Bill Shorten represents the best in Australian politics. And the worst. In his valedictory speech to the House on Thursday, ending 17 years in parliament, he spoke of the achievement in government that was “closest to my heart” – the National Disability Insurance Scheme. “The NDIS belongs alongside Medicare and superannuation as examples of Australian exceptionalism.”

Illustration by Simon LetchCredit:

Shorten is rightly proud of the NDIS. It was a world-first undertaking and instantly set the standard for the way that civilised societies should treat their disabled citizens.

It was not all his work. As Shorten acknowledged, it was Kevin Rudd who gave him his start in the field by appointing him as the parliamentary secretary for disabilities in 2007.

“I thought I knew hardship, having seen disadvantage representing workers,” Shorten told the House. “But nothing had prepared me for the way literally hundreds of thousands of Australians with disability and their carers were sentenced to a second-class life of lesser opportunity.”

And it was Julia Gillard who committed her government to implementing it. Shorten recalls asking the then prime minister to do just one thing: “I asked her to meet five people in my office and leave her phone outside for an hour and a half.” She heard their stories and was persuaded.

Credit must also go to Tony Abbott, the opposition leader who embraced the idea. As he said: “Normally I’m Mr No, but on this occasion I’m Mr Yes!” It’s hard for any major reform to endure without bipartisan support; Abbott gave it that support.

Bill Shorten delivers his valedictory speech in the House of Representatives on Thursday.Credit: Dominic Lorrimer

But Shorten can take most of the credit for creating the scheme when Labor was in power in 2007-2013, and for repairing it now that Labor is in power once more.

By the time Anthony Albanese gave Shorten responsibility for the NDIS in 2022, it had veered out of control. It had become an open secret that it was rife with rorting. Not rorted by the disabled people receiving help, but by the companies and individuals who were supposed to help them and who then billed the government for services provided.

The incoming minister was appalled to discover that, if a service provider sent their invoice to the National Disability Insurance Agency between 5pm and 6.30pm, they were paid immediately without any verification. And that 92 per cent of them were unregistered.

And that there was no specified list of authorised services. Providers were charging the public purse some outrageous sums for some outrageous supposed needs: “What we have seen is the rise of opportunistic, unethical providers,” Shorten said earlier this year. “They’re selling snake oil. They’re selling stuff which frankly doesn’t work and shouldn’t be being paid for.”

That included airline lounge memberships, sex work, pet costs, cigarettes and vapes, illegal drugs, tarot card reading, clothes, guns and cuddle therapy. So Shorten published a list of approved services, the first one, last month, banning all those categories, among others.

Shorten’s awkward munching helped make democracy sausage word of the year in 2016.Credit: Alex Ellinghausen

It’s no wonder that the costs of the NDIS blew out spectacularly. It’s now on track to become the most expensive item on the federal budget, overtaking the age pension, by 2030.

The original 2011 estimates for the scheme were that it would cover 411,000 people and cost $13.6 billion a year. This year it has 660,000 participants with budgeted cost of $42 billion.

It’s obvious that the scheme is succeeding in giving life-changing help to many but failing the test of sustainability. Unreformed, the scheme would have to be cut back or shut down.

As its father, Shorten was best placed to fix it. And, crucially, the one most trusted to fix it. Last year, the government announced measures to restrain its annual cost growth of 14 per cent to 8 per cent by 2026-27. This is essential to achieve Shorten’s stated aim – to make it “politician-proof”.

Among other reforms, he replaced 10 of the 11 top managers and recruited Kurt Fearnley as chair. Shorten persuaded state governments to increase their share of funding from next July. He tripled the number of staff at the Quality and Safeguards Commission to improve scrutiny. He created a Fraud Fusion Taskforce which, over its two-year lifespan, has put 50 people before the courts, prevented $60 million in fraud and currently has more than $1 billion in payments under investigation.

