Meet the workers friend. The fake, phony, fraud and arriviste, the slithering reptile and all round parvenu, Bill Shorten.
Turnbull is right. Shorten is a social climbing sycophant. And what’s not mentioned here is that when his first wife Debbie Beale of Liberal blue blood fame (daughter of former Liberal MP Julian Beale) and goddaughter of Dick Pratt, had outlived her usefulness, he trawled the social horizon for the next Mrs Shorten, the Governor General Quentin Bryce’s daughter, Chloe.
At the bottom I’ve also pasted some of the readers comments.
People are starting to see through this bloke.the question is why didn’t Turnbull go in hard before the last election? If he had, he may not now be dealing with a one seat majority.
A riveting read…
“…Privately, Shorten has always been keen to say the Pratt connection was because of Beale. He is right, to an extent. Those close to Shorten say he conveyed the impression, indeed encouraged the idea, that Pratt was Beale’s godfather. The late Pratt and his widow, Jeannie, were especially close friends of Beale’s parents, former Liberal MP Julian Beale and wife Felicity. Pratt adored Deborah, having doted on her when she was a child.
Shorten was brought into the family fold when he and Beale married after a whirlwind romance. Their engagement party was held at Pratt’s mansion, Raheen. It was a lavish event with singers Vika and Linda Bull and a stand-up comedian. Shorten sold his half-share in a beach house he’d owned with former partner Nicola Roxon to help pay for the engagement ring.
The marriage to Beale, say Shorten insiders, offered much more to a man who relished mixing with the rich and powerful. The bright, likeable Beale helped open doors. Whether by accident or design, her links to the Melbourne establishment assisted with introductions for Shorten to captains of industry.
It was a positive for his early career as he tried to model himself on Bob Hawke, pitching himself as a moderate union leader who shunned class warfare.
While secretary of the AWU’s Victorian branch, before taking on the union’s national secretary position as well to generate a national profile, Shorten was introduced to transport magnate Lindsay Fox by then ACTU secretary Bill Kelty, a Fox mate. Shorten had few members in transport but Fox liked to size up union up-and-comers.
Shorten built buddy relations with members of the rich Smorgon steel family, an industry where he did have members.
He also got to know retail giant Solomon Lew. The Lew relationship was based in large part on their shared pro-Israel stance. As leader of the right-wing AWU in Victoria, Shorten devoted much time to battling the Left over Israel. He mixed easily with Lew and other Australian Jewish businessmen. It was good politics, too, for Shorten, to win the support of Melbourne’s Jewish business community.
In his diaries, Mark Latham highlighted what he regarded as Shorten’s duplicity on free trade with the US from a conversation they had when Latham was Labor leader and Shorten led the AWU.
“Little Billy was in my ear about the FTA, telling me the party has to support it. I said I thought both he and his union were against it, to which he responded: ‘That’s just for the members. We need to say that sort of thing when they reckon their jobs are under threat.’ ”
FULL COLUMN BELOW Bill Shorten: High Flying Fake Or The Workers Friend
Bill Shorten first became a household name in 2006, surfing a wave of favourable publicity when the news broke that two men had survived the dreadful Beaconsfield mine disaster.
It was a brief burst of fame, still more than a year before Shorten resigned as head of the Australian Workers Union to enter parliament and have a shot at realising his dream of becoming prime minister one day.
Beaconsfield nonetheless remains the classic example of what Malcolm Turnbull was talking about this week in targeting Shorten as a “hypocrite” for his cosy links to Melbourne billionaires.
Dick Pratt, the super-wealthy cardboard industry king, was Shorten’s enabler on that occasion. It was a Sunday night and all hope of finding survivors of the mine collapse was lost. Shorten was stranded at home in Melbourne when the stunning news came through — he’d just returned from the mine site and there were no domestic flights back to Tasmania until the next day.
Shorten’s first thought? Naturally, call Pratt and ask to borrow his private jet parked at Essendon airport. In quick time, Shorten was back in Beaconsfield.
With the mine’s management falling silent, he happily filled the void for an information-starved national media. From start to finish, he relayed details of the rescue operation and the condition of the men trapped beneath the earth.
It was a mark of Shorten’s closeness to one of Australia’s richest men that just a phone call to Pratt could secure his private jet free of charge. But that was far from the first, or last, time that Shorten would fly Air Pratt.
He and his then wife, Deborah Beale, flew to the US on board Pratt’s jet for family holidays at the packaging magnate’s New York apartment. One of Shorten’s more exotic adventures aboard Air Pratt was a trip to Cuba.
Defenders from Shorten’s circle claim that Turnbull’s brutal spray in parliament this week — unusual in its intensity, especially after the Liberal PM declined to lay a glove on him during last year’s election campaign — was a cheap tit-for-tat. The multi-millionaire PM’s patience was wearing thin at Shorten’s jibe, borrowed ironically from Tony Abbott’s former chief of staff Peta Credlin, that Turnbull was “Mr Harbourside Mansion”.
