FACTION MAN

Response to Correspondence

David Marr

We were making good time through the mountains at the head of the Manning Valley when the radio cut to Malcolm Turnbull in Canberra. Reception was terrible. Through bursts of static Turnbull could be heard taking his leader apart. He was not making Julia Gillard’s mistake. Nothing was wrapped in euphemism. We sat in the car in Walcha fielding calls from the ABC and listening to the challenge unfold. And all I could think was: what about my Quarterly Essay?

I’ve had the ground shift under an essay before. My 2010 attempt to explain the strange ways of Kevin Rudd had been in the shops for only a few weeks when a message reached me in London to say the prime minister was gone. That essay was read as an explanation for Labor’s sudden decision to push Rudd out the window. Sales were strong. But the triumph of Turnbull in September meant one of the chief reasons to be curious about Bill Shorten vanished. I had written Faction Man with this question in mind: how could such a leader take the recently thrashed Labor Party back to power? In the opening pages of the essay I’d remarked that a “hard rule of the last half-century has been that only larger-than-life leaders bring Labor in from Opposition. Whitlam, Hawke and Rudd were such men. Shorten isn’t.” And I’d added: “But neither is Abbott.” Say what you like about the new prime minister, Turnbull is larger-than-life.

The trucks were backed up to the warehouse the afternoon of the leadership challenge to take 23,000 copies of Faction Man to the nation. We halted the trucks for a couple of days before deciding to press ahead: only a few paragraphs at the top and bottom of the 100-page text addressed the contest between Shorten and Abbott. The political landscape had changed, but not my subject: Faction Man is about Bill Shorten. In a press release I spruiked the essay as an extended examination of the strengths and weaknesses of the Labor leader as he faces a new and more formidable opponent. “He is not to be dismissed. A hidden man in so many ways, Bill Shorten remains a contender.”

I’m not so sure now of that verdict. Only a month has passed but Australian politics has been transformed. Abbott’s time in office seems so far away that children might be studying it in school. His devoted followers are dealing with their grief for the most part behind closed doors. Only Andrew Bolt is still mourning in the Murdoch tabloids. Voters have forgotten the man who didn’t make much impression as leader of the Opposition: wordy Malcolm, arrogant Malcolm and silly Malcolm. Instead they see a figure in whom they can invest their best hopes: a big, intelligent man free of Abbott’s un-Australian horror of the future. They told pollsters immediately they preferred Turnbull to Shorten as their prime minister, and overwhelmingly so. But for a while Australians remained sceptical of his government, even a government where a woman ran the armed forces. Too much had gone wrong, it seemed, to be too easily forgiven. While that lasted, Shorten was still a strong contender. But the mood shifted. By mid-October, he was standing on the wrong side of a crevasse opening up between Labor and the Coalition.

He began to pump out policies. The Year of Ideas he promised for 2015 began as the year was drawing to an end. He became more combative. His tone darkened. In all this he was at his most impressive since winning the leadership. But as he lifted his game, his shortcomings became more apparent. He’s tough and he’s a clever strategist and he’s used to winning. But against Turnbull he seems a little figure. That may not be fair. Turnbull’s frailties as well as his strengths have yet to be tested in office. Anything can happen between now and the uncertain date at which Australia will go to an election. But Bill Shorten, after twenty years in the unions and the factions and a mere seven in parliament, doesn’t seem to be built to take the weight of the nation on his shoulders.

David Marr
19 October 2015