by PAUL COLLITS – SELDOM has so much been written on a man of such little consequence as former Labor leader Bill Shorten.
He has been the story of the week. Alas, I am about to add to it.
- Aren’t we all now enjoined to believe all women?
- Bill seems to be the outlier in an age when “we believe you”.
- Clearly, Party trumps the sisterhood.
Even those with only the slightest interest in everyday Australian politics will have noticed that William Richard Shorten has “retired” from politics.
There have been many takes on this. Has he seen the writing on the wall for his career-long aspirations to the prime ministership? Does he see the writing on the electoral wall for Labor?
ABBORRENT
Does he find abhorrent Labor’s terrorist-adjacent stance in relation to Hamas? (If so, why has he been silent all this time?)
Does he really see his NDIS “reforms” as his crowning “achievement”?
His new gig as Vice Chancellor of the University of Canberra, aka the Canberra College of Advanced Education, as it was before the 1980s Dawkins “revolution”, has also created the odd headline.
The University of Canberra is currently the 403rd best university in the world, on one measure. Giddy stuff.
One who will not be celebrating Bill’s latest “transition” is Kathy Sherriff. She claims, to this day, that Bill Shorten raped her when she was sixteen. Kathy may be angry, lying, mistaken or vindictive. Or none of the above. Aren’t we all now enjoined to believe all women?
Bill seems to be the outlier in an age when “we believe you”, and a time when the presumption of innocence has been reversed for many.
An age when Craig McLachlan, George Pell, John Jarratt, Bruce Lehrmann, Christian Porter, Fr John Fleming, Geoffrey Rush and countless other men have had to face their day in court – or in the court of public opinion – as a result of complaints of sexual harassment and much worse.
Careers and reputations have been crushed. Not Bill Shorten’s, though. He has just sailed on through.
Perhaps someone should raise the allegations with the brand new Chancellor of the University of Canberra, one Lisa Paul.
She is said to be a “social justice advocate”. (And, in another irony, she was “Co-Chair of an Independent Review of the National Disability Insurance Scheme”).
A daughter of the Canberra establishment, I assume she’s an old mate of Bill’s.
Good old Bill. Ironically, it was Bill Shorten who, as then Leader of the Opposition, said in response to the release of the report of the Royal Commission into Institutional Reponses to Child Sex Abuse (in 2018).
“I want to repeat one thing which we said in the House but it cannot be repeated enough,” he said.
“To all of you who have suffered, we understand at long last, and many before, but at long last it’s been said aloud – and in the most important law-making part of the Australian democracy – it was never your fault, it is not your fault and I terribly apologise for the fact that you weren’t believed.
“I am so, so sorry.”
They weren’t believed, outlier Bill said.
Australian historian Keith Windschuttle has stated: “… he [PM Scott Morrison] and Opposition Leader Bill Shorten gave a public apology to victims of child sexual abuse, and declared they believed all complainants were telling the truth. The apology was delivered in Parliament House on October 22, 2018, just seventeen days before the start of the trial that convicted Pell of child sexual abuse.
INVECTIVE
“Most of the jurors in that trial would have heard the apology’s repeated refrain — ‘I believe you, we believe you, your country believes you’ — as well as the invective heaped on religious authorities, police and magistrates who in the past failed to heed that message. It was no wonder Pell was declared guilty at that time.”
It is a plausible argument that the Pell stitch-up was massively helped by ScoMo and Bill’s double act of sorrow in the Parliament following the Royal Commission set up by Gillard to stitch up the Catholic Church.
Kathy Sherriff seems to be an outlier herself. No defence there, from the ALP mean girls, Katy, Penny or from Louise Milligan, the ABC’s slayer of the male-accused.
Bill, like his Clintonian namesake, seems to have been a protected species, shielded by colleagues and by the media. Aided by Daniel Andrews’ silence on the subject, for example.
Andrews said, infamously, that “I believe you” (Witness JJ) in another notorious case. He had sooled his political police onto George Pell and, in effect, had steered the Pell persecution.
Kathy Sherriff didn’t score a second thought from feminist Dan. Clearly, Party trumps the sisterhood.
Penny Wong, one who we might have assumed was on the side of Australian womanhood, said: “Bill Shorten is one of Labor’s greats.”
Oh dear. Once, saying that would have meant Gough Whitlam or Bob Hawke or Paul Keating or Ben Chifley or John Curtin or Neville Wran, or even Jack Lang.
But Bill Shorten? An accused rapist. Who achieved nothing. He couldn’t even win the unlosable election (in 2019), against ScoMo, for God’s sake.
