Bill Shorten has called time on a lengthy parliamentary career, with the former Labor leader and current NDIS minister leaving politics to head into a lucrative university posting.

From bursting onto the scene as the head of the Australian Workers Union during the Beaconsfield Mine collapse in 2006, to his bitter and final defeat as opposition leader in 2019, Shorten has experienced the full spectrum of what nearly two decades in Parliament has to offer.

Labour organiser

Before being elected to the Labor Party in 2007, Shorten made his name as a labour organiser at the AWU, being elected Victorian state secretary in 1998 and national secretary in 2001.

A move to politics was inevitable: Shorten tried unsuccessfully to win pre-selection in the federal seat of Maribyrnong in 1996.

He then won the Labor nomination in the state seat of Melton in 1998. However, he resigned that position to continue in the AWU.

Shorten eventually won the nomination unopposed in Maribyrnong in 2006, forcing sitting MP Bob Sercombe out of the seat after winning popular support from local members.

When the Beaconsfield mine collapsed, later in 2006, it was Shorten who fronted the media and the public, with the AWU describing him as “a pillar of support”.

“I’m a union official and until I’m elected, I’ll keep doing my job,” he said at the time.

“When our members get hurt, I turn up. I’m a pretty hands-on national secretary. Most people would concede that.”

Rolling leaders

Shorten’s leadership during Beaconsfield may have put him in the national spotlight, but it wasn’t smooth sailing to the frontbench and Labor leadership.

After being elected as an MP in the 2007 election, Prime Minister Kevin Rudd named him as parliamentary secretary for disabilities and children’s services, taking his first steps into what would become his signature portfolio in government.

He played a key role as first a supporter of Julia Gillard when she knifed Rudd to take leadership and the prime ministership, and then again when he switched sides to support Rudd in taking it back before the 2013 election, when Labor was dumped from power.

Shorten defeated now-PM Anthony Albanese in 2013 in a leadership ballot through the support of his colleagues, but not the general Labor membership, as the party grappled with the fallout of a bitter leadership battle between Rudd and Gillard.

Prime Minister Anthony Albanese, a political rival of Shorten for the leadership of the Labor Party, was on hand to see him off at his retirement announcement. Photo: AAP

“Some of the leadership disunity in the past is now just that, in the past, and party members have provided us with unequivocal support,” he said after being elected leader.

“There is no doubt that Labor’s been through some difficult times while it was in government.”

Wins and losses

His first job was trying to win back control of Parliament for Labor, whose turmoil had handed the keys to Tony Abbott’s Coalition government and the loss of 17 Labor seats.

By the time the 2016 election rolled in, it was instead Malcolm Turnbull leading the nation, and Labor’s focus on unsubstantiated claims that the Liberal Party would privatise Medicare – known as ‘Mediscare’ – cut through with the voting public, delivering 14 seats, but not a governing majority, to Labor.

Shorten later confirmed that he had a hand in creating a text message campaign that appeared to be from Medicare on election day, claiming that “Turnbull’s plans to privatise Medicare will take us down the road of no return”.

His time as opposition leader may have lasted three Liberal prime ministers, but his ascent to the top job wasn’t to be as he suffered a crippling defeat to Scott Morrison at the 2019 election in what could have been his coronation.

That win for Morrison was a shock.

Many thought Labor and Shorten would return to power after a long list of consecutive opinion polls, but his ambitious agenda for reform (including for curbs to franking credits and property investment tax breaks) resulted in defeat.

NDIS reforms

Although Shorten had a key role in the creation of the NDIS, helping author the legislation that made it a reality, he was thrust into the job of reforming the scheme that some estimates projected could cost up to $100 billion each year by 2032.

Following the release of a review in late 2023, the proposed reforms were fought bitterly by the Coalition, which claimed a lack of detail and time in its fight against it.

Shorten will leave Parliament with these reforms uncompleted before he takes on the role of vice chancellor of Canberra University in February.

He will remain in the Albanese cabinet as National Disability Insurance Scheme and Government Services Minister until then.