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Is Shorten PM material?

Is Shorten PM material?

  • Yes

    Votes: 6 16.2%

  • No

    Votes: 31 83.8%
  • Total voters
    37
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The problem was the immediate media attention was not available in the Keating era as it is today.

MP's who step out of line now a days are ready meat for criticism to the public on the same day. ..This is the 21st century.

Penny Wong should change her name to Penny Wrong because she got so much wrong when she was the Finance Minister under Rudd/Gillard/Rudd. ..She was only out by $123 billion....peanuts.
 
Coffee spill, prang, texting while driving?????????????......The next big event looks like being a train wreck while he is doing something else he should not be doing.

Peter Van-onselen sums up Barnacle Bill's future....How he has survived this far is remarkable.

http://www.theaustralian.com.au/opi...f-the-dysfunctional-years-shackle-shorten/new

As 2016 approaches, Bill Shorten’s achilles heel becomes more and more apparent: he is the last surviving frontline player from a depressing and dysfunctional period in Australian politics.

If you had to name the big four whose roles were at centrestage during Labor’s six years in office, the two prime ministers and the man who would become PM are the standouts: Kevin Rudd, Julia Gillard and Tony Abbott.

Coming in at No 4 is Shorten — only a junior frontbencher during Rudd’s first stint as PM but the key figure who marshalled support away from the popular first-term prime minister in a late-night coup that changed the way modern leaders need to think about their political mortality.

Again in 2013, long after Gillard’s popularity had collapsed, it was Shorten’s switch back to Rudd that delivered the ousted PM the numbers he needed to win back the poisoned chalice of the Labor leadership before leading the party to a bitter defeat a few months later.

While Abbott’s personal unpopularity was on show during the Rudd-Gillard years, courtesy of the job he did on his Labor opponents (negative politicking doesn’t endear opposition leaders to the voting public but it can be effective), it took time for Shorten’s unpopularity to manifest itself.

But we can trace the origins of his broken bond with the people to the role he played in bringing down Rudd and Gillard. An early indication of that unpopularity was on display in the Labor leadership showdown soon after the 2013 defeat. The new system of letting members have their say saw 60 per cent of members cast a ballot for Anthony Albanese, who was seen to have played a much straighter bat than Shorten during the years of Labor division.

Shorten succeeded in winning the Labor leadership only for the same reason he was successful at tearing down previous Labor prime ministers — his control of the numbers in the partyroom. The votes from the members was an early sign of how the wider public would come to see Shorten.
 
It would appear Bill Shorten is not out of the woods yet......He may face more grilling next year.


http://www.theaustralian.com.au/nat...s/news-story/991084f793ad473dda8ef1879d10ceda

Bill Shorten will face the political blowtorch for his former leadership of the scandal-plagued *Australian Workers Union after Malcolm Turnbull vowed to use the damning findings of the *Heydon royal commission to make union corruption a frontline election issue.

The Prime Minister declared “Mr Shorten has got to answer for this” hours after tabling Dyson Heydon’s scathing final report on the two-year inquiry, which *detailed “widespread” and “deep-seated” corruption by “louts, thugs, bullies, thieves, perjurers, those who threaten violence, errant fiduciaries and organisers of boycotts” in the union movement.

As unions rejected the inquiry as a “fix”, the Coalition unveiled plans to bring revamped laws to parliament built on Mr Heydon’s recommendation for an all-powerful regulator able to shut down registered organisations.

Mr Turnbull also vowed to *reintroduce a bill to restore the Australian Building and Construction Commission watchdog in the first week of parliament next year — a move that could create an early election trigger after draft laws stalled in the Senate.

More: Turnbull must adopt Abbott’s zeal
More: Thugs, bullies and thieves exposed
More: Strife over ‘corrupt’ payments

Crossbenchers David Leyonhjelm and Nick Xenophon *yesterday raised the prospect of the Prime Minister using the legislation as a trigger for a double-*dissolution election.

Mr Turnbull said the report’s release was “a real watershed *moment for the Labor movement, for its leaders, for Mr Shorten”.

“We are willing to fight an election on this ... if we cannot get the passage of this legislation through the Senate, then in one form or *another it will be a major issue at the next election,” he said.
 
Yes, there is no doubt this will be a test of his leadership potential.

