Close your eyes and imagine Prime Minister Bill Shorten, instead of Albo. PETER VAN ONSELEN describes how the Australia of 2024 would be VERY different – as Labor icon rides off into the sunset

Today former Labor opposition leader Bill Shorten will deliver his valedictory speech to Parliament ahead of his political career soon coming to an end.

He’s taking up the role of Vice Chancellor at University of Canberra.

As Shorten rides off into the political sunset, Anthony Albanese is planning for the looming election campaign, due before the end of May next year.

Shorten came very close to becoming prime minister, only falling short when he lost what has been dubbed the ‘unlosable election’ in 2019 against Scott Morrison.

Shorten led in every major opinion poll for two years counting down to that election, including polls conducted during the campaign itself.

Yet Labor not only lost the election, it went backwards. Undoubtedly a major factor behind Shorten’s defeat was his big target policy strategy.

Following Labor’s defeat, Albo took a very different approach. He crawled up into a tiny ball and went to the 2022 election with the smallest of small target agendas, having ruled out almost every policy script Shorten had previously campaigned on.

It begs the question: where would Australia be now if Shorten, not Albo, had become Labor PM after the Abbott, Turnbull and Morrison years of Coalition rule?

Would we be better or worse off than we are now?

For starters, Labor would have been in government before the pandemic struck, not immediately afterwards.

And it would have won with a mandate for change, as opposed to the pyrrhic victory Albo won, without an agenda or mandate in sight.

Shorten’s big target plans included sizeable increases in government spending, on health and education, coupled with major changes to how the government collects tax.

He pledged to introduce a new top marginal tax rate, limit negative gearing to newly built properties and also wanted to limit franking credits on shares, so that they couldn’t be used to receive a government credit when no income tax had been paid.

This final policy change created an enormous backlash against Labor amongst self-funded retirees.

Inevitably some of Shorten’s agenda would have been stalled or been amended in the Senate. 

But with the support of the Greens it’s possible much if it would have become law, especially in the context of winning an election mandate.

Economists are divided about what impact the policy changes would have had.

Some may have distorted markets, others had the potential to help with the cost of living and the housing crisis we see today.

The fact Shorten would have become PM less than a year before the pandemic hit may have limited the number of policies he would have implemented in a first term. 

Remember – this would be Prime Minister Shorten’s second term right now, had he won in 2019 and been re-elected three years later.

As an aside, Albo would have been his infrastructure minister, the same role he held during the Rudd and Gillard years.

Leadership rules likely would have prevented Albo stirring the pot even if he had wanted to.

It is unlikely Shorten would have dived headfirst into a Voice referendum campaign the way Albo did. 

He would have been far more pragmatic and cautious, avoiding the scenario we’ve seen in which Indigenous rights have been set back decades courtesy of trying to impose a Voice to Parliament when voters weren’t ready for it.

Shorten had pledged to hold a plebiscite in his first term to ascertain whether or not a majority of Australians wanted a republic before moving to debate models if they did.

Would the pandemic have put a line through that process? Maybe. 

In a Shorten-alternative universe, Treasurer Jim Chalmers would have been a far more junior minister, albeit it still in cabinet as finance minister. But he wouldn’t have been in Shorten’s inner sanctum.

Chris Bowen would be the Treasurer instead, and Tanya Plibersek would be Deputy PM, rather than on the outer, like she is now under Albo’s leadership.

She would likely be Shorten’s heir apparent, although Bowen and the NSW Labor right faction might have had something to say about that when the time came.

So would Australians be better or worse off had Shorten become PM? 

It is hard to imagine we would be worse off, given the collapse in living standards and real GDP per capita under Albo’s government.

That said, the Shorten agenda delivered in totality ahead of the pandemic might have been terrible timing, causing all manner of unintended consequences in the context of Covid.

Would Shorten have legislated major initiatives such as JobKeeper? His instincts would certainly have been to do so, but would the Coalition in opposition have been as supportive as Labor was when Josh Frydenberg and Morrison did so? I have my doubts.

It would have been interesting to see if Shorten could have improved his popularity with voters had he been elected into high office.

His critics have long argued that his personal unpopularity was as relevant to the 2019 defeat as the big target was.

Perhaps the pandemic would have helped him do so, as was the case with state Premiers such as Mark McGowan in Western Australia.

The 2019 election was a sliding doors moment for Shorten and Albo – and by extension the nation too.