Faction Man

Bill Shorten's Pursuit of Power

David Marr

• Publisher: Black Inc.
• Year: 2016
• Print ISBN: 9781863958196
• eBook ISBN: 9781925203929
• Topic: Politics & International Relations
• Subtopic: Political Biographies
• Index: Politics & International Relations

In Faction Man, David Marr traces the career of a Labor warrior. In dazzling style, he shows how this brilliant recruiter and formidable campaigner mastered first the unions and then the party in pursuit of an ambition he set himself in childhood: to be Prime Minister of Australia.Bill Shorten is now a contender. But where do his loyalties lie? Is he a defender of Labor values in today's Australia, or is he a shape-shifter, driven entirely by politics? And does this product of the old world of union intrigue have what it takes to defeat Malcolm Turnbull and lead the country?Marr reveals a man we hardly know: the Napoleon of the factions, a virtuoso with numbers and a strategist of skill who Labor has backed to return the party to power.'David Marr is as brilliant a biographer and journalist as this country has produced' —Peter Craven, Spectator

Sources

Bill Shorten gave me time and documents, for which I am most grateful. Colleagues from his many lives – schoolboy to leader of the Opposition – helped me on and off the record to grasp the shape of his complicated life.

But this essay would not have been possible without the labour over many years of my colleagues, particularly in the Melbourne press, who tracked the wild factional plays that are at the heart of Shorten’s career. Of that big team, I want to thank particularly Jason Koutsoukis, Ewin Hannan, Brad Norington and the splendid Michael Bachelard. At the end of my desk is a wall of books about the Rudd–Gillard era. Over the last months I have regularly given thanks for the memoirs of Gillard, Combet and Rob Oakeshott; the diaries of Bob Carr; Paul Kelly’s Triumph and Demise, Aaron Patrick’s Downfall and Barrie Cassidy’s The Party Thieves.

Russell Marks, lawyer and policy advisor, recruited his La Trobe colleague Dominic Kelly, doctoral candidate and political commentator, to a two-man research team of great skill and endless energy. They were my seeing-eye dogs in the dark world of Victorian politics.

And this is something I’ve never done before: thank Chris Feik, my infinitely demanding editor at Black Inc., for dragging another Quarterly Essay out of me.

Transcripts for the Royal Commission into Trade Union Governance and Corruption can be accessed at www.tradeunionroyalcommission.gov.au/Hearings/Documents/Transcripts/2015/Transcript-8-July-2015.pdf (8 July) and www.tradeunionroyalcommission.gov.au/Hearings/Documents/Transcripts/2015/Transcript-9-July-2015.pdf (9 July).

1	“I’m stuffed”: Saturday Paper, 12 December 2015, p. 15.
4	“Bill is different”: Bill Kelty to me, 22 July 2015.
8	“I have suggested”: William Shorten, Royal Commission on the Activities of the Federated Ship Painters and Dockers Union, 3 February 1981, p. 754.
8–10	“Look it up”, “Because it’s quicker”, “There was politics” and “The breadth of”: Shorten’s eulogy for his mother, 15 April 2014, text supplied by Shorten.
10	“This, from the beginning”: Letter from Fr Pedro Arrupe SJ, 20 May 1978, Xaverian (Xavier College), December 1978, p. 5.
11	“Don’t let your heads be turned”: Shorten’s eulogy, 15 April 2014.
11	“outstanding contribution” and “William proved”: Xaverian, 1983, pp. 30 & 39.
12	“He was always”: Chris Gleeson to me, 23 June 2015.
12	“We were all very”: John Roskam to me, 24 June 2015.
12	“The house meetings”: Xaverian, 1984, p. 28.
13	“I’ve always been” and all other quotations from Des King: To me, 6 July 2015.
13	“He is breaking”: Race Mathews to me, 25 June 2015.
14	“I was a”: “Insight”, Age, 24 September 2009, p. 1.
14	“I chose to”: Shorten to me, 16 July 2015.
14	“I wasn’t really”: Shorten to me, 30 July 2015.
14–15	“Our spies also”: Lot’s Wife, 7 September 1985, p. 15.
15	“In reply to”: Lot’s Wife, vol. 25, no. 8, p. 15.
16	“The Socialist Left”: Sunday Age, 28 May 2006, p. 13.
16	“Network had one”: Aaron Patrick, Downfall: How the Labor Party Ripped Itself Apart, ABC Books, 2013, p. 13.
16	“Bill was just”: Patrick to me, 21 July 2015.
17	“Get all your mates” and “It was about”: Peter Cowling to me, 24 June 2015.
18	“A sport where”: Sunday Age, 28 May 2006, p. 13.
18–19	“In your last”: Lot’s Wife, 28 July 1986, p. 27.
19	“a festival of” and “spiteful screaming matches”: Lot’s Wife, 23 June 1986, p. 7.
20	“I know they say”: Shorten to me, 30 July 2015.
20	“legitimate market research”: Lot’s Wife, 15 June 1987, p. 3.
20–1	“We lobbied”, “That was somthing” and “No. No.”: Shorten to me, 30 July 2015...

Table of contents

• Cover Page
• Titel Page
• Copyright
• Contents
• The Numbers: 14 September 2015
• Give Me the Child: 1967 to 1994
• In the Headlights: 8–9 July 2015
• Billy the King: 1994 to 2006
• Let It Zing: 2014 to . . .
• Brutal Maths: 2000 to 2006
• Love Me Do: 11 June 2015
• Apprentice: 2006 to 2010
• Minister: 2010 to 2013
• Staying Put: 31 August 2015
• Faceless Man: 2013 to 2015
• The Rise of Modern Man: 2016
• Sources
• Back Cover