Federal election 2016 analysis: Labor factions sizing up Bill

BILL Shorten’s future as Opposition Leader depends almost entirely on how many seats his party picks up, writes Ellen Whinnett.

• Federal election 2016: All the latest news

BILL Shorten’s future as Opposition Leader depends almost entirely on how many seats his party picks up.

The rules he inherited from Kevin Rudd mean the leadership is automatically vacated after an election. If he wins, it’s a formality that he continues in the role.

But Labor’s factions are quietly discussing among themselves how they would manage a leadership contest in the event of a loss.

They’re looking at having just one candidate from each faction — meaning Tanya Plibersek or Anthony Albanese from the Left, and either Mr Shorten or Chris Bowen from the Right.

Broadly, all the opinion polls are predicting a Coalition victory — it’s just the size of it that’s hard to pinpoint.

If Labor gets thumped it will be game on at the very next caucus meeting.

The question then would be whether Mr Shorten would stand aside for shadow treasurer Mr Bowen as the Right candidate.

Given Mr Shorten’s fierce ambition and sense of destiny, it is hard to see how this would come to pass, but he is a pragmatic deal maker, so who knows?

After all, Malcolm Turnbull came back six years after losing the Opposition leader’s job and is now Prime Minister.

If Mr Shorten just narrowly misses out on a victory, he would have a strong argument that he had gone within a whisker of toppling a first-term government and should be allowed another chance.

Tony Abbott got two chances, leaving Julia Gillard with a minority government and then knocking off Kevin Rudd three years later.

Things will get complicated if Mr Shorten has a middling result, picking up a few seats but failing to win government.

That leaves the party in opposition for another three years, and will make other ambitious people in Labor ranks very edgy.

Those close to Mr Shorten are now starting to think about what would be an honourable defeat.

Ten seats is a number getting a lot of airplay.

There seemed a relentless march towards a Coalition victory up until yesterday, when both leaders went a bit flat.

Mr Shorten looked tired, gave some weird answers on radio and generally looked like the race was over, even as he blitzed four seats in Sydney.

Mr Turnbull, also in Sydney, tripped up by guaranteeing no doctor’s fees would go up under the continued freeze on the Medicare rebate, refused to do a media conference, changed his mind and did a media conference, then disappeared from view.

The close of polls at 6 o’clock tonight cannot come soon enough.\

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Originally published as Federal election 2016 analysis: Labor factions sizing up Bill