What's left when Shorten loses the ABC & Fairfax support

[Andrew Bolt]

When the media Left gives up on a Labor leader you know he’s gone.

Laura Tingle, Financial Review:

Just how drawn-out the damage for Bill Shorten will be from the federal government’s royal commission into trade unions became clear on Thursday… The Opposition Leader did not cover himself in glory in the witness box, which he seemed to approach as a politician approaches a media interview. That is, don’t answer the question you were asked, answer the question you wished you had been asked.

In the witness box, it looked even more evasive than it does in front of a bank of cameras.

The bottom line of his evidence seemed to be that he knew nothing of the magnitude of amounts paid to his old union, the AWU, by employers for various services rendered, even if he was generally aware that there were agreements that money would be paid for services rendered, such as OH & S training…

To a general public unlikely to ever be across the details of the issues on which Mr Shorten is being questioned, the most devastating intervention during the Opposition Leader’s appearance must have been that of Commissioner Dyson Heydon on Thursday. Helpfully noting his concern that Mr Shorten’s “non-responsive” answers might ultimately affect his “credibility as a witness” was devastating for the Opposition Leader.

Tony Jones, ABC:

And - well he’s relied all his life, and you are right about this, on his charm, the gift of the gab, his ability to win over an audience and of course all of these things failed miserably in the context of the Royal commission where you’ve got the Royal commissioner publicly questioning his credibility as a witness…

And, you know, I mean, it had the benefit that no television interview will have: as many hours to conduct an interview and no chance of him sort of waffling on. He had to stick to the point and he wasn’t sticking to the point and this is the problem. But point they were trying to get to was this: what happened behind the scenes in those secret dealings with employers while simultaneously you were conducting negotiations for a workplace agreement for your workers? That was what they were trying to get to: what he said and that’s what he was trying to avoid saying. Pretty damning either way.

Aaron Patrick, a former Bill Shorten acquaintance, former member of Young Labor and author of Downfall: How the Labor Party Ripped Itself Apart:


Well it doesn’t look good, doesn’t look good for Bill Shorten and this is almost his worst nightmare…

I don’t see how you can legitimately claim that receiving money from an employer, particularly a kind of employer like this, a small labour hire firm, when you’re engaged with workplace negotiations with that company is not a conflict of interest. And the other circumstances of the arrangement are also pretty strange, which is it wasn’t declared and the person’s job wasn’t described accurately. So, no, I don’t buy that…

I think what’s happened today and yesterday in the Royal commission looks incredibly bad. Because you have a man here who’s wanted to be Prime Minister his entire life and came up through the trade union movement and presented himself as the modern face of trade unionism. And here we go, we’re digging through these - what look like dodgy deals. This is not the kind of - this is not modern trade unionism. This is not unions working at their best. And so I think - to be honest, I think the Labor Party and the Opposition’s in shock and they’re trying to work out what this means, what the reactions’s going to be and how average Australians are going to feel about this.

Graham Richardson:

Bill Shorten ... looked incredibly ill at ease at times and it is no wonder that he did. The two issues that caused him so much grief over the past two days were the undisclosed donation and his admissions about the Cleanevent enterprise bargaining agreement…

(H)is failure to declare a $40,000 in kind donation to his election campaign in 2007 ... fails ... “the pub test"… You can bet your bottom dollar, however, that any big donation has been procured directly by the candidate and not by an underling. This is where Shorten is struggling for credibility…

The Cleanevent deal is a problem as well. Shorten was so adamant this was good for the workforce and his words on Wednesday made his original statement look pretty sick. His reasoning that the amount the workers were to receive in wages and the wellbeing of their conditions was necessary to keep the company afloat and save their jobs may well have validity.

Had he relied on that defence in the first place and put some meat on its bones he would be in way better shape now...Shorten has been damaged — not mortally but severely.


UPDATE

From the conservative side of the commentariat, Paul Murray is in hot form about the latest smoking gun - Shorten striking a verbal side deal with bosses worth $480,000 to the union while ostensibly representing its members in a pay deal.

Quadrant:

In response to questions about monies assigned by employers to curious ends under the supervision of Bill Shorten’s AWU, the Opposition Leader has shared insights into ... the value of display advertising in union publications. Plus, he has hailed the lofty intentions of companies that pay for political campaign managers and see those contributions billed as something else…

Shorten insisted that all this was above board, not to mention a very good thing when employers make that special effort to foster close and cordial relations with their workers’ representatives…

Shorten might yet have taken some consolation in the knowledge that, had he been testifying on the other side of the Pacific, details of those employer payments would have been enough to put a US union official behind bars. The offence and punishment for payments like those ... is laid out in (29) U.S. Code § 186 – Restrictions on financial transactions:

It shall be unlawful for any employer or association of employers or any person who acts as a labor relations expert, adviser, or consultant to an employer or who acts in the interest of an employer to pay, lend, or deliver, or agree to pay, lend, or deliver, any money or other thing of value—

(1) to any representative of any of his employees who are employed in an industry affecting commerce; or

(2) to any labor organization, or any officer or employee thereof, which represents, seeks to represent, or would admit to membership, any of the employees of such employer who are employed in an industry affecting commerce …

The maximum penalty for a “willful” violation of section 302: five years and a $15,000 fine.

[Rorschach]

Well the ALP have pulled out all stops to label this an ABBOTT WITCHHUNT...

Shorten, today was proving to be the biggest hyprocrite we've seen on the political front in a very long time. Whilst defending his ego and railing against smear campaigns he spent all the time smearing Abbott and ignoring the fact that the RC was into unions not into Bill Shorten.

We'll be hearing day after day from now on how tawdry this has been and that shorten is a victim of misuse of power.

[Neferti]

Well the ALP have pulled out all stops to label this an ABBOTT WITCHHUNT...

Shorten, today was proving to be the biggest hyprocrite we've seen on the political front in a very long time. Whilst defending his ego and railing against smear campaigns he spent all the time smearing Abbott and ignoring the fact that the RC was into unions not into Bill Shorten.

We'll be hearing day after day from now on how tawdry this has been and that shorten is a victim of misuse of power.

Aussie thought he did a great job.

[Rorschach]

Well he would he's a political dickhead... make that just dickhead.