Labor folk have umpteen ways to minimise the damage that Bill Shorten did to himself, the Labor Party and the opposition's chance of winning the election this week.
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The royal commission into trade unions was a set-up, perhaps what Tony Abbott would call a "stitch up". Political fundraising is a murky area, but the mud falls fairly evenly and the coalition, and any number of its most senior members, had had relationships and sponsorship systems as disgusting as anything in which Shorten was engaged.
Anyway, there's no evidence, it is said, of any illegality, and certainly, no "smoking gun".
These excuses may be true enough, so far as they go. But they won't do.
There is simply no profit rationalising what Shorten was doing. And it won't sell to voters anyway. Nor does it help to compare its stench with other fundraising operations that have recently been in the spotlight. Most may fall short of meeting the test of being legally corrupt – because there is no actual evidence of favours for cash. But they reflect a corruption of the spirit, and a perversion of the public interest. And an indifference to the appearances and the interests of ordinary working women and men.
Voters may well judge Shorten as being far worse. It is not obvious that his every word and deed involved his standing up for his members. There is a clear possibility that a person in arrangements such as he had, could put his own interests, or his union's, ahead of people his union was supposed to represent.
Chicanery by unions with paid-up memberships translates directly into bloc votes in both the councils of the trade union movement, and the Labor Party. Shorten's rise and power in the party has been based on parlaying such numbers. Those numbers, at critical times, changed party and Australian history, not least as a result of his successful betrayals of the elected leader.
Rorts with membership and "donations" have been critical to the power Shorten, and men like him, enjoy in the councils of the party. And it's why some people, normally regarded as being on the opposite side of the political spectrum, have long been so relaxed in his company, and so willing (as similar types also were with Bob Hawke) to do him personal favours. Will members of fundamental Labor constituencies automatically consider that what was in the interest of Shorten or the AWU was in their interests? They have been given ample evidence to suggest otherwise.
Shorten's AWU has never been feared for its industrial militancy or its success in negotiating good terms and conditions for its members. The AWU's jurisdiction lets it seek members in hundreds of work places. It has always been in competition for members with other unions, with a jurisdiction focused on particular fields of occupation. Some of these, such as the construction unions, play hard, but have been successful in winning terms and conditions far superior to those obtained by the AWU. For just such reasons, employers have preferred to deal with the AWU. It is "pragmatic", "responsible", "open to negotiation". These can be – and oddly, perhaps, Abbott will be the one saying it – "tame" "pushovers."
Shorten's appearance at the royal commission confirmed, if it were needed, that there is a vast gulf between many modern unions and their membership. There is a similar gulf in political Labor, and for much the same reasons. Unions, like the party, are run by suits, pollsters and professionals, not by the memberships. Their contribution is, usually, frankly unwelcome, if only because they lack the insights and the background of the suits. Heavens, some work with their hands.
The skill and the professionalism and industrial timidity did not win AWU workers, or the economy, any dividends better than those of more militant unions. Nor did it make AWU jobs, compared with others, more secure. The benefits of employer goodwill, when apparent, went to the union and its officers. But deals negotiated by such officials saved tens of millions for employers, creating a reservoir of goodwill that helped them see that continuation of the rule of the existing leadership of the AWU was in their interest.
This was a union with interests that had come into conflict with its members. It is by no means the only one, and even if it takes a partisan inquiry to establish it, the public interest is being served by the facts coming out.
One does not advance the interests of union members by helping to cover up the deeds of officials. Nor is the shamefulness of some modern Labor fundraising to be excused because some Liberal or National – perhaps some Palmer Party or Green – methods are worse.
Some rationalise that political fundraising is always intrinsically messy, unattractive and sometimes seems to raise the spectre of bribery, or undue influence or access. But, it is said, pragmatically, politicians and their parties have to fundraise. We have to believe that most are honest men and women and that they will resist temptation. If it were otherwise, apparently, we could have no democratic process at all.
But not all fundraising is intrinsically dodgy. Generally, the more open and transparent, the less risk of compromising party integrity. And taxpayers directly fund most political expenditure. There have been major – probably more serious scandals – before. Gough Whitlam's attempt to raise money from the Iraqis in 1975 showed appalling misjudgment. The fundraising relationships between senior federal Labor figures and charter members of WA Inc in the 1980s was shameful. So was the brown paper bag system in the Bjelke Petersen government.
