Bill Shorten

Unions for Refugees released this statement of solidarity with the stand taken by doctors and nurses at Lady Cilento Children's Hospital in Brisbane staff on February 12. * * * Unions for Refugees would like to congratulate the stand taken by doctors and nurses at the Lady Cilento Children's Hospital in Brisbane in support of 12-month-old Baby Asha. We encourage every unionist to extend their solidarity to them.

Faction Man: Bill Shorten's Path to Power David Marr Quarterly Essay No. 59 Black Inc., 2015 Even the usually perceptive journalist David Marr, in his latest political profile for Quarterly Essay, is defeated by the indistinct and bland Shorten who, in public opinion polls, trails behind “Someone Else” as preferred leader of the Labor Opposition.

Labor leader Bill Shorten’s October 5 “defence” of penalty rates so totally missed the mark that he was quickly on the receiving end of a backlash from his own party. Shorten said that the extra income from penalty rates could be the difference between parents being able to send their children to private schools or not. What makes this even more embarrassing for Labor is that this was not a slip up due to an off-the-cuff comment. It was part of a prepared media statement.

Somewhere wandering aimlessly through the hard streets of Sydney's North Shore, is a dishevelled man in a crumpled suit and a few days’ growth telling concerned passers-by, “I'm not crying, it's just the onion” as he bites into his umpteenth bulb since Monday night, eyes red and flakes of onion skin around his mouth and down his front.

New polls show that had an election been held in mid-August, Tony Abbott's federal Coalition would have suffered a 7.5% swing against it. The Prime Minister’s prevarication on marriage equality and the scandal over entitlements are fueling the dissent.

We thought marriage equality was in the bag after Prime Minister Tony Abbott hinted he’d support a cross-party bill and conscience vote in the Liberal Party room in June. We thought we were closer when opposition leader Bill Shorten put forward a marriage equality bill. Victories overseas — Ireland and the US — in May and June propelled momentum here. But both Abbott and Shorten are now backtracking.

From his late teens, Bill Shorten would tell anyone who listened that his ambition was to be Labor prime minister, following in the footsteps of his heroes Bob Hawke and Paul Keating. But first of all he had to find a faction because, in the Labor Party, it is the factions who have the power to select MPs, premiers and prime ministers.