Bill Shorten’s trade union past a growing threat

Bill Shorten’s past is catching up with him at such a fast rate that it is overwhelming his political present and future.

When Malcolm Turnbull replaced the highly unpopular Tony Abbott as prime minister last month, political commentators wrote off Shorten’s chances of winning power for Labor at next year’s federal election.

Senior party figures privately agreed, even if they adopted a wait-and-see approach.

It now looks as if Dyson Heydon’s royal commission into union corruption will finish off Shorten — sooner rather than later.

The mass of material erupting into the public domain about Shorten’s wheeler-dealer days as head of the Australian Workers Union, courtesy of evidence to the commission, fits a compelling narrative that is very bad news for the man who has dreamed of becoming prime minister since his youth.

Shorten’s repeated defence — that he was distant in those union days from negotiating confidential “side deals” to enterprise wage agreements that brought in huge sums of employer cash to his union — looks hollow.

As the AWU’s Victorian branch and national secretary in the years leading up to him entering parliament in late 2007, Shorten was very hands-on at the helm. It just does not jell with Shorten’s way of doing things, as claimed, that he would leave sorting out big-money arrangements to a union underling-puppet such as Cesar Melhem.

No matter how much Shorten pretends he was above the fray and left things to Melhem or others, an undeniable pattern has formed.

On Shorten’s watch, the AWU signed a deal with Australia’s ­largest mushroom producer, ­Chiquita Mushrooms, that saved the company $3.5 million a year, involved $4000-a-month payments to the union and cut the conditions of workers.

Shorten did a deal in 2007 with a labour hire company, Unibilt, whose workers he represented in wage negotiations, to pay $40,000 to fund an election campaign manager who actually worked for him. These funds were declared only recently when the issue was set to become public. Shorten ­insists no favours were expected from Unibilt.

This week, the weight of ­evidence compounded when company executives from construction partners Thiess John Holland confirmed, on oath, how hundreds of thousands of dollars were made in “disguised” payments to the AWU during Shorten’s time as leader. The payments allegedly ­involved sham invoices.

Shorten allegedly did the deal with Thiess John Holland and left it to Melhem to “tidy things up”.

The week ended with another big clanger when it was detailed how, from 2003 to 2005, ACI Glass paid more than $450,000 to Shorten’s Victorian branch.

Company executives giving evidence in the royal commission were mystified about invoices saying the payments related to “paid education leave” and “professional fees ­consulting”.

“It’s news to me,” former ACI chief financial officer Greg Ridder said.

More material still to come on ACI could be excruciating for Shorten. Some union officials involved in the ACI negotiations have not yet been called to give evidence.

It is also suggested that building industry “mediator” and Melbourne underworld figure Mick Gatto was involved.

The Labor Party can bleat, with some justification, about the political motives behind Tony Abbott setting up the royal commission to target unions, tarnish Labor by ­association and wound Shorten.

It also can claim the evidence does not point to Shorten pocketing money for personal benefit. Leaving aside the funds sloshing around grand union fundraisers and ALP branch stacking, there have not been examples of the Kathy Jackson-style personal largesse similar to the Federal Court’s recent finding that she spent $1.4m on personal holidays, clothes, jewellery, a home mortgage and even a divorce settlement.

Still, Shorten’s supporters cannot complain about unpleasant facts that may surface when things are already going poorly.

In his short stint as Opposition Leader, Shorten has failed to connect with voters, as miserable personal polling results show.

He has gained a reputation for carping and obstruction that may have worked for Abbott but cannot work for an alternative prime minister needing a ­blueprint for the nation in economically troubled times.

Shorten’s main asset — Abbott — is gone. His one-liners, or so-called “zingers”, have made him a figure of ridicule.

As Shorten faced off Turnbull in parliament this week, Labor’s attempts to portray the new Prime Minister as an out-of-touch rich man who had parked his wealth in a Caribbean tax haven fell flat. Turnbull still has his nay-sayers in the Liberal Party right wing, but no one can deny the force of his scorching attack on Labor and Shorten for launching a “shabby smear campaign”. Acknowledging his wealth, Turnbull said he had worked hard and enjoyed his share of luck, but also paid his taxes ­scrupulously and “given back”.

Turnbull’s most searing rebuke was to argue that Shorten was responsible for leaving workers at the Cleanevent company short on take-home penalty rates while the union scored a financial benefit — a claim denied by Shorten.

The Turnbull attack exposed the weakest part of Shorten’s weak underbelly. In his recent Quarterly Essay on the Labor leader’s rise to power, David Marr chronicles the combination of number crunching and ego that has propelled ­Shorten to where he is today.

But Marr says it takes more than self-belief.

“Shorten is a serious candidate because he is also willing to lead the life it takes to reach the top: A life hostage at every point to public scrutiny, luck and the intrigue of his colleagues.”

Shorten has had plenty of the latter two things but let himself down on the first by his lack of foresight in realising that every side deal could be open to future scrutiny and could count against him one day. Maybe he hoped no one would look.

The royal commission has become a gathering snowball for Shorten, worse than anything before. It will almost certainly make the hardheads in the Labor Party think twice about whether he can be put up as a credible alternative to Turnbull at the election.

Shorten, meanwhile, is not the type to fall on his sword, and party mathematics is on his side for now. He has Kevin Rudd to thank for instituting a new party leadership selection process that makes it extremely difficult to dislodge a leader between elections: a threshold 70 per cent vote of the federal party­room to support a leadership spill. The catch is this: the Labor caucus can change the rules and could resort to a majority vote once again if it came to the crunch. Such an outcome would infuriate the party membership base and prove an ugly spectacle, but it would be a quick fix and as good as over for Shorten.

There are no big stars in the wings, but there are three plausible candidates. Tanya Plibersek, ­Anthony Albanese and Chris Bowen are regarded as leadership material inside the partyroom.

Albanese would win if he had the nerve to run.