Privately, Shorten has always been keen to say the Pratt connection was because of Beale. He is right, to an extent. Those close to Shorten say he conveyed the impression, indeed encouraged the idea, that Pratt was Beale’s godfather. The late Pratt and his widow, Jeannie, were especially close friends of Beale’s parents, former Liberal MP Julian Beale and wife Felicity. Pratt adored Deborah, having doted on her when she was a child.
Shorten was brought into the family fold when he and Beale married after a whirlwind romance. Their engagement party was held at Pratt’s mansion, Raheen. It was a lavish event with singers Vika and Linda Bull and a stand-up comedian. Shorten sold his half-share in a beach house he’d owned with former partner Nicola Roxon to help pay for the engagement ring.
The marriage to Beale, say Shorten insiders, offered much more to a man who relished mixing with the rich and powerful. The bright, likeable Beale helped open doors. Whether by accident or design, her links to the Melbourne establishment assisted with introductions for Shorten to captains of industry.
It was a positive for his early career as he tried to model himself on Bob Hawke, pitching himself as a moderate union leader who shunned class warfare.
Corporate chiefs became curious, wanting to meet the man who, according to rumours that Shorten encouraged, was destined to be Labor’s leader. While secretary of the AWU’s Victorian branch, before taking on the union’s national secretary position as well to generate a national profile, Shorten was introduced to transport magnate Lindsay Fox by then ACTU secretary Bill Kelty, a Fox mate. Shorten had few members in transport but Fox liked to size up union up-and-comers.
Shorten built buddy relations with members of the rich Smorgon steel family, an industry where he did have members.
He also got to know retail giant Solomon Lew. The Lew relationship was based in large part on their shared pro-Israel stance. As leader of the right-wing AWU in Victoria, Shorten devoted much time to battling the Left over Israel. He mixed easily with Lew and other Australian Jewish businessmen. It was good politics, too, for Shorten, to win the support of Melbourne’s Jewish business community.
One Shorten acolyte put it this way: “Bill’s gregarious. He could just as easily be in Toorak, intoxicated by the company of rich people, and then travel to the western suburbs for a union barbecue with chemical workers.”
Turnbull got at least one thing wrong this week when he called Shorten, among many harsh things, a fake and sycophant for “tucking his knees under the tables of billionaires’’ during his past union career. The Liberal PM also claimed “everyone knows that”. Voters now have an inkling, thanks to Turnbull, that it is rich indeed for Shorten to needle him about his wealth. But it’s doubtful that voters yet know much more than a broad outline of Shorten’s alleged hypocrisy.
That is why, as Peter Dutton has signalled, the Turnbull assault on Shorten’s character is most likely only the start: political messages require repetition and reinforcement.
Inside Labor, Shorten’s blueblood past has been a concern for some time: he is often criticised for acting like Labor royalty. During the recent election campaign, party funds were allegedly used to help pay for child-minding and clothes worn by Shorten’s wife, Chloe Bryce, daughter of the former governor-general.
Election-night festivities had two classes of guests: red wrist bands for downstairs and silver ones for elite guests upstairs.
One insider said: “An element of criticism of Bill is unfair, because he met people through his first wife. At the same time, he has since decided to go to the Left publicly and launch anti-market attacks that contradict his past positions.
“Turnbull was right to say he’s been a sycophant to the wealthy, but Bill has left himself wide open.
“He doesn’t begrudge people who’ve made wealth, so why not say that? He’s never been a working-class hero, so why create a fake persona now? The problem is (he) always takes the low road, the easy way. He’s the one who usually lets himself down.”
What Shorten really thinks was given an airing six years ago in the worldwide release by WikiLeaks of US cables that proved embarrassing to many public figures.
According to a leaked 2009 cable, when Shorten was a parliamentary secretary for Kevin Rudd, the then US consul-general in Melbourne heard Shorten be “highly critical of current Australian union leadership”. He talked up his pro-business credentials, his MBA from Melbourne University and his closeness to the late Pratt.
Turnbull this week seized on Shorten’s alleged duplicity by noting his firm opposition to company tax cuts because “Malcolm is helping his rich mates”. This position is starkly at odds with Shorten running the case in past times for reducing corporate tax.
In his diaries, Mark Latham highlighted what he regarded as Shorten’s duplicity on free trade with the US from a conversation they had when Latham was Labor leader and Shorten led the AWU.
“Little Billy was in my ear about the FTA, telling me the party has to support it. I said I thought both he and his union were against it, to which he responded: ‘That’s just for the members. We need to say that sort of thing when they reckon their jobs are under threat.’ ”
The Pratt association tops political conversation about Shorten’s rich links because there is much available information highlighting dual allegiances. There is, however, much other negative Shorten material that Turnbull has shown an inclination to exploit. One is Shorten’s loyalty, to the puzzlement of many, to Kimberley Kitching, recommended for possible criminal charges but promoted by Shorten to the Senate, and to her husband, Andrew Landeryou, a former bankrupt who seems to court trouble.
The other is the Coalition’s increasing references to companies such as Cleanevent from Shorten’s tenure at the AWU’s Victorian branch: Shorten was happy to cut a wage deal for low-paid Cleanevent workers that slashed their penalty rates, while the company contributed funds to his union, including the payment of members’ dues.
