Labor senior Bill Shorten calls on Eleanor Roosevelt's idea to quell gossip Bill Shorten, Federal Labour Member for Maribyrnong, calls on a voice from history to help stop rumours. Picture: Mark Stewart Source: Herald Sun Eleanor Roosevelt, wife US president Franklin D Roosevelt. September 1943. General / Alone Source: The Daily Telegraph A KEY federal Labor powerbroker has invoked the wife of a legendary US president to reaffirm his support of PM Julia Gillard. Employment and Workplace Relations Minister Bill Shorten told a property industry event in Melbourne that he wasn't interested in gossip about the Labor leadership. Asked if he should vie for the leadership in the "national interest," Mr Shorten said he didn't take the question seriously. "What this country wants is stability, I support our Prime Minister," he said. I think it was Eleanor Roosevelt (wife of wartime US president Franklin Delano Roosevelt) who said 'small minds talk about people, moderate minds talk about events and great minds talk about ideas'. Mr Shorten issued a challenge to the media. "I want to have a competition (that) every time we get a question about gossip, could we get two questions from our opponents about their policy and then I'll be happy to take as many questions about gossip," he told a Property Council of Victoria lunch. Mr Shorten said the built environment could have enormous significance, and not just for a city. Take the Berlin wall. From the moment construction began on the wall, which was brutally functional, it defined its city and its era. Here was a concrete slab of totalitarian architecture that in its construction came to represent the Cold War," he said. And in its destruction signalled the end of the Cold War. Think of the historic hair-raising-on-the-arm speeches of the John F Kennedy and Ronald Reagans of the world. Think of the images, which I saw first hand at the end of 1989 and 1990... where you could see the people of Berlin tearing down the wall literally with their bare hands.