Thursday, 16th February, 2006

One is from Haileybury, the private school that began educating the sons of gentlemen at Melbourne's Brighton in 1892. The other is from Xavier where the Jesuits educated the retired Howard Government Minister and current High Commissioner to London, Richard Alston. Both are about to face the party selection panels. And in a sign that the ideological divide between the two major political parties has narrowed, if not disappeared, this pair are seeking to represent Labor not Liberal.

Bill Shorten is the Xavier candidate and the current federal secretary of the Australian Workers Union - the country's largest. There is one thing you can certainly say about Mr Shorten, who is challenging sitting member Bob Sercombe for pre-selection in Maribyrnong: he is a great self promoter. If the internal Labor ballot was based on newspaper column inches he would be a shoo in to get to Canberra. Believe everything you read and Bill Shorten will be the next Labor Prime Minister.

But not all of the publicity is of the kind that will win Mr Shorten support within a future Labor Party caucus. A profile by Paul Daley in The Bulletin in May last year and another by Brian Toohey in The Financial Review last weekend made much of the excellent capitalist connections provided by his marriage to the daughter of former Liberal MP and multi-millionaire businessman Julian Beale. "What does this guy stand for?" The Bulletin quoted one internal Labor critic as demanding. "He tries to be all things to all people. He's married into a Liberal family, yet he attacks Liberals and the bosses by day; by night he's very close to the employers, to the likes of Pratt. To me he's all piss and wind. He is very confused about where he fits in."

The Pratt in question is the billionaire owner of Visy Industries Richard Pratt who told The Financial Review that although he had not provided Bill Shorten with any direct financial help for his campaign to become a politician he had assisted with other fund-raising activities including hosting a couple of dinners for him to raise money for the Labor Party at his Melbourne home Raheen.

For those in the Labor Party clinging to the ideas of class warfare, connections with the big end of town are a disqualification. Kim Beazley might not have suffered from his first wife being the daughter of Liberal Defence Minister Shane Paltridge and Bob Hawke combined friendships with many business leaders, including Sir Peter Abeles, and a successful leadership of the Party. Whether Mr Shorten has the ability to do the same has yet to be put to the test.

Haileybury's aspiring Labor member is the Victorian Secretary of the National Union of Workers Martin Pakula who went from being a scholarship boy to an economics and law degree at Monash University. Like Shorten, Pakula has worked his way up through the union ranks to the point where he now thinks he has the numbers to defeat Simon Crean for the seat of Hotham.