Bill Shorten has announced he is going to retire to become Vice Chancellor of the University of Canberra.
Bill Shorten was the head of the AWU before entering parliament. He was one of the university educated union officials. for those interested he got a Arts and law degree and then later a MBA.
He first came to prominence when he was the public face of the workers down in Tasmania when two miners were almost buried beneath the surface.
He got to parliament and rose to cabinet level pretty quickly introducing the NDIS to Australia. He switched sides twice in leadership. Firstly turfing out Rudd and then bringing him back.
Perhaps because of this he immediately on assuming being the Leader of the Opposition was to bring a party disunited together again. This was understandable given they lost in a landslide. In this he succeeded. Indeed he was so successful in this and at combatting Tony Abbott as PM he was in line to win in a landslide (although to be fair Tony Abbott's total ineptness helped). This led the Liberals to get rid of Abbott.
Turnbull then won a close election which all the polls showed would be the case although few actually believed them. Turnbull blamed mediscare for the result although the polls showed it made very little impact. Shorten was slow to understand how to combat Turnbull.
In the nest campaign Shorten lost the unlosable election however because of massive polling failures we still do not know why.
Since being in government again Shorten has been perhaps the most impressive minister.
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