finally, the media catches up with Bull Shittens plan to run off and hide with his Senior Ministers...
How Bill Shorten flew under the radar with Pacific climate change tour
THIS week, Australia started talking about whether Malcolm Turnbull was going to put the GST up to 15 per cent. Then we cheered Michelle Payne as she became the first female jockey to win the Melbourne Cup.
And Bill Shorten, his deputy Tanya Plibersek and his shadow immigration minister Richard Marles all flew around the Pacific in a private plane talking about climate change.
In case you missed it, Shorten and Co hopped aboard the private jet of media buyer and philanthropist Harold Mitchell and zoomed off to Papua New Guinea, the Marshall Islands and Kiribati to see how climate change is affecting our low-lying Pacific neighbours.
Apparently the issue is so urgent, it required both the Leader and Deputy Leader of the Opposition to accompany the immigration shadow minister, Richard Marles, to inspect the situation personally.
But, curiously, Labor left behind its climate change shadow minister, Mark Butler.
Butler is the president of the ALP and a senior frontbencher whose portfolio is centred on climate change. But he didn’t make the passenger list.
Sources say that’s because Plibersek demanded at the last moment that she be included.
With only eight seats on the plane, (three journalists; Shorten and one staffer; Marles and one staffer), that left just one seat and it appears Butler was bumped in favour of Plibersek.
And so the Labor leadership team jumped aboard the same small jet
(thank goodness they all came back safely 
) and headed overseas, basically vacating the field at a time when Turnbull and the Government were being scrutinised for several days over an apparent plan to raise the GST.
Climate change is a serious issue in the Pacific, where political leaders fear global warming and resultant sea-level rises will threaten their nations, which are often only a few metres above existing sea levels.
It was discussed at length at the Pacific Islands Forum in PNG by former prime minister Tony Abbott days before he was rolled by Turnbull in September and was the subject of a poor-taste joke by Immigration Minister Peter Dutton, which was caught by a TV microphone.
The smaller Pacific nations are looking to Australia to show leadership ahead of talks to tackle global warming in Paris next month and a fact-finding mission by the Leader of the Opposition is appropriate.
But politics is won and lost in the centre. Labor will not win an election campaigning on climate change problems in the Pacific.
Centrist voters who parked their vote with Shorten because they’d given up on the Abbott government are flocking back to Turnbull and Shorten needs to be focused on keeping them on Labor’s side.
So sending the leadership team away for three days on a fact-finding mission is just plain weird. 
Mitchell is a long-time supporter of development in the Pacific and didn’t want to engage on the politics of the trip, telling the Herald Sun he supported both sides of politics equally and would continue to do so.
“For a long time I’ve been concerned about Australia’s responsibilities to our nearest neighbours, East Timor, Papua New Guinea and I chair the Australia-Indonesia Centre,’’ he said.
He also has a pre-existing relationship with Marles, having bankrolled his trip earlier this year to Geneva and to the Zaatari refugee camp in Jordan.
In Kiribati, Shorten said climate change represented a “clear and present danger’’ to homes and communities on atolls which were less than 2m above sea levels. “For Kiribati, climate change is not an economic debate or an environmental one, it goes far beyond that,’’ he said.
Addressing Kiribati president Anote Tong directly, he said: “Mr President, a few months ago, you asked the Prime Minister of Australia to come and see for himself the reality of climate change. I couldn’t come as the Prime Minister — this time. But in bringing Labor’s leadership team, I hope you see how much your cause means to us.’’
Shorten did manage to spook International Development and Pacific Minister Steve Ciobo into issuing a statement spruiking the Government’s climate change credentials in the Pacific, including $50 million spent on “climate resilience related projects’’. “We have also committed $200 million to the Green Climate Fund and will advocate for the interests of our Pacific neighbours through our seat on its board,’’ Ciobo said, as he jetted off for tiny Niue.
But mostly, the trip failed to cut through, with the main headlines generated when Shorten was filmed dancing at an official function with locals on Kiribati. Camera phones will ensure those minutes last a lifetime.
Shorten is the not the first and he’s not the worst. In fact, it’s probably just as well his awkward sober-Australian-male shuffle was caught on camera in Kiribati, otherwise most people would never have noticed he was there.
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