The Labor leader first sought to reinterpret the Brexit vote during his final address to the National Press Club on Tuesday, then went further in an interview with Fairfax Media to make the explicit link with the Turnbull government. Opposition Leader Bill Shorten with his bulldogs, Matilda and Theodore, at home in Moonee Ponds, Victoria. Credit:Alex Ellinghausen The government's policies were "creating the preconditions for disadvantage and inequality", Mr Shorten said, and that inequality created the "alienation, marginalisation, a search for more extreme solutions" that has rocked US and UK politics in recent months. "I don't think we're as far down the track but three more years of the Liberals will create more inequality," Mr Shorten told Fairfax Media. "We're not at the point of America, but cooperative economic growth where people are included, not left behind, that's how you avoid in democracies where people are feeling marginalised and alienated.

"We're not immune from that – I don't think we're as far down the track." Bill Shorten does up his tie as he departs his home for a visit to a radio studio in the Melbourne CBD. Credit:Alex Ellinghausen He grouped Mr Trump's populist movement and the UK Independence Party with the One Nation party created by Pauline Hanson. Ms Hanson is running for a seat in the Senate representing Queensland at this election. It is part of Mr Shorten's wider theme portraying himself at the moderate centre of Australian politics. Bill Shorten during an early morning run in the rain in Melbourne. Credit:Alex Ellinghausen

Mr Turnbull says that his party offers a plan for growth as the best way to keep Australia as "a high-wage, generous social safety net country and the most successful multicultural society in the world". But as election day approaches on Saturday, Mr Shorten dismissed his rival for the prime ministership as insubstantial: "I think in this election he's emerged as a hollower figure than people thought." Chloe Shorten has been travelling with her husband. Credit:Alex Ellinghausen What he sees as his great strength we see as his great weakness He said he'd expected more of Mr Turnbull: "When he took over the job, I thought, 'Oh wow, the Liberal Party's going to move back to the centre'.

"My concern about Malcolm Turnbull's policies is that he seems to have given up on the centre ground. I thought he'd move there but he hasn't. When you're freezing GP rebates, when you're increasing price of prescription medicine, when you're taking away bulk billing incentives, when you're not funding schools according to need in the battling suburbs and the regions, you're creating the preconditions for disadvantage and inequality." Mr Shorten has confessed to being a fan of Napoleon Bonaparte, and one of the "Little General's" maxims was to "concentrate all your forces on the enemy's weakest point". Asked to nominate Mr Turnbull's weakest point, the Labor leader said: "His case for re-election is 'I'll give large corporations a big tax cut'. What he sees as his great strength we see as his great weakness." There is evidence that the government has recognised the potency of the Labor attack on its staggered 10-year plan to cut company tax – the Coalition now emphasises the early years of the plan, where only small businesses benefit, and has quietly dropped reference to the last years, when the tax cut is extended to billion-dollar firms. Looking at Labor's campaign ads, however, suggests that the party really thinks the Coalition's greatest weakness is the suspicion that it plans to privatise Medicare.

Mr Turnbull has repeatedly denied any such intention and his deputy, Julie Bishop, has accused Mr Shorten of "trying to sneak into office on the back of a lie". Labor's hammering of its Medicare scare campaign has not, however, made any impact whatsoever on the published opinion polls, which have not budged from 50:50, on an average across all major pollsters, in the seven and a half weeks of the election campaign, including the last few weeks of Labor's Medi-scare. Does Mr Shorten not worry that, by overegging his Medi-scare, that he will damage his own credibility? "We didn't invent the taskforce" that the government set up to examine options for privatising the back-office payment system for Medicare, Mr Shorten replies. "Has everyone just conveniently forgotten $5 million of taxpayer money" that the government allocated for the taskforce. The government, of course, has since announced that the taskforce is now defunct and has ruled out the privatisation of any part of Medicare.

"They've made a temporary retreat, absolutely, I'll acknowledge that," he says. But "I don't trust the Liberals on Medicare," is his fallback. This is akin to the dunking of suspected witches – on the Shorten test, there is no way that Mr Turnbull can prove his innocence. Doesn't Mr Shorten acknowledge that any attempt by a government to privatise Medicare would be political suicide? That even that committed ideologue John Howard, who gambled his government on WorkChoices and lost, gave up on his early efforts to abolish Medicare and instead claimed to be its best friend? "That doesn't mean they won't try," Mr Shorten replies. "Do you really think the healthcare system can afford having GPs having their fees frozen for six years?" There no evidence so far that the freeze is damaging bulk billing, which is now at a record high rate of 85 per cent. "We haven't seen a six-year freeze yet," says Mr Shorten. That's true - the freeze, introduced by the Gillard Labor government, is in its fourth year. Napoleon had another maxim – that "a leader is a dealer in hope". How is Mr Shorten's scare-based politics dealing in hope?

"I'm giving Australians hope that Medicare won't be wrecked. I'm giving them hope that Medicare will be defended. I'm giving them hope that there's one guy running for PM who's interested in healthcare for all Australians. Hope that their kids will get a quality education. I'm giving parents hope their kids can afford to go to uni. I'm giving Australians hope that they can afford to buy their first home, and giving future generations hope we can take real action on climate change." And was the Prime Minister respecting the first Napoleonic maxim, by concentrating on Labor's economic credentials and union links, concentrating on Mr Shorten's weakest point? "He's not concentrating on anything. He's just offering platitudes and slogans. By contrast, we're concentrating on Medicare, education, jobs – he basically isn't really contesting us there at all." He rejects the government accusation that he'd govern in the interests of the union movement, where he spent his career before Parliament: "Let me be clear – I'm not anyone's cat's paw. I'm not a cat's paw for banks, the unions, I'm interested in governing for all."

The Australian newspaper this week published correspondence showing that Mr Shorten agreed to a request from the CFMEU, the construction union at the centre of accusations of workplace thuggery, to block any effort to reinstate the Australian Building and Construction Commission. "I was already on the record" before the CFMEU request, he says. "I've been on record for a number of years" opposing the return of the ABCC to clean up the construction industry, Mr Shorten says. "The Australian has managed to discover something which had been on the public record for five years at least." As evidence that he is prepared to act against a union interest, Mr Shorten nominates two actions he took as industrial relations minister in the Gillard government - "I put administrators into the troubled HSU, the first minister of a conservative or Labor government ever to put administrators into a union, and I tripled the penalties for breaches of industrial relations regulations." Mr Shorten was much underestimated. When Mr Turnbull took the prime ministership, the election was widely forecast to be a Coalition walkover. But Mr Turnbull disappointed so many people's hopes that Mr Shorten won the opportunity to compete for attention and votes, and he proved to be an energetic competitor who made the election a contest.

Now, the expectations have been raised, and, though the betting odds show Labor is likely to lose, some Labor MPs privately are setting benchmarks for Labor's seat count as the test of Mr Shorten's claim on the leadership. How many does he have to win to consider himself successful? What's the Labor leader's definition of success on Saturday? "When a young person can get an apprenticeship, when there's real action on climate change, when there's fewer victims of family violence, when we've got better public transport funding, a first class NBN, when Medicare is not being cut and slashed, and the only way we can achieve that is by winning." Anything short of victory is not success? "I'm in it to win it. I'm not interested in an honourable second place." Follow us on Twitter