BILL SHORTEN & I

READING DAVID MARR'S QUARTERLY ESSAY ABOUT LABOR LEADER
BILL SHORTEN - FACTION MAN 

I spent the late teenage years in suburban Melbourne transitioning from Pom to Australian citizen, which is why I liked reading about the Labor Leader Bill Shorten's formative years.

I WANT TO LIKE HIM. David Marr says Shorten scored Brownie Points for his rapport and recruitment of young people at Monash University. 
The energy and idealism of youth, yes! I was a Pied Piper too - at school was voted Student Rep and organiser for live bands and discos!
While Bill was recruiting a new generation of ALP members and attracting Prominent and Influential Party figures to his fundraising events, I was a new Australian oblivious to all which wasn't in front of me...I booked La Femme to play Huntingdale High in 1980 after seeing them perform in Melbourne's thriving new wave/ pub /music scene(no ID then).

ACTU President Bob Hawke wanted to be my man too, as I was turning 18 and could vote for the first time.

1982 was a defining year - suffering from undiagnosed Depression, I left an office job which I thought was killing my soul. 
My tears of despair at hearing it would take 6 weeks to receive the dole, created compassion in the Centrelink officer and I kept a roof over my head.

I heard the call to action by Bob Hawke. His message was hopefull, but I was turned away as I hadn't registered to vote! Nobody had told me, but I still had some benefit from a Labor Government in the Commonwealth Employment Scheme.

THE BUZZ WORD OF THE 1980'S - NETWORK! 

On the tight-rope of a fringe existence in St.Kilda I was attracted to a theatre poster which led me into helping form a Youth Arts component of Fringe Network, 
a resource for artists.

IDENITITY POLITICS AS MELOURNE FRINGE

Based in Brunswick St. Fitzroy the C.E.P. provided 6 month wages, and sent off to learn how to touch-type!

Brunswick St Fitzroy

I was flying high as Fringe Network Secretary/Board Director/Arts administrator and Festival Programmer and Performance Poet!


Shorten created NETWORK too, a youth faction of Young Labor at Monash. 

ALL THAT GLITTERS IN THE IRISH DNA from the Goldfields of Ballarat to the Coal Mines of Ipswich.
I met my husband at the first Melbourne Fringe Festival of 1983 and we became Partners in Puppetry. link here:

When Premier Joh and his cronies had left main stage in Queensland and Wayne Goss was the Labor man in charge we headed North for health and economic prospects. We felt at home in working-class Ipswich, but moved out into the Brisbane Valley because Roy wanted to plant trees.

THEN, Pauline Hanson scared us....We had to do our bit to fight Racism and Right wing haranguing by force of Reason and Humanism.

Something which was a revelation was ALP/DLP history. Many local branch ALP members were Roman Catholics like Bill Shorten. 
I went to Frank Hardy's Power without Glory for a literary summary of those post-war clashing of ideologies!

Bill's often going on about talking up Labor values for working people/families, but I was always puzzled by the Party not winning the participation of Unemployed workers.

Treasurer Wayne Swann ruled out the unemployed getting an extra $50.00 per week and Bill doesn't see that social democracy means building the party with victims of the worst of Capitalism.


Journalist David Marr opens his essay with the most important word in Politics, The Numbers.

I wouldn't read Machievelli's The Prince until Tory Tony Abbott became Prime Minister so now as I read the Quarterly Essay I wonder if  Leader of the Opposition Shorten has a knot of guilt about anything, and I guess that's what the Royal Commission into Trade Unions has been trying to find out with $80million of tax-payers money for Tory Tony's dirty digging.

How corrupted does an M.P's Conscience get?

If the means justify the ends, the silence by The Left and Right of the ALP on human rights violations towards asyslum seekers is abhorrent.
 Australia's Immigration "Border Force" actions and contracted Security operators off-shore detention behaviour is something they can live with for the pay packet, power and privileges, from Superannuation to gifting each other thousands of dollars for each others campaigns.
 Silence is sinister not golden.

Right Faction Labor man Bill Shorten with a Docklands political pedigree has been given the schooling and entre to the business networks via Unions and marriage.

 Becoming a Friend of Israel is something I didn't learn about in the elective of HSC Politics. but I have learned about it via observations with my local MP Shayne Neumann when he was part of a debate about ALP policy on Palestine.

What does it take to be a Politician? And to what end do you use the Power for?
Shayne Neumann MP for Blair and Bill Shorten MP in Ipswich Queensland during a Flood Insurance Inquiry.

Kurt Vonnegut  author of God Bless You, Mr. Rosewater (aka Pearls Before Swine), wasn't on my reading list either. My husband has read widely and offered this relevant to our understanding.

“The what?”

The Money River, where the wealth of the nation flows. We were born on the banks of it. We can slurp from that mighty river to our hearts’ content. And we even take slurping lessons, so we can slurp more efficiently.

“Slurping lessons?”

From lawyers! From tax consultants! We’re born close enough to the river to drown ourselves and the next ten generations in wealth, simply using dippers and buckets. But we still hire the experts to teach us the use of aqueducts, dams, reservoirs, siphons, bucket brigades, and the Archimedes’ screw. And our teachers in turn become rich, and their children become buyers of lessons in slurping.

“It’s still possible for an American to make a fortune on his own.”

Sure—provided somebody tells him when he’s young enough that there is a Money River, that there’s nothing fair about it, that he had damn well better forget about hard work and the merit system and honesty and all that crap, and get to where the river is. ‘Go where the rich and powerful are,’ I’d tell him, ‘and learn their ways. They can be flattered and they can be scared. Please them enormously or scare them enormously, and one moonless night they will put their fingers to their lips, warning you not to make a sound. And they will lead you through the dark to the widest, deepest river of wealth ever known to man. You’ll be shown your place on the riverbank, and handed a bucket all your own. Slurp as much as you want, but try to keep the racket of your slurping down. A poor man might hear.

Another thing Bill Shorten and I have is visiting Victorian State MP for Oakleigh, Race Matthews.
I had been to his office as a 17 year old homeless student in fear I wouldn't be able to stay at school. He put me in touch with a local youth worker and not long after I had a room in a house which supported my Year 12 study.
I would have been a good candidate for being a mere member of the ALP, even to hand me a pamphlet.
Bill Shorten showed more promise. He had formed a 

 In the school holidays I worked with Mum and the middle-aged, menopausal Greek women clocking on already in a sweat! 
Didn't see any Union organisers promising better working conditions in the heat of the metal sheds around Clayton.

Marr shows what a men's club Shorten has risen from.