It doesn’t seem, at least to this correspondent, that long since Bill Shorten arrived in Canberra, wearing the tag “future prime minister” that had been draped over him ever since the Beaconsfield mine disaster gave him a national platform to display his excellent media training. In fact it’s been 17 years, 18 by the time he quits in February, and two failed attempts to become prime minister, and two ministerial stints focused on what will surely be his enduring legacy, the National Disability Insurance Scheme.
It was Shorten who as a parliamentary secretary in the Rudd government not merely lifted the profile of Australians with disabilities and the need for the country to do better by them, but championed disability services reform, beginning Labor’s trajectory toward the establishment of the NDIS.
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