This article is more than 1 year old

This article is more than 1 year old

Bill Shorten says he wants to bring employers and unions together in a summit as one of his first gestures in office if Labor wins the coming federal election.

The Labor leader used an appearance on Sky News to outline an immediate set of prime ministerial priorities, including a Bob Hawke-style consensus summit with business and unions, and a bipartisan gesture on infrastructure – inviting the opposition to nominate representatives for Infrastructure Australia to help “break the gridlock”.

Shorten also said he wanted to sit down with Indigenous Australians in an effort to “get this right now” – a course, his interviewer, Andrew Bolt, counselled him against, declaring it would lead to “separatism”.

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Wednesday night’s interview came as Shorten, frontbenchers and factional heavyweights were in overdrive attempting to resolve disputes ahead of this weekend’s party conference in Adelaide in an effort to minimise outbreaks of public fractiousness at the three-day event.

Discussions were under way about tweaks to the party’s policy on asylum boats, there were efforts to try and defuse a fight about environmental regulation, and there was discussion about the Newstart allowance in advance of a motion on the conference floor to increase the payment.

Bolt – a voluble conservative, and one of the most polarising figures in the Australian media – told his viewers before the conversation with Shorten on Wednesday night that he did not intend to be combative during the discussion with the Labor leader, which might disappoint some of his regular viewers.

He said the interview was about understanding different points of view, a theme Shorten picked up, saying his objective should he win the next election was to “get competing views in the same room”.

Bolt pushed Shorten on two of his pet topics, climate change and immigration, but did not persist with a confrontation.

He wondered what Shorten had learned during his time in politics. The Labor leader said opposition was a good teacher.

Shorten said occupying the opposition leadership was not the only way to serve a political apprenticeship but “it does test you”. Opposition leaders had “to jostle for your view to be heard”, he said.

Bolt pressed the Labor leader on why he was unpopular with voters. Shorten said he believed negative perceptions were shaped by many voters only encountering him when he popped up on the nightly news opposing government policy.

He said that, when he met voters at events, their responses to him were positive. Shorten said low approval ratings “doesn’t worry me in the macro”.

“When I’m out there with the real people of Australia, I get a good reception,” he said.

Shorten said both he and his team were ready to govern. “We’ve learned a lot of lessons … and we are emerging as a strong alternative government”.