The government attacked Shorten for being the former head of the Australian Workers’ Union, which was last year raided by the Australian Federal Police. They attacked him for doing an interview with GQ magazine, published this week, in which he wore an expensive-looking suit for the photographs, but in the interview, swore and called the Prime Minister “vacuous”. Loading According to Newspoll, which two weeks ago had the two-party preferred vote at 53-47 Labor’s way, Australians will vote in a Shorten-led ALP government next election. But if that happens, they will do it while harbouring great ambivalence about their putative Labor prime minister.

Shorten’s approval rating was a low 33 per cent in the last Newspoll, which is higher than it has previously been (Turnbull’s is 40 per cent). Last year, Ipsos conducted for Fairfax focus groups in Sydney and Melbourne, and some of the descriptions of the Opposition leader included “a snake”, “he stabs people in the back”, “sorry but I can’t stand him”, and the kicker: “inauthentic”. It is this last descriptor the government has homed in on, capitalising on a global collapse in public trust in government and politicians, which has left us craving any leader who seems to actually be who he says he is. The government is keen to portray Shorten as a rubber-man who stands for nothing, which is quite different to the Opposition’s portrayal of Turnbull as someone who does have principles, but is willing to sell them out in the pursuit of power. This week Financial Services Minister Kelly O’Dwyer ran a merry critique of Shorten in question time, saying he was an “eco-warrior in inner-city Melbourne” and a “miners’ mate” in the coal mines of Queensland.

She said he talked a big game on company tax cuts behind closed doors to corporate bosses but was a “GetUp groupie” in public. He was “Mister Feminist” in the pages of GQ magazine but when he was a union leader, he did little for women’s equality, O’Dwyer said. Kelly O'Dwyer led the attack on Bill Shorten in question time this week. Credit:Alex Ellinghausen This line of attack she borrowed from one of Labor’s own: the first female president of the Australian Council of Trade Unions (and later an MP), Jenny George. George wrote a scorching letter to The Australian this week saying Shorten’s former union, the AWU, “did not take the issue of women’s representation seriously in the decades of struggle to make the movement more representative of its leadership”.

George pointed out that Shorten’s own factional power base - the Victorian right - had only two female MPs out of 10. Shorten often cites the Labor policy to have a 50/50 gender split of MPs by 2025, but according to George, his faction “take[s] the prize for dragging the chain”. “This leader of the Opposition is completely two-faced and can’t be trusted,” O’Dwyer told Question Time, in this vein. “He has a problem with this thing called authenticity.” Julia Gillard was famously branded a liar, untrustworthy and traitorous for the way she deposed her predecessor Kevin Rudd.

Tony Abbott was made out to be dangerously ideological, radical and high-handed in his decision-making. Rudd was painted as chaotic and grandiose. Turnbull, according to the Opposition, is an arrogant blue-blood beholden to the right-wing of his party (although that line of attack has been blunted with the Nationals in disarray and Abbott, the self-appointed voice of the Liberals’ conservative wing, increasingly marginalising himself). Michaelia Cash’s bizarre outburst this week in Senate estimates, in which she seemed to imply there was something untoward going on between Shorten and his female staff, showed the government is willing to extend its attack on Shorten to deeply personal territory. Loading Replay Replay video Play video Play video

The episode was widely viewed as an unfortunate outburst by Cash, but it gave other ministers an opening to broaden the attack on the Opposition leader to his family situation. Immigration Minister Peter Dutton, speaking to 2GB’s Ray Hadley on Thursday, said: “People know there is a history of problems in Bill Shorten’s personal life, Tony Burke’s personal life, and to be lectured by the Labor party really sticks in the craw.” Dutton was referring to the circumstances of both men’s divorces from their first wives, and he got very cute when he went on to insist that he was “not the moral police” but “there is a past there, [Shorten] can answer to it”. When Hadley made the point that there is no question of Shorten having a “past” with any of his staff, as Cash had implied, Dutton said airily “those are questions for Mr Shorten”.

It was pretty grubby stuff - while Cash had withdrawn her comments, others in the government were happy to exploit the lasting innuendo they created. As O’Dwyer said this week, Shorten does have an authenticity problem. That is presumably the reason he agreed to do a humanising interview with GQ, where he talked about his family and whether or not he’s dabbled in recreational drugs. But this week it seemed government MPs were trying to daub him with some sort of women-problem as well. This is dangerous territory. Cash gave her colleagues a master-class in what over-reach looks like, but it remains to be seen whether they absorbed the lesson.