Even for Bill Shorten, that swipe is a bit rich

Bill Shorten (left) and Tony Jones on Q&A last night. Picture: ABC

There are no hard-and-fast rules when it comes to campaigning, but insulting the audience?

Remember when Hillary Clinton did that, you basket of deplorables? By way of thanks, many traditional Democrats declined to vote for her.

Bill Shorten came close to that level of disrespect for the audience on Q&A last night, when he referred to one of the key questions being asked, over and again by voters, as dumb.

Dumb, as in stupid, as in: not worth my time?

The public likes to see the Opposition leader patiently explaining his policies.

The ALP has a big climate change strategy: 45 per cent renewables in short order and electric cars for everyone!

Many people are thrilled. But who is going to pay for it, and how much will it cost?

If you can’t afford to buy a new car, what will the penalty be?

How will the government control the cost of those cars, when every second household has to have one?

Who will pay for the infrastructure? Where will we get the lithium for the batteries, and what do we know about how it’s extracted, because that picture, in the Congo, doesn’t look pretty.

These are reasonable questions.

Q&A host Tony Jones last night challenged Shorten on the costs of his environmental policies.

Shorten attacked the question, saying: “That is such a dumb question to say, what does it cost without looking at the cost of inaction.”

It’s actually not dumb to ask how much something will cost. People are worried, why wouldn’t they be? There’s a huge renewables lobby out there, rubbing their hands in glee at the prospect of an ALP victory, and that’s fine, but the voters still get a look in, surely?

Were it not for that misstep, you’d have said Shorten did a reasonably good job last night.

He wants to shift the focus, he said, from well-off Baby Boomers toward the younger generation.

Most baby-boomers have Gen X kids, and a subtle shift in their direction may indeed be welcome.

He mentioned the planned wage increase for child care workers; that’s well overdue, although the policy will have to be a little better designed than the current one.

There’s a reason child care fees are now $200 a day in the big cities: when the government agrees to cover some of the cost, the fees go up and up, because why wouldn’t they?

That money doesn’t flow into the pockets of the low-paid workers. There are all kinds of cowboys in the child care sector. It should be not-for-profit, run by the State, with a cap on fees.

Shorten also gets kudos just for going on the show. It’s a sympathetic audience for a Labor leader, no doubt about it, and you can see why a conservative, Pentecostal Christian like Scott Morrison would avoid it like the plague, but it still looks chicken.

“At least I’ve turned up,” Shorten said (Morrison, for the record, took a grilling from Leigh Sales on 7:30 last night.)

Shorten has been asked this question a thousand times: why are you so unpopular?

He got asked again last night. He says he doesn’t really know. He loves his Mum, and that’s a good quality.

On his Mum, he told the audience that she didn’t get quite the shot at life she wanted. Of this, he said: “If you really want to know who Bill Shorten is, I can’t make it right for my mum but I can make it right for everyone else.”

I’m not sure anyone should be making a promise of that magnitude. It’s not the role of government to “make it right” for everyone. There’s a lot of luck in life. Also much to be said for personal qualities, like drive, and ingenuity; the capacity for hard work, and sacrifice.

Shorten noted his own longevity, saying: “I remember the headlines. Tony Abbott was going to be there for three terms. I outlasted him. And Malcolm Turnbull, the Sun King … he’s probably watching this from New York, isn’t he?”

Ahem. As the numbers man behind the exact same instability in the Labor Party — ousting Rudd, ousting Gillard — that was a bit rich.