If he can rise to the occasion and assist with cleaning those entrenched left crooks properly he can then move as Prime Minister in due course to very much more important matters:-

"A royal commission into fraud and corruption in the banking and financial services sector; the underpayment of staff by large companies and small buisinesses; the links between developers and elected officials; price gouging by oil companies; and tax avoidance schemes by multinational companies. " J J Portal, letter in the Age today, p. 14

The louts, thugs, bullies, thieves and perjurers in the corporate sector are making people on the ground losing jobs and reasonable income streams very angry.
 

Firstly, Bill Shorten has no hope of becoming Prime Minister as he is deeply associated with the left crooks and the voters are fully aware as indicated in the his 14% approval rating....He says he stood by workers to get the best deal and yet he ripped workers off of their entitlements in the Clean Event and Chiquita affairs just to gain some hoot for the unions and himself......He is two faced and those workers will never forgive him.

Secondly, if you an advocate for news from the AGE (that left wing paper) you may be behind in some of the latest news whereby action is being taken to close the loop holes of corporate tax avoidance. Some action has already been taken on the high interest charges on credit cards but if people want to spend, charge everything on their credit cards and then find they cannot pay, then they should manage their financial affairs with more care and spend less according to their income.....They living are beyond their means just as the Labor Party does when in power whether it be State of Federal...... Pay your credit card on time and avoid the high interest rates....The high interest rates are two fold......a) as a deterrent for slow payers and b) the banks have to cover themselves for the loss they often incur when when people go bankrupt.......If the Labor Party had not sold off the Commonwealth bank, the government of the day could have made banking more competitive...There would have been far more control of the banking and financial institutes....So please stop complaining about banking.

Where is your proof that small business are underpaying staff?.....In many cases some workers take on jobs like fruit picking and are paid according to their to their efforts.....Some will make good money if they work hard and others will earn less if they linger behind a reasonable quota.....If workers are being paid an hourly rate I think you will find those rates are regulated...If they find they are being under paid then it is up to them to make a case the watch dog for their correct entitlements.

You mentioned price gouging by oil companies!!!....What did Labor do about it and other things you mentioned when they were in power?....Absolutely nothing.....they had fuel watch and food watch which cost taxpayers money and was a complete failure.
You talk about lugs, bullies and thieves in the corporate sector which I think are getting confused with the CFMEU when using that terminology.....I don't know if you have ever been in business and employed workers in your lifetime but you do not seem to understand in the business world if demand is down in business one has to cut costs accordingly or go out of business, resulting in the requirement of less staff.....I can tell you from one who knows....Perhaps you believe a business should run at a loss just to keep on staff.....But of course you would only be joking I guess.
 
Is Bill Shorten PM material??????.....Not according to many in the LUG party as reported by Grace Collier.


http://www.theaustralian.com.au/opi...nted-by-awus-dirty-cleanevent-deal/news-story

Bill Shorten haunted by AWU’s dirty Cleanevent deal

The Australian
February 6, 2016 12:00AM
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Grace Collier
Columnist
Melbourne

Some federal senators, of the mostly unemployable variety, are having a great time leading the government around by the nose over access to a report that they would not bother to read and would be even less likely to comprehend. Just because they can, these people are going to vote against the reinstatement of the Australian Building and Construction Commission. The Prime Minister should go to an election as soon as it suits. Many Labor types will be grateful for this, too. A new political cycle will bring an end to the suffering and facilitate natural elimination of their toxic leader.

In the old days, when I was in the labour movement, we had a saying to describe people who had what it took to ruthlessly clamber over the collective, stand on our shoulders, and springboard off us to rise to the top. With a mix of wonder and disgust, we would say about the person concerned, “he would eat his own young”.

Among Labor people, it is said that the leader, Bill Shorten, would do the deals no one else would to get where he wants to go. You have to wonder though, when the man was a union official, how did he sleep at night, how did he front up to his job every day and how did he ever look working people in the eye?

It became blindingly apparent last year, when the royal commission into trade union governance examined dodgy deals from his past, that long ago, when he worked at the Australian Workers Union, Shorten ethically bankrupted himself. By his own actions, Shorten threw away his moral right to advocate on behalf of working people. Today, by association, everyone in Labor sits down there with him, with the silent ghosts of gypped workers looking on in dismay.

In November 2014, Shorten told the National Press Club “Labor will be defined in 2015 by the power of our ideas”. For the whole year, the true believers waited. Every time Shorten appeared before the camera, looking like something the cat dragged in, you could almost hear the sound of a whoopee cushion slowly deflating. He stumbled over his words, made jokes that fell flat, let off lame “zingers” and occasionally lapsed into the negative, carping sarcasm of the disaffected union rep. These performances were only eclipsed by his soliloquies of deluded self-justification in the royal commission witness box.

