How Bill Shorten earned Australia’s trust

As Labor welcomes its new Members to parliament, and continues the analysis of its campaigning fortunes, attention is as much on the ALP as it is on the likely vulnerability of the next Coalition government.

When Caucus met in Canberra at the week’s end, there were two things of which all Labor parliamentarians seemed at one: everyone was agreed it had been a disciplined, effective and positive campaign, and second, Bill Shorten’s leadership was not going to be challenged.

“The leadership will be declared open, nominations will open…but there will only be one candidate,” said shadow infrastructure and transport minister Anthony Albanese “and that candidate will be Bill Shorten.

“Turnbull’s exposed — by his own side’s in-fighting.”

“Caucus will give him the authority to negotiate with the crossbenches on behalf of the Labor Party before he’s formally endorsed next week,” he added.

Deputy leader Tanya Plibersek was equally adamant.

“Bill has done a terrific job,” she said “and under Bill’s leadership, he’s been able to unite our Caucus and give us a very clear platform to take to the Australian people.”

What is much more uncertain however is the vulnerability of Malcolm Turnbull’s leadership.

“We’ve got a deeply divided, unstable government,” Plibersek said “and we need to be prepared to go back to the polls sooner rather than later.

“The instability we’re likely to see in the coming months, it might be sooner rather than later, but it won’t be from our side.

“I think it’s much more likely the sorts of stories you’re hearing, where Peter Dutton is going to knock off Julie Bishop, and you know, Tony Abbott will be back on the front bench and so on, that tells you where the instability will be coming from.

Albanese said Turnbull’s exposed — by his own side’s in-fighting.

“What’s clear is that the government will be very vulnerable,” he said.

“Volunteers around the country, our fantastic candidates, our terrific national secretary George Wright and the team that he assembled.”

Generally, Labor is satisfied it gave the election campaign the best shot it could however.

“We got a lot of help from our 12,200 volunteers around the country, our fantastic candidates, our terrificnational secretary George Wright and the team that he assembled for that central campaign,” Plibersek said.

“But the feedback I get everywhere is that people are very impressed with the job that Bill’s done.

“This is a pretty great result and I think the enthusiasm and the efforts of those new Members of Parliament will be very welcome by those of us who are already there.

“We’ve done better than anybody expected us to — certainly a lot of people in the media were writing us off.

“They wrote us off, first of all, when Tony Abbott became prime minister; that was it for a generation.

“And we got rid of Tony Abbott and then Malcolm Turnbull became the leader of the Liberal Party and we were written off again then.

“The fact that we’ve come so close is a tribute to our discipline, to the fact that we had more than 100 positive policies for people to judge us on.

“We’ve done so well after one term in Opposition.”

“It has always been important for Members of Parliament and for political parties to have a focus on building trust with voters.

“Voters did trust our message that we were prioritising jobs, health and education.

“The fact that we’ve done so well after one term in Opposition, that we’ll be welcoming a large number ofnew Members — we’re yet to determine how many — is a great tribute to Bill’s leadership, to our unity, to our discipline, and to our positive policy agenda.

“We’ve still got to let the AEC do a little bit more work.

“We’ve got some great Members of Parliament that are in, you know, very close-run contests.

“We’ve got to focus on what comes next,” she added.

This article originally appeared in the Labor Herald.