Shorten played a key role in removing Kevin Rudd as PM in 2010 and then reinstalling him, at Julia Gillard’s expense, in 2013. Credit: Andrew Meares

He’s not quite finished, but he has put the scheme on “train tracks” to sustainability, as he puts it. Compared with the outlay growth anticipated in 2022, Shorten’s reforms will have saved the taxpayer well over $100 billion over the course of a decade.

In creating – and then repairing – such an important improvement to the lives of Australia’s people, Shorten shows Australian politics at its best.

But he was also one of the faction chiefs who connived to destroy two elected Labor prime ministers, ushering in the “coup era” of Australian politics, the rampant regicide of the “revolving door” prime ministership that made Australia a laughing stock for a decade.

If that only damaged Labor governments and destabilised the political system, that would be bad enough. But it did much more. We can now see that the factional fun and games in the corridors of Canberra inflicted enduring harm on the people’s trust in democracy.

Shorten wasn’t the instigator of the threshold event, the 2010 lightning coup against Kevin Rudd. The motive force was Mark Arbib with sidekicks Karl Bitar, David Feeney, Stephen Conroy and Don Farrell. And, of course, the willing participation of Julia Gillard; you can’t have a challenge without a challenger.

Shorten, with wife Chloe, concedes defeat after the 2019 election.Credit: AP

But Shorten, as leader of elements of the Victorian Right faction, energetically joined the execution of the elected prime minister. He said at the time that he feared that he and his little gang would be cut out of the victors’ circle if the coup succeeded. His motives were self-interested and unprincipled.

So he helped remove Rudd and install Gillard. Only to then connive against Gillard and help restore Rudd to the prime ministership as electoral oblivion loomed.

The madness, of course, soon infected the Liberals, too. Rudd-Gillard-Rudd was followed by Abbott-Turnbull-Morrison. One consequence is that John Howard was the last Australian prime minister to be re-elected.

But democracy is much bigger than politics, politicians, factions, parties, prime ministers and even elections. It is, at core, an act of the people’s confidence in the virtue of collective decision-making, of trust in our fellow citizens and submission to the greater good. So what happens when the people who are supposed to model these ideals expose themselves to be self-interested thugs, grasping opportunists and self-involved narcissists?

Unsurprisingly, Australians have been discouraged and disgusted. People’s trust in democracy has not recovered from the era of the disposable leader. The ANU and Griffith University’s Australian Election Study shows that the public disapproved of every leadership coup, regardless of party or personality.

The proportion of Australians saying they are “satisfied with democracy” was in a healthy 80 per cent range in the late Howard and early Rudd years, the highest at any time since 1969. It peaked at 86 per cent in 2007, the year Rudd was elected. From the moment he was torn down, this proportion started to shrink non-stop until it hit bottom at 59 per cent in 2019. For perspective, this was its lowest since the dismissal of the Whitlam government.

When the pandemic struck, trust in government recovered somewhat. But, to this day, satisfaction with democracy has not recovered to the pre-coup era, according to the Australian Election Study.

Does Shorten regret his part in the destruction of two Labor prime ministers, the onset of the coup mania and the enduring damage to Australians’ confidence in democracy?

“You do regret your mistakes, you don’t forget your failures,” Shorten said in his valedictory on Thursday, and for a moment the House held its breath in anticipation.

Shorten resumed: “Oh, what I would give to go back to election day 2016 and turn that sausage in bread around the right way.” He got a laugh as the audience recalled that much-publicised lapse in democracy sausage etiquette when he approached it from the side instead of the end. But this was not any metaphor for political remorse, however.

Asked for his political regrets, Shorten falls back on Frank Sinatra: “Regrets. I’ve had a few, but then again too few to mention.”

When I ask him straight whether he regrets his part in the downfall of two Labor prime ministers, he disavows responsibility and only replies: “I regret that the instability occurred.”

The journalist David Marr wrote a 2016 assessment of Shorten in the Quarterly Essay. It was titled “Faction Man”. Today, Marr looks back on Shorten’s political career and concludes that “he never ceased being a man of factions”.

The best and the worst of Australian politics.

Peter Hartcher is political editor.