This week, Shorten put out a policy called “Protecting rights at work”. It promptly sank without trace. This is because it was so laughably fatuous, so breathtakingly hypocritical, and so embarrassingly dishonest, that the kindest thing that anyone in the media could do was ignore it, and turn their face away. Here is the only way the situation can be summarised: Labor has released a policy to punish employers that rip workers off, yet the person leading Labor ran a union that made agreements with employers that let them rip workers off. The policy begins: “A Shorten Labor government will put in place a suite of reforms to protect rights at work by cracking down on unscrupulous employers who are willing to exploit workers.” Labor wants big fines for these people and is “also seeking views about whether a new criminal offence is warranted where an employer intentionally or recklessly seriously rips off workers.” Where this occurs, the penalty “could be in the order of $43,200 (240 penalty units) or two years imprisonment for an individual.”

What a great idea, let’s jail the owners of, say, Cleanevent. They secured enterprise agreements from the AWU that allowed the award to be undercut by $10 an hour per person, which is estimated to have cost 5000 workers more than $400 million in lost wages. Shorten’s defence of his role in the 2004 Cleanevent agreement, taken from the royal commission transcript, was that the employees would have been ripped off anyway. The award wage was only a “gold standard”, “fanciful in the real world” and something hardly any employers abided by.

Union officials have right of entry powers enshrined in law. This is so they can enter premises and inspect documents for the purpose of prosecuting wage underpayments. They are supposed to pursue employers who underpay workers, not fall over themselves to help them.

Anyhow, make no mistake, the ABCC is needed. It will work to prevent the thuggery and corruption endemic in Australia’s construction sector by enforcing an anti-corruption code of conduct, referred to as “the code”. No one, especially the daft senators, who are obsessed with tackling corporate corruption, seems to realise this, but the code does not apply to unions at all. The code applies only to companies. It is companies who are in the frame, probably more so than unions.

When union thugs visit subcontractors to demand bribes and union EBAs in exchange for working on big projects, it is because a company executive running that project has given the union a list of which businesses they should visit. We are now the most expensive construction destination on the planet because the parties have been controlling markets and bumping up construction prices. Our largest builders and their unions have long colluded to rip us all off. The ABCC will target and prosecute the big builders who set this chain of undesirable events in motion.
 
Both Albo and Tanya face stiff Greens opposition in their city seats.

Even if this weren't so, looking at the opinion polls for 'Malware', they'd probably both sit tight until post-election.
 
Poor old Bill has headed west to salvage what is left in WA.....Bill has arranged a dinner for 4 with just one place setting.
Perhaps he should keep going west into the Indian Ocean or Christmas Island.



http://www.theaustralian.com.au/nat...t/news-story/dd96044519dd73f2ac7e00fcd2944e5e

Bill Shorten has insisted he will lead Labor to victory at the federal election despite an extraordinary declaration by one of his most senior frontbenchers, retiring West Australian MP Gary Gray, that the party is headed for defeat.

The Labor leader flew into Perth yesterday amid mounting chaos in the party’s West Australian branch after Mr Gray, a former resources minister, revealed he would not recontest his seat of Brand at this year’s election.

Mr Gray’s shock announcement came after Labor’s only other two West Australian lower-house MPs, Alannah MacTiernan and Melissa Parke, revealed in recent weeks they would not recontest their seats of Perth and Fremantle.

Labor sources said Mr Gray and Ms MacTiernan, a former state Labor minister, had grown dissatisfied with elements of Mr Shorten’s leadership and their lack of influence over policy. Mr Shorten denied there was a lack of confidence among Labor MPs in his leadership as the party prepares to face an election as early as the middle of the year.

The spate of departures means Labor will not have a single incumb*ent lower-house MP contesting the election in Western Australia — a situation believed to be unprecedented — at a time when the party is polling well at a state level against an unpopular Liberal government.

It has also created headaches for Labor officials and power*brokers, who are scrambling to find candidates for the three seats.

The rats are leaving the sinking ship.
 
If Shorten were to become PM on Juily2 he will lead the country like a true blood unionist...POW!!!!:badass::2evil:

http://www.theaustralian.com.au/nat...t/news-story/0093024ff6f43831e375669ad217f385

In a pre-election manifesto penned by the Opposition Leader and released today, Mr Shorten says he is proud of his background as an AWU organiser, despite *Coalition attempts to “smear” his past through the royal commission into trade unions.

