This article is more than 1 year old

This article is more than 1 year old

Bill Shorten has unveiled three big-spending policies to invest $2.4bn in seniors’ dental care, $4bn to provide cheaper childcare for families and to boost early childhood educators’ pay by 20%.

Shorten made the promises that Labor will “build Medicare” and expand social services to win the 2019 election on a positive platform of “hope over fear, vision over cynicism” at a quasi campaign launch at the Box Hill Town Hall in Melbourne on Sunday.

With Australians returning from holidays over Easter and Anzac Day, Shorten and Scott Morrison both held large rally events to capture voters’ attention as early voting opens on Monday ahead of polling day on 18 May.

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Morrison enlisted support from the former Liberal prime minister John Howard and New South Wales premier Gladys Berejiklian and announced $167.5m for “congestion-busting” in western Sydney, while Shorten emphasised the superiority of Labor’s shadow ministerial team and vision for Australia.

Campaigning on a platform of closing tax “loopholes” to pay for higher social spending, Shorten made a virtue of the opposition’s big-target strategy, comparing it to the Coalition, which he said offered the most “threadbare policy platform that any government has ever taken to an election in the history of the commonwealth”.

Shorten said that when Labor puts forward “the bold plans, the big ideas, when we make the argument for change, we win”.

“The people of Australia want a vision, the people of Australia want their hope renewed, the people of Australia do not want cynicism.”

Shorten said while Labor had campaigned to “save Medicare” at the 2016 election, its message in the home stretch of the 2019 campaign will be to “build Medicare”.

He announced that, if elected, Labor will spend $2.4bn to give three million older Australians on the aged pension or commonwealth seniors’ health card $1,000 of free dental care every two years.

Poor dental care can “undermine your quality of life, your self-confidence, your basic dignity”, Shorten said, arguing that the policy would prevent older Australians delaying care.

In a statement the policy was described as “the next step towards Labor’s vision of universal access to dental care in Australia”.

The health minister, Greg Hunt, said in a statement the true cost of $500 dental work a year for three million pensioners would be $6bn. He said the $2.4bn figure “doesn’t stack up” and accused Labor of a $3bn funding blackhole.

Shorten announced that Labor would also increase the pay of early childhood educators by 20% over eight years, an average increase of $11,300 above any award rises.

In a statement, Labor said it had “provisioned $537m” over four years for the measure. The full cost over a decade will be $9.9bn.

“This is an investment in early education, in a strong economy of the future and this is an investment in pay equity in a female-dominated industry, a fair award for the workforce,” Shorten said.

Shorten also gave further details of Labor’s $4bn childcare package, which Labor says will see 887,000 families earning less than $174,000 get fee reductions of up to $2,100 per child off their yearly childcare bill.

Shorten warned that if childcare centres “simply jack up the prices to minimise the benefit for the people” then they would be “will be named and shamed on childcarefinder.gov.au”.

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“If we see childcare centres unfairly raising prices we will use the power of the parliament to freeze fee increases and enact price control.”

In addition to the policies announced on Sunday, Labor is campaigning on a $2.3bn package to reduce out-of-pocket costs for cancer treatment and a $1.75bn plan to extend universal childcare to three-year-olds.

Labor plans to collect $387bn more revenue than the Coalition over a decade, mainly from opposing middle- and high-income earners’ tax cuts ($230bn), ending cash rebates for self-funded retirees with excess franking credits ($57bn) and changes to superannuation ($34bn).

In Sydney, Morrison said the election was a choice “not a coronation”, warning that government cannot take on social spending “unless you have a strong economy and you know how to manage money”.

Facebook Twitter Pinterest Scott Morrison at a campaign rally at Sydney Olympic Park on Sunday. Photograph: Mick Tsikas/AAP

“It’s a choice between a government that has demonstrated that it knows how to manage money and a Labor party under Bill Shorten who has demonstrated that they can’t control what they spend, so it means they can’t control what they tax.”

Howard warned that Shorten would be the “most leftwing prime minister since world war two”.

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Morrison unveiled an extra $167.5m for “congestion-busting infrastructure” in western Sydney, including $63.5m to upgrade Dunheved Road and increased commuter car parking at Kingswood, St Marys, Emu Plains, Campbelltown, Macarthur, Revesby and Riverwood stations.

Morrison announced the Coalition would freeze the humanitarian intake of refugees at 18,750 and boasted the Coalition had stopped boats carrying asylum seekers who he said had taken “the place of somebody coming legitimately through the program”.

Morrison – who has set a target of women making up 60% of the refugee intake – warned that “in most cases” it had been women in refugee camps with “no money to pay people smugglers” who had missed out on places.