Bill Shorten at the royal commission: no killer blow, but now for the aftermath
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Version 0 of 1. A cheeky sort could say that we finally know what Bill Shorten has been auditioning for throughout the period of his opposition leadership, when it’s periodically seemed impossible for him to answer a question, or deliver a comprehensible line. Perhaps this was just practice for his rite of passage at the trade union royal commission this week. Shorten presented to the world as a wafting, benign cloud. Despite hammering away for the best part of two days, the precision prosecutorial onslaught couldn’t penetrate Bill Shorten’s epic waft. All that could be done was call the waft out, which commissioner Dyson Heydon did on Thursday when, with some dour showmanship and an impeccable instinct for timing, he called into question Shorten’s credibility as a witness. Heydon made the not unreasonable point that it was strange for someone to seek an early appearance at the royal commission if they didn’t intend to cooperate fully and answer questions. Obviously Shorten’s objective was not full and frank disclosure of events long past, his objective was to get through the process without the commission being able to land any killer blows. Related: Bill Shorten rejects claims employer payments created conflict of interest It was a rational objective, and Shorten succeeded. There really wasn’t a killer blow, despite what you might read in some publications. But his presentation came at a cost. Apart from the obvious – the unfortunate appearance of Australia’s alternative prime minister being questioned for two days in a quasi-legal proceeding – there were the specifics. Shorten presented as someone who had not much idea what he wanted to say, and someone who had a tendency to delegate a great deal and not ask many questions. Shorten’s Sergeant Schultz posture could have been defensive. There were a lot of questions where the Labor leader was invited to agree with the proposition his conduct at the Australian Workers’ Union had been entirely improper. Any witness in any proceeding – proper judicial, or quasi judicial – is unlikely to throw any fuel on that particular bonfire. It could have been tactical, and consistent with the best sort of legal advice, except we’ve seen it very often before the last 48 hours. The “delegator-in-chief” persona is completely consistent with how Shorten presents in daily politics. He doesn’t knuckle down on detail, and hard-wired detail aversion is a risky attribute for a person aspiring to be a prime minister. It can trip you up if you aren’t very careful. Apart from not knowing, and forgetting, and not having particular lines of sight on various things, Shorten also presented to the commission as ultimate political insider. He saw nothing untoward about negotiating on behalf of workers while asking the bosses for the odd favour, including one case, a $40,000 favour, that wasn’t declared publicly until eight years after it happened. This is how politics works, Shorten told the commission with a resolute tone and nothing approximating a flinch or a flicker of self-doubt. He’s absolutely right. This is how politics works. This conduct, and other conduct like it, is widespread and endemic. If you lack the self-belief to hustle, if you lack the network to fundraise, and if you lack the stomach for inhabiting a universe crafted in a material called grey area and powered on compromise, you really aren’t party or government material. Australian politics is a self-reinforcing club delivering new candidates into parliament on travelators, candidates who then set about dancing with the people who brought them, sometimes appearing to forget the voters are even there. The culture Shorten reflects is the default, not the exception. It’s why voters feel alienated, yet the attempts to change the culture always seem to founder on someone’s trivial objection. Let’s be clear about what this royal commission is. It’s an exercise initiated by the Coalition to expose activities that will weaken the trade union movement, and tie Labor up politically. The investment paid dividends this week. The government had a really terrible week and it was blasted off the front page by Bill’s big day(s) out. Let’s also be clear about how Shorten washed out of his gruelling 48 hours in the witness box. He survived the appearance, with the collateral damage I’ve outlined. As I said during the live coverage this week, I suspect the appearance itself is more likely to reinforce pre-existing positive or negative perceptions of Shorten than to be a significant changer of perceptions. But surviving Jeremy Stoljar’s periodic “ah ha!” or Dyson Heydon’s live televised smackdown is actually the easy part. Shorten now has to navigate the aftermath, and that’s quite difficult. Raking over his trade union past has become a sanctioned activity courtesy of the not entirely answered questions of the past 48 hours. The complications of the national conference loom. He has to get through that with his authority intact. And looking forward, he has to continue to command the loyalty of parliamentary colleagues who, despite the lessons learned from the Rudd/Gillard period, the government’s weakness and Labor’s clear ascendancy in the opinion polls, still assemble like little nipping sharks at the first sign of blood. |