When Shorten’s branch negotiated a three-year deal for members on Melbourne’s East Link freeway project for Thiess-John Holland, the construction consortium agreed to a union-requested payment of $300,000 that went straight into AWU coffers. Shorten escaped criticism over this and other arrangements involving payments to his union in the 2015 findings of the royal commission into union corruption.
But Turnbull and his frontbench have started gnawing at commission evidence that does not show Shorten in a favourable light. It was nasty for Turnbull to claim Shorten was unfit to be prime minister. A worse slur was to accuse him, a man meant to put workers’ interests first, of “selling out”.
http://www.theaustralian.com.au/national-affairs/bill-shorten-highflying-fake-or-workers-champion/news-story/7839da260f7b5e39a0b87f55dac50259
Bill is fake. His ‘working capital’ as he slithered and knifed his way to the top, were the workers whom he betrayed.
You can see his insincerity written all over his face: the stupid, ‘oppose everything’ policies that are designed to attract his decreasing ‘flock’ of workers, to which, I notice, he has recently added the middle class.
If you want to see a ruling class whose exit from the stage of world history is well overdue, you only have to look at Bill, his union mates and the vacuous rantings of the Labor front bench. It is they who have lived off the backs of the working class, and Bill is their leader because he has done more of it than anyone else..
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Jeff
Jeff19 MINUTES AGO
Perhaps the Victorian Police should re-open a certain investigation into BS.
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Steven
Steven19 MINUTES AGO
Shorten’s lurch to the left is to appease the Greens. The ALP cannot win government without them. The current bunch of no-hopers would sell the country down the river to gain power. Just as Shorten sold out on his union members.
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Raymond
Raymond27 MINUTES AGO
There are people who used to vote for Labor (the workers’ party) and who would never dream of voting Liberal (the big business party). But the Shorten Labor party’s dishonest dealings with the CFMEU are exposed and Labor is obsessed with out-greening the asinine Green Party on climate and homosexual issues, Who can the disillusioned ex-Labor supporter vote for now?
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Shiralee
Shiralee27 MINUTES AGO
Am I being too cynical when I suspect that his marriage to Deborah Beale was secretly one of convenience to pave the way for little Billy’s road to power? His subsequent second marriage certainly has connections to the elite he obviously craves to belong.
Sadly I felt his involvement with the Beaconsville disaster was all to do with increasing his media profile. That Turnbull has finally shone the spotlight on this vainglorious hypocrite is a relief.
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Bruce
Bruce28 MINUTES AGO
When he married Deborah a speaker at the Wedding said that Bill will be a future PM. The Author has not said his next wife was the GG’s daughter?
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Alan
Alan30 MINUTES AGO
I reckon Sam Dastyari is more genuine than Bill Shorten (and probably more honest).
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Glenton
Glenton33 MINUTES AGO
Shorten the moth everything he does is for himself. Workers and the country are only a means to an end. Trashing them to reach his goal as PM is not a problem to him.
He is still a Union bully who is owned lock stock and barrel by the CFMEU, AWU and the rest. Last election the unions with Getup spent $36million trying to Shorten elected PM. Says it all.
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Lynda
Lynda34 MINUTES AGO
FAKE! Definitely fake!
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Chris
Chris38 MINUTES AGO
Based on the polls, most people do not care too much for Shorten already. When the full story of his duplicity and hypocrisy are exposed, then they will like him even less. No surprise that Albo is preferred by Labour party members – they already know what sort of person Shorten is.
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andrew
andrew38 MINUTES AGO
FAKE
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John
John43 MINUTES AGO
I’m going with “Fake”. From the time he popped up on the scene of the accident at Beaconsfield, BS gave the strongest impression he was just going to make mileage out of the event for himself.
Whenever Bill says “I’ve got your back”, just make sure there’s not a knife in his hand…
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Robert
Robert44 MINUTES AGO
There is a good reason why Malcolm Turnbull has held off attacking Shorten until now. He and Daniel Andrews were assets to the liberals in the last election.
Imagine if Albo had been ALP leader
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Ross
Ross44 MINUTES AGO
Just another reason why Abbott should be in the PM seat, he’s the only one who can maintain Shifty-Shorten’s criminality and poor character in the limelight; Turnbull’s crack it is like a flash in a pan moment!
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Terryd
Terryd44 MINUTES AGO
A complete fake just like virtually all of the Labor leaders and Parliamentarians. Do yourself a favour and have a look at their bios, Chardonnay Socialists armed with a university degree or two, straight out of uni. into either the Union head office (no factory floors for this lot), to the public service or as an advisor to a politician. In other words, no affinity with the worker, out for themselves to fashion a career in politics and worst of all, no inkling of how the productive sectors of an economy work.
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Andrew
Andrew47 MINUTES AGO
Latham’s example of Shorten’s duplicity says it all. Completely untrustworthy. Looking forward to Turnbull’s destruction of him.
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Martin
Martin48 MINUTES AGO
If Shorten was a personal friend, would you go to him for help, – I don’t think so.
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Glenton
Glenton30 MINUTES AGO
@Martin Guess you need to check with Rudd and Gillard. All depends on how many knifes Shorten has left.