Bill Shorten may be remembered as the last political figure with the guts to take big reforms to an election

If the sole measure of success for a politician is winning elections, Bill Shorten would go down in history as a dud. Despite making strong headway against Malcolm Turnbull in 2016, Shorten fell short. Then came the “unlosable election” against Scott Morrison in 2019, which turned out to be very losable for Labor after all.

But this would be a simplistic way to assess a character as complex as Shorten, who will leave parliament in February to become the new vice chancellor of the University of Canberra.

A more nuanced view is that Shorten’s impending retirement from federal politics is a significant loss for a struggling federal Labor Party. He joins Kim Beazley among good Labor leaders who would have made even better prime ministers.

In assessing the impact of Shorten’s 17-year stint in parliament, it is important to recognise he was far from perfect. His communication style as opposition leader was often overly wooden, and his close association with the political decapitations of Kevin Rudd and Julia Gillard meant the electorate never fully trusted him.

By his own admission, Shorten has experienced some dizzying highs and lows in politics. After his twin election losses, Shorten could have easily left parliament and carped from the sidelines. He also rebuffed a push for him to quit after the 2022 election and move to Europe as an ambassador. To his credit, Shorten instead rolled up his sleeves and went about becoming the Albanese government’s most effective minister.

Shorten played an important role in the creation of the National Disability Insurance Scheme under the Gillard government and has more recently embarked on the difficult task of reining in runaway expenditure on the scheme. If his reforms – which disability advocates say go too far and economic hawks say don’t cut deep enough – succeed in stabilising this important but costly scheme, the nation will owe Shorten a huge debt of gratitude.

Shorten also led the charge against the robo-debt scheme, which he once declared “perhaps the greatest scandal in social security”. Shorten’s royal commission into the fiasco was the right thing to do for the victims and for good future governance. But the wily Shorten also knew his pursuit of the scandal would also damage the Coalition politically. It was Shorten at his best – mixing good policy with clever politics. Most senior figures in the Albanese government could only hope of having the capacity to do the same.

Perhaps the saddest part of Shorten’s departure is that he may, in time, be seen as the last opposition leader who had the willingness to go to an election with a big reform agenda.