Batman by-election: Bill Shorten’s coal conundrum features in Batman mural

A mural depicting the split personality of Bill Shorten on coal has been unveiled by the same artist who lampooned Tony Abbott.

Scott Marsh’s mural in the Melbourne seat of Batman.

A mural depicting the split personality of Labor leader Bill Shorten on coal has been unveiled in the Melbourne seat of Batman where the opposition leader has been wooing Greens voters on one hand while half-heartedly pushing mining in Queensland with the other.

The painting in the suburb of Preston is by artist Scott Marsh who is famous for a mural showing Tony Abbott marrying himself in Sydney.

The leftie Bill is wearing an Afghan scarf and ponders whether the coal is vegan, while working class Bill, wearing an Adani coal miner’s hat and drinking a tinnie, declares a love for jobs and North Queensland Cowboys star Jonathan Thurston.

Mr Shorten last week announced a former coal miner, Russell Robertson, as Labor’s candidate in the marginal federal seat of Capricornia, in Central Queensland.

“I’ve spent my life representing miners. I understand the importance of mining. I’ve spent my life representing resource construction workers. I’ve spent my life standing up for blue collar engineering workers,” he said last Wednesday.

Later in the week he stood in a tram shed with workers alongside his candidate for Batman, Ged Kearney, and triumphantly proclaimed Labor “is the party of the environment.”

“We are the party of the environment ... We are the party of the reef and the regions and we don’t believe that the progress of this nation is achieved when you throw one group of Australians overboard.”

Mr Shorten, so adept at bridging factional disputes, is battling to win the left-right dispute in his own mind. The Greens, who gleefully pointed the mural out to all and sundry, are laughing.

Artist Scott Marsh finishing off his mural of former prime minister Tony Abbott getting married to himself in Redfern.