page_title: Bill Shorten
section_title: Entry into politics
hierarchical_section_title: Bill Shorten / Political career / Entry into politics
caption_attribution_description: English: Bill Shorten outside Jason Wood's Boronia electoral office during the Dec'1st anti-WorkChoices rally. [1].
context_page_description: William Richard Shorten is an Australian politician who served as Leader of the Opposition and leader of the Australian Labor Party from 2013 to 2019. Shorten was first elected as the member of parliament for Maribyrnong in 2007, and was a cabinet minister in the Gillard and Rudd Governments from 2010 to 2013.
  Born in Melbourne, Shorten studied law at Monash University. He worked in politics and in law before becoming an organiser with the Australian Workers' Union in 1994. He was elected State Secretary of the Victorian Branch of the AWU in 1998 before becoming AWU National Secretary in 2001. In this role, Shorten played a prominent role as a negotiator following the Beaconsfield Mine collapse in 2006, which first brought him to national prominence.
  Shorten was elected to the House of Representatives in 2007 for the Division of Maribyrnong and was immediately appointed a parliamentary secretary. Following the 2010 election, he was promoted to the Cabinet, serving first as Assistant Treasurer, then as Minister for Financial Services and Superannuation and Minister for Workplace Relations in the Gillard Government.
context_section_description: Prior to the 1996 federal election, aged 28, Shorten contested Labor preselection for the Division of Maribyrnong. He was defeated by Bob Sercombe, who went on to retain the seat for Labor at the election. In February 1998, Shorten won preselection for the safe Labor seat of Melton at the 1999 state election. He was not a resident of the electorate, located on the rural–urban fringe to Melbourne's north-west. He subsequently resigned as a candidate in order to become state secretary of the AWU.
  In 2005, Shorten announced that he would again seek preselection for the Division of Maribyrnong, challenging Bob Sercombe (the sitting member and a member of the Beazley shadow ministry). Justifying his challenge to an incumbent Labor MP, Shorten said, "...we haven't won a federal election since 1993. When your footy team loses four consecutive grand finals, you renew the team."
  On 28 February, Sercombe announced that he was withdrawing his candidacy for re-selection, a few days before the vote of local members in which Shorten was expected to poll very strongly. As a result, Shorten was selected unopposed to contest the seat.
  During the Beaconsfield Mine collapse, Shorten, as National Secretary of the AWU, played a role as a negotiator and commentator on developments in the immediate aftermath and the ensuing rescue operations. The mine rescue operations drew mass national media coverage, and raised Shorten's political profile ahead of the 2007 election.
caption: Shorten speaking at an anti-WorkChoices rally in 2006
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