His “career” was built upon some (engineered) media appearances during a Tasmanian mining collapse, and his promotion by a few corporate types.
Bill was only ever a hero to the AWU (Australian Workers Union). A “lion” of the Australian labour movement.
RAT
Woop-de-do. Who cares? Who has even heard of the AWU these days? Who under forty could even say what AWU stood for?
Shorten’s achievements? Well, cartoonist Johannes Leak this past week depicted Bill as a whiskered rat rowing away from a sinking ship on fire, a ship that had “NDIS” printed on its side.
Bill is a suck-hole to billionaires, despite his union roots. He parlayed his rich connections into a political career.
As the AFR’s Aaron Patrick has noted: “His famous appearance at the 2006 Beaconsfield mine rescue of Todd Russell and Brant Webb was only possible because a billionaire who employed his members, Richard Pratt, loaned the young union leader a private jet to get to Tasmania in time for the live news coverage.”
Bill Shorten hasn’t had much of a personal story, either. He left his first wife (Debbie Beale, daughter of Liberal MP and businessman Julian Beale) for another woman. That would be the daughter of the once Governor-General, Quentin Bryce.
According to one report: While neither Bill nor Debbie have gone on the record to discuss exactly what happened, Labor sources told The Telegraph that Bill separated from Deborah after he told her at an AFL game that he didn’t “think” he “wanted to be married any more”.
The source said Deborah was “totally shocked” by the split.
Nice. What have the ALP foot soldiers actually been protecting all this time, one may ask? Was Bill ever worth protecting?
So much for Bill’s “career” and life story. What of his next “career”?
LEFTIE-TYPES
As with so many Leftie-types, like Mark Scott (these days much urged to resign his post at the University of Sydney) and so many others, Bill has landed in the university sector. Where else?
The seamless career pathways for the elites are clearly defined. The ruling elites form a career club, with guaranteed opportunities for rich pickings for those who serve their time in what used to pass as public service.
Senior political positions now seem no more than CV building for what is to come afterwards.
Much has been made of Bill’s salary as incoming VC of the University of Canberra, variously pitched at either $1.2m or $1.8m.
VC salaries in this wide brown land clearly aren’t linked to institutional excellence, then.
The bigger question, of course, is why any vice chancellor should be on such an income. And why a clapped-out ex-politician of questionable morals with a non-existent policy record and a tendency to lies and treachery should be considered worthy of such office.
Until the 1940s, vice chancellors didn’t exist in Australia. They weren’t needed.
Back in the day, universities were communities of scholars, and of modest scale.
They certainly weren’t corporations or money-making ventures. Now, they are. That is why universities are in the business of maintaining their quotas of (much higher) fee-paying international students, and whinging loudly when they don’t get the steady, guaranteed supply.
It explains why they are so in favour of mass immigration, legal or otherwise. This keeps them afloat. It also explains why there is a housing crisis for students living near university campuses.
The universities produce graduates with the “right” world view, ready to move seamlessly into government, corporates, NGOs and other quasi arms of the State.
They import students in order to drive the mass immigration goals of the State. They harvest research grants that will keep afloat the climate narrative. A system perpetuated by both sides of politics, these past thirty years.
Campuses are hotbeds of revolutionary fervour. Teaching is downgraded in the interests of chasing the almighty research dollar. Academics are in bed with corporates. Half the universities are glorified TAFEs.
BEAUTIFUL
Hence, Vice Chancellor Shorten. It is a beautiful result, all around.
They deserve each other, based on the performance and qualities of each. But the real lesson of this week isn’t ultimately about Shorten. It is about our once great halls of learning. After all, they picked him!
At least there is one good outcome from the past week. Bill’s big announcement has shone a brighter light than normal on the academy.PC
Brilliant as usual, Paul. I suspect people who know Bill better than even you do will say you let him off lightly.
Did anyone ask Kathy Sherriff for a comment?
Shorten’s page on the ALP website still carries this line:
“After completing high school at Xavier College…”
I think most Australians reading ‘high school’ would have an image of a government school, probably in one of the less affluent neighbourhoods. Xavier College, for those who don’t know, is one of Melbourne’s most prestigious (and expensive) Catholic, ie non-government schools.
Quite a nice bit of real estate in a very affluent suburb. Plenty of room for the sporting activities.
If Shorten described Xavier as a ‘secondary school’, I’d have no issue. But ‘high school’ indicates, to me, an attempt to look like one of the proletariat.