Original sentence: In 2014 just after Shorten was elected as leader of the Australian Labour Party, a rape accusation was made against Shorten that was alleged to have occurred in the mid 1980s.Shorten had been consistently polling better than Abbott and Labor better than the Abbott Coalition Government from the July 2014 Australian federal budget until the September 2015 Liberal leadership ballot when Malcolm Turnbull succeeded Abbott as Prime Minister.Shorten strongly denied the allegations, and after an investigation police announced that there was no reasonable possibility of a conviction
Edited sentence: In February 2016, Shorten called Cory Bernardi a "homophobe".In March 2016, Shorten committed that the party would oppose any effort to extend discrimination law exemptions to allow people who object to same-sex marriage to deny goods and services to same-sex couples.Shorten denied the allegations in a statement after police saw no reasonable possibility of a conviction.Shorten had been consistently polling better than Abbott, and Labor better than the Abbott Coalition Government from the July 2014 Australian federal budget until the September 2015 Liberal leadership ballot when Malcolm Turnbull succeeded Abbott as Prime Minister.Shortly afterwards, just after he was made leader of the Australian Labour Party, Shorten was accused of rape, that was alleged to have occurred in 1986.The 2016 Double-Dissolution Election was held on July 2, 2016 concluded with a slim majority of 76 seats for the Coalition, with Malcolm Turnbull retaining power and just barely edging out Shorten and his Labor team.The 2019 Election was called to be held on May 18, 2019 where Shorten's Labor Party will vie to take power from Scott Morrison's Liberal National Coalition