There's a very good chance that Bill Shorten will be the next prime minister. Stop snickering, you. Just look at the polls.

Labor are either in a strong lead (according to Newspoll) a stronger lead (Essential) or a freakin' massive lead (according to Fairfax-Ipsos) over the Coalition.

Labor also won by a landslide in Western Australia following the disastrous decision by the Liberals to do a preference deal with One Nation. And the Liberals are not ruling out doing it again because, like the old saying goes, the definition of sanity is doing the same thing over and over and confidently expecting that eventually the public will totally get on board.

Also, the shadow frontbench is filled with well-liked, seemingly capable MPs and senators – Tanya Plibersek, Tony Burke, Penny Wong, Chris Bowen, Anthony Albanese, and so on – while Turnbull's lost his health minister to an expenses scandal, has an Attorney-General dealing with the Bell group fiasco and is facing a stoush with his foreign minister over Tuesday's on-then-abruptly-off extradition treaty with China, which was supposedly a precondition of a trade deal.