Union Boss Gets Golden Opportunity

by Glenn Milne - Sunday Mail (Brisbane)

When the Beaconsfield gold miners are finally hauled from their hell on Earth they will be instant and deserved heroes.

But there's been one other undoubted winner from this compelling saga – Australian Workers Union national secretary Bill Shorten.

While the baby-faced Shorten, 38, has been touted as a future Bob Hawke, the fact is that up to now his national profile has been pretty much non-existent. Beaconsfield has fixed that. Anyone with a television now knows who Bill Shorten is.

He has become the public face of the miners throughout their ordeal, talking on behalf of their families from the breakfast television shows at dawn through to the last news bulletins late at night. Day in and day out.

And he's done a first-rate job. In turn quietly reassuring, hopeful, realistic, stoic and ecstatic, he has expertly managed public expectations through the longest fortnight in Beaconsfield's history.

He has been the public face used by the town to communicate its emotional peaks and troughs to the rest of Australia.

While Shorten's motives have been pure – to represent his union members on the ground at a time of need – there is also no doubt that this mining disaster, turned miracle, has resulted in a huge personal upside for him as well.

You might remember that "Little Billy", as former Labor Leader Mark Latham dubbed him, was at the centre of the recent factional blood-letting in Victoria centred around Simon Crean's preselection.

The subsequent crisis that gripped the party and tore at Kim Beazley's leadership was largely of Shorten's making and a direct consequence of his ambitions.

The assault on Crean was part of a broader campaign by Shorten and his right-wing allies to secure preselection in a raft of federal seats.

Shorten made it, unseating frontbencher Bob Sercombe in the safe Labor seat of Maribyrnong. But most of his cronies did not.

Apart from Shorten's own success, it was pretty much a debacle that destabilised the Opposition for months. Not that it would have bothered the AWU chief. His goal is clear – he wants to be a future Labor Prime Minister.

Those ambitions are bolstered by not only his union credentials but his connections at the big end of town.

Shorten is married to the daughter of millionaire and former Liberal frontbencher Julian Beale. He's friends with trucking magnate Lindsay Fox.

And as well as representing the workers, he also boasts an MBA.

Beaconsfield has also delivered a deeper political bonus for Labor generally and Kim Beazley in particular out of this tragedy.

Shorten's thoughtful performance has reinforced the message that unions are about people – that they bind communities together at times of need and represent their interests in an often cold and brutal world.

The subtext of Beaconsfield at a time when John Howard's new industrial relations laws are causing increasing anxiety among voters is that unions can be a force for good.

The public face of that message is now Bill Shorten.