If a week is a long time in politics, July, when Bill Shorten was obliged to attend the trade union royal commission, seems so long ago that it predates the invention of the helicopter.

My colleague, Andrew Bolt, helpfully collated the commentariat’s collective response after the opposition leader’s appearance: Tony Jones believed Shorten had “failed miserably”. Graham Richardson claimed he couldn’t pass “the pub test”. Aaron Patrick said it “didn’t look good”. Laura Tingle reported that “Shorten’s ‘non-responsive’ answers might ultimately affect his ‘credibility as a witness’.” She described this criticism as “devastating” because it had come directly from the commissioner, Dyson Heydon. Bolt himself described Shorten as “toast”.



Now it’s Heydon who’s “toast”. If Shorten appeared to conduct his time at the commission with an “Am I bothered?” air, he sure seemed right to have done so; the trade union movement knows its enemies better than anyone else and declared the event a Tory stitch-up from its inception.

Shorten is still leading the Labor party in the wake of this latest credibility disaster for the Coalition, after last week’s credibility disaster (blocking a free vote on marriage equality) and the preceding week’s credibility disaster (chopper-friendly Bronwyn Bishop). He’s now sitting atop polls from both Ipsos and Morgan that have the Coalition facing a loss of between 36 and 44 seats.

Is it time for a rethink? In Guardian Australia, First Dog On the Moon won’t refer to “Bent Snorkel” by his real name; I have previously called Shorten a “tired accountant trying to liven up a stock report”; and Jeff Sparrow was one of the July chorus, describing him as “an uninspiring and slightly shifty bureaucrat”.

But Labor is now leading 54%-46%, on a two-party-preferred basis, with a leader who has gone in one month from “toast” to an approval rating of 39%. Does that seem low? It makes him the second most popular politician in the country after Malcolm Turnbull at 41%, and a clear four points ahead of Abbott.

An opposition doesn’t return to a position of strength like this from the government’s mistakes alone. Does anyone want to admit that that not only is Bill Shorten likely to lead Labor to victory at the next election, but that he deserves to?

Shorten appeared at the royal commission as a former Australian Workers’ Union national secretary, but few have registered that unlike other recent Labor leaders, Shorten really is a union man.

Few have registered that unlike other recent Labor leaders, Shorten really is a union man.

The old ACTU habit of maintaining external unity by placating internal rivals and resolving issues by consensus is visible in Shorten’s “de-rabbleisation” of his party. The first indication was actually when Shorten resolved his leadership rivalry with Anthony Albanese without leaving blood on the floor; Albo’s defeat was not punished with a resentful exile but kept in the fold with a personal choice of shadow ministry.

The vast majority of policy at the ALP’s recent conference passed unanimously; Shorten was less interested in right faction warlordism than allowing left-led policy through to keep the peace – though of the handful of issues that did provoke a vote, the leader was careful to win every one of them.

Tanya Plibersek – not an unambitious woman – defers so neatly to Shorten that she delegates a proxy when obliged to vote against him, and, unlike a paranoid silverback, the opposition leader isn’t keeping his youngsters down. While the Coalition calcifies around its ageing leadership, ambitious young Labor MPs like Sam Dastyari, Tim Watts, Clare O’Neil, Terri Butler and Andrew Giles are being allowed prominence in national debates. Not all are Shorten’s factional kin, either.

And the infamous Labor leaks of the Killing Season have all dried up - not even the few remaining ancient Labor Catholics unable to fathom marriage equality are ripping out the plugs. Compare this to the Coalition party room, which has more holes than a meat-sack thrown to the crocodiles.

Unlike Abbott, Shorten has built around himself a party that has the unity to properly back him in. You can understand why a smile creeps across his face as he launches into policy fights – on the RET, marriage equality, penalty rates, healthcare, and education – which the public support in vast numbers while the government languishes on the unpopular side.

Back at Turc in July, the conservatives thought that with Shorten in the dock they also had him on the ropes. It was their mistake to believe that the public was as interested in the minutiae of industrial relations as they were. Even as they were crowing over Shorten’s destruction, Tingle warned the general public would never be across the detail of the questioning; the Liberals’ only opportunity was to shred Shorten’s general credibility. As the commission continues to implode from the Heydon scandal, that effort has failed.

And how many voters will care to recall the questions put by Heydon to Shorten; far fewer than the number who know about his invitation to a Liberal party fundraiser, or that Bronwyn Bishop expensed a helicopter ride.

Shorten tours the country shoring up support for marriage equality, pledging a 50% RET and reminding voters of the jobless rate – now grown to 800,000. We wrote him off as a “tired accountant”, “shifty bureaucrat” and scorched bakery product, but a month after he was said to be finished, he seems to know what he’s doing.