Bill Shorten's support was not a game-changer in Kevin Rudd's return to the Labor leadership in 2013, a new essay says.
Journalist David Marr has uncovered new details about Mr Shorten's lesser role in the Rudd return in a Quarterly Essay published on Monday entitled Faction Man.
Media reports to date have suggested Mr Shorten's factional ties were vital to the restoration of Mr Rudd.
But Marr writes that Shorten's factional power base had completely fractured in early 2013, as MPs came to the conclusion only Mr Rudd could save their seats at the election due later in the year.
The NSW Right threatened to "ignore Shorten in future leadership contests if he didn't shift too", Marr says.
Mr Shorten publicly supported Ms Gillard, but privately commissioned his own research in his Victorian seat of Maribyrnong which showed a 13 per cent swing against him if Ms Gillard was to remain leader at the election, the essay says.
Marr says despite Mr Shorten's long history of factional deals, going back to his time in student politics, he brought only one other vote with him in the caucus vote that restored Mr Rudd.
Since then, factional lines continued to break down, and Mr Shorten's closest allies had been unable to control candidate preselections.
Marr writes that Mr Shorten's deal to get the ALP national conference in July to support asylum seeker boat turnbacks involved making promises to union bosses on several seats in state upper houses, a place on a China trade mission and a deputy mayoralty on the fringe of a capital city.
A former Gillard government minister tells Marr the opposition leader is ambitious for his own sake: "He wants to be PM because he wants to be PM. Everything is about becoming PM."
Union veteran Bill Kelty says Mr Shorten's appearance at the unions royal commission this year had hurt the Labor leader.
"I rang him afterwards and said to him: `If you want this job, there is something called pain. To be prime minister you have to absorb the pain.'"
A Labor veteran says the opposition may need to accept a return to government could take six years.
"You're really accepting a two-term strategy with deep confidence in your abilities to manage a disparate rumbling caucus and a bristling, insincerely loyal frontbench for six years. Faux mateyness over the chopsticks. Gripes and grievances behind closed doors."
Mr Shorten says in an interview with Marr that he has a clear aim in the lead-up to the election.
"I know what the nation should look like in 10 and 15 years time and it's up to me to tell that story to the nation."
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