Bill Shorten is copping criticism from all sides over a controversial Labor advertisement promoting the merits of employing Australians with one crossbencher suggesting it "could be an ad for the Ku Klux Klan".
Leaked to Nine News on Sunday but since withdrawn, the ad has the Labor leader saying "the people who want the jobs are here" and ends with an image of Mr Shorten standing next to a group overwhelmingly featuring white Australians.
Key senate crossbencher Derryn Hinch said it was just stupid and blinkered.
"It could be an ad for the Klu Klux Klan," he told ABC radio.
"Didn't Bill Shorten look at it the first time and say 'hang on where are the multicultural people here?'
Following a backlash on social media, Labor frontbencher Anthony Albanese blasted the campaign.
"I think the ad's a shocker and it should never have been produced and it should never have been shown," Mr Albanese said on Monday.
"It's not the sort of ad I want my party to be promoting."
Mr Albanese, a senior member of the party and former leadership contender, said he had not seen the ad before it aired.
Asked whether it was racist, Mr Shorten told reporters: "Rubbish."
"But I certainly think we need to encourage as much diversity as we can," he said.
"I think we should have had more diversity in it and I will be speaking to the Labor party about that."
Mr Shorten later tweeted the criticism was a "fair cop".
"A bad oversight that won't happen again," he wrote.
The backgrounds of the people in the ad is not known, but Multicultural Affairs Minister Zed Seselja said the ad was a throwback to Labor's white Australia policy from 50 years ago.
Junior minister Craig Laundy told reporters Mr Shorten would have known the content of the ad and authorised it.
Mr Laundy found it suspicious the ad was leaked in Queensland, where Pauline Hanson's One Nation had polled so strongly at the federal election on the back of an anti-Muslim campaign.
"Bill Shorten wants to, on the floors of parliament, say one thing on the topic of One Nation yet when he has the opportunity he releases a xenophobic and targeted campaign in that state - it's hypocritical," the Sydney MP said.
Labor senator Sam Dastyari has also come under fire for a Facebook video in which he mocks home prices in Sydney.
In the video Senator Dastyari points out homes across from a train line and power station, on busy roads and with disused furniture out the front, remarking: "This is what a million dollars will buy you."
Senator Dastyari said he never intended to offend anyone but was making the point that housing in Sydney was now unaffordable.
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