Recent Liberal rorting on donations from property developers has seemed, at times, to descend into clear criminal corruption. In NSW politics in particular, gambling, booze and property interests always seem to have inside access to senior members of both parties, with risks that are probably more severe, apart from to the pockets of AWU members, than anything the TWU was doing.
At every recent election Labor has claimed that Abbott has a secret agenda to reintroduce tough industrial relations laws. Abbott has consistently denied this. But he is seeking, with the royal commission, to build a middle Australian constituency that union governance has to be reformed. No doubt the agenda is to weaken the power of union officials. No doubt the fight is less than fair.
That does not mean people should waste their breath defending the indefensible. If senior Labor figures want to avoid Abbott getting a "mandate" to impose proper duties of stewardship on union officials, they should do it by initiating reform themselves, setting standards of decency, transparency and good stewardship at least as high as that demanded of company directors, or people in fiduciary roles.
But the union movement has a long tradition of resistance to reform, just as the party has. That's no coincidence. Exactly the same union brokers, including Shorten, are involved. It is no longer even a left-wing thing, since a day when the left came to realise they could share the spoils, including seats in Parliament, by taking their share.
Shorten, like his predecessors Kevin Rudd and Julia Gillard, has never actually done work that an AWU member might do. He, like Rudd and Gillard, is an archetypal suit, who went to good schools, married well, learnt political games and cunning at university, and became a careerist union leader of the modern type.
By now, he had ascended, seemingly effortlessly, to the top of the union, and had amassed a big war chest. His power has made him feared – sometimes distrusted. But he has never had any discernible charisma and, though he has lieutenants, not a followership. No one hangs on his words or wonders what fresh insight or piece of wit will spring from his lips. No one can ever remember him for his articulation of any idea or ideal (disability reform was an already prepackaged idea when he climbed on the bus).
A book of modern quotations would struggle to find a memorable sentence, beyond the banal, worth perpetuating, other than some commonplace or zinger bearing the mark of having come from elsewhere. He has risen without positive trace and, five years after he falls, few will remember him, least of all with any fondness, for anything he achieved. That's sad, but as much a commentary on his party as on himself.
He is not a bad person, though almost everything he has done in the councils of the party, state or federal, is apt to remind ordinary voters about how much of "practical" politics is about patronage, favours and snouts in the trough. But then again, he's not even the most unattractive or grasping of the right's power brokers.
Shorten is failing because nothing in his political or industrial career – nothing that he says or does – has been likely to persuade ordinary voters he is the genuine thing. He has never worked hard at debate or persuasion. When you have the power he has, and has had, one does not need logic in the councils of the party.
Voters do not seem to actively dislike Shorten in the way that many seem to seriously hate Abbott. But they have not been able to warm to him. Yet the number of people who feel essentially negatively about him is at Abbott levels.
Even opinion poll approval seems to come more from a desire to see a new Labor government, or a non-Abbott government, than for a Labor government led by him. Shorten (or more accurately Abbott himself) has done all that is necessary to persuade voters that coalition government is an ongoing catastrophe and menace to the nation's wellbeing, even more bizarre than the Gillard or Rudd governments. But Shorten has not even persuaded his own side, let alone the electorate about a case for voting Labor. That problem is not one of a few policies, some of which are starting to emerge. It's about having people feel that they know and are comfortable with a party of ideas and initiative.
For 20 months the opinion polls have consistently suggested Labor could and should win the next election, on the back of the failings, U-turns and idiotic decisions by Abbott and his team. But a good many Labor political insiders have already despaired of a Labor victory. They recognise that Shorten has not made the case. Voters, though already sick and tired of a one-term government, have not been convinced the party of Gillard and Rudd, and Shorten, is ready for, or deserves, another go.
If Shorten were some stop-gap leader engaged in fundamental reform, or keeping the seat warm for some obvious successor awaiting the right moment, there might be some case for persisting with him. But he opposes any serious reform – particularly anything which diminishes the power of people like him. There is no obvious successor, but almost anyone else could do better and change the name of the game.
