‘Bring people in’: Bill Shorten’s playbook for Sussan Ley

Former Labor leader Bill Shorten has urged Opposition Leader Sussan Ley to bring her internal rivals back into the fold as she deals with criticism from Andrew Hastie, Jacinta Nampijinpa Price and Jane Hume, drawing on his experience from nearly toppling Malcolm Turnbull after just one term.

Ley continued to draw criticism from her detractors after she suggested US ambassador Kevin Rudd be booted from Washington due to a flare-up with President Donald Trump, with Hastie the latest to undermine his leader’s call.

The WA MP said on 2GB radio on Thursday that Rudd had “got the job done” as Ley softened her rhetoric to criticise Rudd without calling for his sacking, a day after senator Jane Hume labelled the upbraiding of Rudd as “a little churlish”.

Shorten said on this masthead’s Inside Politics podcast that “sometimes an opposition leader will feel the need to say something, to say anything.

“But you don’t have to be out there in the media every day and never … fight on your opponent’s ground when your opponent’s kicking with the breeze”.

After Ley lost frontbenchers Price and Hastie, Shorten said it was crucial a new opposition leader “bring people in” and have “all the different views sitting at the shadow cabinet table”.

“Before you can engage the electorate, you’ve got to demonstrate your team’s united,” he said, highlighting the challenge for Ley as she tries to spotlight economic policy principles with her party fracturing. Shorten said the opposition was “as lost as Burke and Wills” on climate change and should drop its philosophical opposition to quotas for female candidates.

Now the vice-chancellor of the University of Canberra, Shorten heaped praise on Rudd and Prime Minister Anthony Albanese for a successful White House visit.

Shorten, a fierce leadership rival of Albanese for years before leaving politics last year, said the prime minister was growing in the job. However, the former NDIS minister noted that he had won internal arguments on contentious issues inside Labor, such as boat turn-backs and the US alliance, which he suggested had been a foundation of this government’s success.

Speaking in Britain last month as debate in the UK raged about the anti-immigrant far-right, Albanese said Labor had “maintained a strong control of our borders [and] we have turned back boats” to preserve an “orderly” migration program. Albanese and his Left faction allies fought against Shorten in 2015 when the then-opposition leader adopted the Coalition’s turn back policy.

Albanese has since accepted the policy.

Shorten said: “There’s no question that I’ve always supported the American alliance, and indeed, I supported boat turnbacks, and not everyone in the party has.”

“I might not have the job, but it would seem that some of the positions I took 10 years ago seem to be the right call.”

Despite the veiled jab at Albanese’s past as a Left faction warrior, Shorten praised the government for the White House visit that included deals on critical minerals, defence procurement, superannuation investment and a clear personal rapport between the leaders.

“I thought that was Australian diplomacy at its most professional.”

“The government would have war-gamed this meeting within an inch of its life,” he said, praising Rudd, who Shorten helped depose in favour of Julia Gillard, for his energetic style.

Albanese’s successful trip shut down critics who had questioned his ability to keep the US alliance on track.

“I think he is stepping up in the job and I think there’d be conservatives who would say that, too,” Shorten said.

On Trump’s backing of AUKUS, Shorten said: “What I thought we saw on display was … the more reassuring, internationalist, more classical Republican play that they’ve got a role in the world.”

“The Americans were giving at their most senior level a reassurance that AUKUS is part of this MAGA administration.”

“This deal is going to be scrutinised for the next 20 years.”

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