Arguing that his tenure at the union, including six years as national secretary, taught him to solve problems and balance competing interests, Mr Shorten says he will draw on this experience if he becomes prime minister in July.

“As Labor leader, I still think like an organiser. Whether it’s dealing with the rising influence of vested interests or solving a community-level problem, empowering people is the key,” he writes in For the Common Good, published by Melbourne University Press.

The comments are a must read.

Just the first few comments.

Logical
1 hour ago

The CleanEvent cleaners and others left in the same boat by Bill's sweetheart deals, must be very pleased to hear this (not). But it seemed to me Bill's been doing just this since he was elected as an MP with the usual union assistance.
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Robert
Robert
1 hour ago

Will BS introduce the hard hat as preferred head ware for his labor pollies. I see from a recent addition to their ranks that flamboyant hats are now permissible attire in the hallowed halls of revered political rumpus rooms!
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stephen
stephen
1 hour ago

Greece, here we come !!
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Michelle
Michelle
1 hour ago

BS has learned nothing from TURC either, "thick as a brick" is an understatement.
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Sunil
Sunil
1 hour ago

Yes for a start he has good company! Kim Carr, Doug Cameron, Mark Dreyfus, Tanya Plibersek, Michell Rowlandd - all angry class warriers! Of course after all the Unions are for squeezing as much as possible from other people's money! Go for it Bill and teach these 'dirty capitalists' a good lesson! Oh I almost forgot you have great counter part in UK too! Perfect!
 
I wrote Shorten off 2 years ago, but he is proving a formidable opponent. His performance in the budget reply was quite polished.

I still don't trust Labor's ability to manage the country's finances, so I doubt they'll get my vote, but Shorten's plans for changes to negative gearing look sensible. Turnbull has really allowed himself to be wedged on this.

I think the Libs have delivered a good budget, but the selling of it hasn't started too well. Turnbull is in for a battle in this election and needs to lift his game.
 

Well there was a reason Turnbull was dumped before, there is no mongrel in him, soft as $hit.

Bill is talking it up, as a good organiser does, but there is little substance to it.

Wait till the dust settles, and the media start asking sensible questions, rather than fawning over the Labor Party.

It wasn't as though Labor, had any trouble increasing and inventing taxes, when they were in office.
The problem was their brain fart ideas to spend more than they raised.

Finding more people to tax isn't a problem for Labor, throwing away money is their downfall.
 

I thought Labor's downfall was trying to take on BHP and Rio.
 
sptrawler said:
Wait till the dust settles, and the media start asking sensible questions, rather than fawning over the Labor Party.:
Click to expand...

That's not going to happen.




The Oz media is pathetic, especially the Labor biased ABC.
 
Shortens budget reply speech was full of the usual rhetoric, propaganda, lies and more lies.

The naive will swallow his great big plan but none of them will not think to ask BS how he will pay for it all?

The naive and the rusted on Labor supporters have very short memories.

An extra $100 billion tax burden on the public.

More big hits on business who are the engine room of employment.

If Labor do get up on the July 2 we will see higher debt and deficit, more borrowings higher unemployment, higher taxes, higher spending and more union control to push business off shore just like they have done in the past and they wonder why we have stop making cars, clothing and shoes.

They say his renewable energy target of 50% by 2030 will bump the cost of electricity by 78%.

The French have no idea what they will be in for when they start building the subs in SA....The unions will reign supreme......The unions will make sure that $50 billion figure will double.
 
With LNP internal polling showing the ALP to win, the prospect of Bill being PM is real.

I'll post this just to remind people how Cats and Dogs can get on if maturity prevails:

I wonder if Keating has divided loyaties?


http://www.smh.com.au/comment/keati...orten-is-paying-the-bill-20150924-gjujs2.html
 
Poor old Barnacle Bill is coping from both left and right over his anti business philosophy.

IS HE PM MATERIAL????...I don't think so with no business experience and a union hack mentality, how can he be.....He wants to run the country like a corrupt union boss.

...It is all about power with Bill.....It is all about central control.....Bill is far from a true Labor man of yesteryear....I don't know why Shorten does not join forces with the Greens and the Communist Party and rename the ALP the Socialist Party as it is more in keeping with their ideology....But who knows, with the Greens nipping at their heels the Labor Party may have no alternative.....They hate each others Gutz but it would be a marriage of convenience as some would say....It will be sort of "I CAN'T LIVE WITH YOU BUT AT THE SAME I CAN'T LIVE WITHOUT YOU".



http://www.theaustralian.com.au/fed...s/news-story/6027f1944d3f680bba901cc14762a552

Bill Shorten has lashed out at Labor stalwart Keith DeLacy over his criticism of the opposition’s anti-business agenda, mocking the former state treasurer as a company director who wants a tax cut, as business leaders called for an end to class-war politics.

