‘What the f*** just happened’: Top Shorten lieutenant’s election defeat text message to Labor member

Former Labor senator Sam Dastyari has revealed the startling text he received from one of Bill Shorten’s top lieutenants in the midst of the Labor party’s shock election defeat.   

While Scott Morrison defied the odds and was handed another three years in power, Dastyari received a text from an unnamed senior Labor adviser that read: ”What the f**k just happened?’ 

In the election aftermath, Dastyari revealed he had been inundated with people wanting to know how the Labor party had reacted to the result.   

‘I tell them the truth. No one in Labor expect this result – no one. I saw all the Labor party polling. I spoke to all of the senior shadow Ministers. None of them saw this coming,’ he wrote on a 10 Daily column. 

‘The Labor party will now do what it does best: Blow itself up. It will be completely lost,’ he declared. 

He went on to say that history had been rewritten following the poll’s drastic inaccuracy. 

‘There will be endless columns, hand wringing, and – for Labor – questions over how it lost the un-loseable election,’ Dastyari said.   

In a video posted to Twitter, Dastyari called the election results an ‘unmitigated disaster’ for progressives and the Labor party, but urged people not to point the finger at Bill Shorten. 

‘We obviously got it wrong, we lost the election because we got it wrong, and we have to ask some really serious questions about how we got it wrong,’ he said to his 36,000 Twitter followers. 

In a video posted to Twitter, former Labor senator Sam Dastyari called the election results an ‘unmitigated disaster’ for progressives and the Labor party 

He predicts that in the coming weeks there will be some ‘really easy targets’ to shift the blame for losing the ‘un-loseable’ election.   

‘People are going to turn around and say it’s all Bill Shorten’s fault, and that’s bulls**it.’ 

‘Labor wouldn’t have gotten where they got if it wasn’t for the fact that they had chosen strategically to prioritise unity over disunity. And that was a collective decision, I think it’s unfair to place everything on Bill,’ he said.

Sam Dastyari’s rant comes after Labor was accused of alienating their core electorate with policies that were too progressive and divisive on climate change and negative gearing. Pictured: Bill Shorten after his concession speech following his election loss

He went on to emphasize that the decision to make a bold, forward-thinking policy agenda was done collectively, and that Shorten shouldn’t be made a scapegoat for what an entire party had decided on. 

‘I think it’s really going to be dangerous if people if people try and make some kind of a cop-out explanation as to what happened.’ 

He then called for a fundamental change for the way Labor goes about implementing their values and agenda. 

‘I think a lot of us believe we had our ideology right, but clearly, clearly a fundamental rejection like the rejection we’ve had means that as a party, as a campaign machine, as a parliamentary team (and) as a movement, there has to be a proper re-think’ 

His rant comes after Labor was accused of alienating their core electorate with policies that were too progressive and divisive on climate change and negative gearing.

Older Australians in particular appeared to turn on Labor over the controversial plan to scrap franking credits for self-funded retirees.

The policy was so complex that many voters did not understand what it would mean and many feared they would be left out of pocket. 

He went on to give props to Scott Morrison for his win, admitting that he ran the ‘perfect campaign’. 

In his opinion piece, Dastyari managed to find a silver lining for Labor in the chaos that has been the 2019 Federal Election. 

He referenced the Coalition losing the ‘un-losable’ election back in 1993, where they still went on to regain power by 1996.