In truth Shorten could have set fire to his hair at the lectern and the ALP would still have looked more sober and professional than the Coalition does at present. These days the only thing that is distracting from the government’s consequential stuff-ups – such as its energy and climate policy blackhole – are the less consequential ones – such as Andrew Broad’s stylings as a B&S ball James Bond. As though inspired by the Coalition, the Greens have now imploded. Short months from an election Labor’s rivals to the left and right are at bloody civil war. Opposition Leader Bill Shorten at the ALP national conference on Monday. Credit:Alex Ellinghausen In this landscape it is difficult to judge whether Shorten has been, so far, a lucky general or a good one. To answer that question it is instructive to consider how he has been using his time as the government wastes its own. What you see when you look closely over Shorten’s public presence in recent weeks is a program of modest speeches and announcements. They are designed either to strengthen relationships between industry, social and political interests, or to create new ones.

This is not Morrison’s fraught suburban dad-ism, nor Turnbull’s exciting time to be an Australian. It is not Abbott’s exhausting sloganeering nor Rudd’s grand 2020 visions. It is the political strategy of a former union leader who once celebrated signing up netballers to the cause. Shorten is selling stability rather than fervour. Illustration: Jim Pavlidis Credit: Between late November and early December Shorten made significant but little-noticed speeches on science, energy and housing policy, each of them emphasising differences not only between Labor's and the Coalition’s policy stances, but their world views. In his address to the Australian Academy of Science, Shorten dismissed the “Orwellian” national interest test recently foisted upon Australian researchers already alienated by a government stacked with climate-science deniers. Should he government, Shorten's Labor would return science to the centre of cabinet decision-making via a scientific expert advisory panel.

“In an age of climate deniers, anti-vaxxers, birthers, truthers, trolls – we need to put a premium on the scientific mindset, on the value of evidence,” he said. On energy he signalled Labor’s virtuous pragmatism, advocating for policy that he said would not only seek to improve reliability and cut prices, but also address sustainability. Articulating this triumvirate of policy intent is controversial only among Coalition ranks. It has long been demanded not only by a majority of Australian voters, but by industry and energy providers – traditional Liberal allies. Wooden to leaden, but sure and steady ... Bill Shorten on 7.30. Credit:ABC 7.30 In a speech to the Housing Industry Association, Shorten reiterated Labor’s plan to restrict negative gearing to new housing and to halve the capital gains discount for investors. “I simply don’t believe it’s fair that young Australians trying to buy their first home and build a future and to bring up their family have to bid against affluent property investors subsidised by the taxes that we all play,” he said, defending a flagship policy that has less appeal in today’s sinking housing market than it did when first announced.

This was an issue that Shorten returned to in his speech at Labor’s national conference, when he announced the ALP would introduce subsidies to investors building new affordable housing. Even this policy was pitched at middle Australia rather than those driven to the extremes. Loading “A hidden struggle in this country is being fought by the hundreds of thousands of our fellow Australians who can’t afford to live anywhere near where they work,” said Shorten. “They’re spending over a third of their paypacket on rent – and plenty more on petrol each day they travel. “Rental affordability is a national challenge and it demands national leadership. Building more affordable housing is infrastructure policy. It is cities policy. It is jobs and productivity policy." Shorten was not only standing by Labor's negative gearing policy; in adding to it he was binding the social housing sector to investment.

In interviews, too, Shorten has maintained this determined equanimity. Morrison ended the parliamentary year asserting that Shorten was a “clear and present threat” to the nation’s safety for his support for a bill that would allow medical evacuation of critically ill children from Nauru. Such a move would give a “green light” to people smugglers, the PM said. “I will fight them on this. I will seek to stop them doing this ... Stopping terrorists is more important than getting a cheap win for the nightly news out of Canberra.” Loading When this was put to Shorten on ABC’s 7.30 that night, the Labor leader not only maintained his composure, he looked as though he might drift off to an untroubled slumber in the midst of the interview. “I am disappointed in what he said but I am not distracted by it,” he said in a tone of almost ecclesiastical disappointment. “That name-calling is not going to solve a single problem.”

Shorten’s strategy of intransigent reasonableness might have helped entrench Labor’s lead in the polls, but it has not yet turned around Australia’s view of the man himself. As Labor’s fortunes rise, Shortern’s own polling for preferred PM remains stubbornly low. A glance at Essential’s research from October sheds some light on this. Morrison sits at 42 per cent and Shorten at 27 per cent. Morrison is the preferred PM of 79 per cent of Coalition voters, but Shorten is the preferred PM of just 57 per cent of Labor voters. Shorten lags, it turns out, because so many Labor voters don’t like him. The reasons for this are not that hard to fathom. Shorten was, after all, complicit in the assassination of both Kevin Rudd and then Julia Gillard and has fostered enemies in the camps of both former leaders. Though he has finally stopped with the terrible zingers, his presentation still explores the terrain between wooden and leaden. His relentless pragmatism has broken the hearts of many supporters, especially those who would like to see a Labor government kill off Adani and end offshore detention with its first breaths.

But at a time when the simplest tasks of government in Australia are being derailed by hardliners inured not only to scientific evidence but political reality, when ideologues are wrenching the Western order apart, Shorten’s reasonableness might be the most timely of political strategies.