The Opposition Leader’s criticism of the former long-serving Queensland treasurer came despite at least a dozen Labor luminaries, including former premiers and party leaders, taking up boardroom posts.

Mr Shorten’s unrelenting attack on the Coalition’s proposed business tax cuts — which Mr DeLacy blasted as “the most anti-business policy I’ve ever seen federal Labor put to an election” — is driving a deep wedge between the Opposition and corporate Australia.

As the Opposition Leader yesterday declared he would not be “dictated to by business”, four of the nation’s most respected business leaders called for a higher standard of political debate, questioning Labor’s divisive election tactics.

More: Deals make unskilled best paid

Former Business Council of Australia president Graham Bradley warned that Labor’s recent policies gave few in business confidence the party had learned its lesson from the mining and carbon tax “debacles”.

Wesfarmers and Woodside chairman Michael Chaney lamented the “scaremongering and divisive approach that’s taken in modern political campaigns” that was pitting “battlers versus well-off, rich versus poor, haves versus have-nots, rather than working to achieve a greater pie for all”.

Tony Shepherd, the chair of the government’s 2014 Commission of Audit, said Mr Shorten’s agenda was fundamentally “anti-business” to a degree that would embarrass former prime ministers Bob Hawke and Paul Keating.

Mr Shepherd, the former president of the Business Council of Australia, also warned future Australians would suffer the effects of “intergenerational unfairness” if spiralling government spending was not reined in.

“I don’t think they’re continuing the Hawke-Keating legacy, and I lived through that legacy and worked with Hawke and Keating through that phase,” Mr Shepherd told Sky News. “I find this very disappointing, this attitude which is anti-business, fundamentally. Unless we get struck by a rainbow and growth takes off, the reality (of growing government spending) will still be there.”

The comments came after Mr Shorten hit back at comments from Mr DeLacy, the Goss government treasurer from 1989 to 1996. “Shock horror, a company director saying he would like to see a company tax cut for his company,” Mr Shorten said, insisting Labor “won’t be dictated to by business who want to see ... a handout from the taxes and from the budget of Australia”.

More than a dozen former Labor MPs have stepped into roles as company directors, including party leaders such as Mr Keating, Bob Carr, Steve Bracks and John Brumby.

Former federal ministers who have won places on corporate boards include Martin Ferguson, John Dawkins, Lindsay Tanner, Nicola Roxon, and Nick Sherry.

Former Commonwealth Bank chief executive and ex-Future Fund chairman David Murray also entered the fray. He said he was “puzzled” that Labor was calling for a banking royal commission when “no major issues were raised by the government or Opposition” on the findings of his landmark 2014 financial system inquiry.

Mr Hawke stepped in yesterday to try to neutralise the growing storm. “I know from my conversations with Bill that he is keenly aware of the need for Labor, in government, to co-operate with both business and the trade unions to optimise conditions for creating growth,” Mr Hawke told The Australian.

Finance Minister Mathias Cormann seized on Mr DeLacy’s comments, saying Labor was “running on a unity ticket with the Greens pursuing an anti-business, anti-success, anti-investment, anti-jobs, anti-growth agenda”.

Some readers comments.

Paul
1 minute ago

Another day another Billion dollar Bill promise.
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david
david
6 minutes ago

Shorten is trying to use class hatred as bait

The tax cuts are for small and large business combined which is the engine room of the economy providing jobs and growth

yet shortens propaganda is " cuts for the big end of town" which is simply a mindless throwback to Marxist class hatred

The tax cuts provide jobs and stimulate investment

Shorten is trying to use class hatred to muddy the waters instead of evidence based policy that the government is using
 

Newscorp amping up the attack now that it's possible Labor will take a fair few Lib seats.

What the papers aren't talking about is the fact that Labor are basically performing a Lazarus, which points to a failure of the Libs not to consolidate their grip of fear in the electorate, a fear that evaporated once the Abbott Govt decided debt wasn't a bad thing under their stewardship, but none others.

Now Bronnie and Peta are in Newscorp's circle of trust it will be interesting how far they will punish Malcolm before singing the loyalty song, or if they will help kill him off so that Tony can take back his sceptre after the election.
 
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