Labor rushed out a TV ad to support Mr Shorten's claim, linking it to Labor's ongoing Medicare scare campaign and the prospect of a rise in the GST to 15 per cent. Opposition Leader Bill Shorten addressed the National Press Club of Australia in Canberra on Tuesday. Credit:Alex Ellinghausen But the Prime Minister's comment was, in fact, a reference to Labor's sudden decision to backflip and dump its opposition to the axing of the School Kids' Bonus earlier in the election campaign. In his final set-piece speech of the 2016 election campaign at the National Press Club, Mr Shorten outlined his vision for "inclusive economic growth" that prioritised Australian jobs, better childcare, schools and hospitals, tackling climate change and "above all", protected Medicare. And he suggested Britain's shock exit from the European Union was due to growing inequality, declaring it a "political and economic lesson that cannot and should not be ignored" and linking it to the Prime Minister Malcolm Turnbull's policy program such as a 10-year company tax cut.

In an at-times heavily negative speech, Mr Shorten told voters that Mr Turnbull was "lying to your face" about the future funding for Medicare. Chloe Shorten has been travelling with her husband. Credit:Alex Ellinghausen Health and superannuation policy questions also had the Opposition Leader on the back foot, with Mr Shorten ducking questions about Labor ads that claimed the government would cut $57 billion in hospital funding, while promising to restore just $2 billion in additional money. over four years. He dismissed suggestions that Labor had left people in the dark over its superannuation policies after the opposition booked a net $3 billion in extra revenue by adopting the government's super polices, while expressing reservations about whether it would implement all of the policies. Bill Shorten's speech writer James Newton listens as his boss promises that he will legalise same-sex marriage if elected PM. Credit:Alex Ellinghausen

And Mr Shorten would not say whether, if Labor lost on July 2, it would back the government's legislation to establish and hold a same-sex marriage plebiscite. "The first piece of legislation I introduce into the 45th Parliament will be a bill to amend the marriage act, a simple change. The words "a man and a woman" are replaced with "two people", no $160 million plebiscite, no hurtful, hateful government-sponsored advertising campaign for us," he said. I don't accept the proposition we'll run an honourable second in this election ... what happens after the election if we don't win, we'll cross that bridge when we get to it. Opposition Leader Bill Shorten "I don't accept the proposition we'll run an honourable second in this election ... what happens after the election [with the plebiscite] if we don't win, we'll cross that bridge when we get to it." Some Coalition MPs have said they will abstain from voting in the parliament to pass a same-sex marriage law if the plebiscite backing same-sex marriage passes, or that they will vote in line with their electorate rather than the nation.

On the Brexit decision, Mr Shorten said while the Coalition had used the shock vote and fallout in global markets to call for stability and their own re-election, "they fundamentally misunderstand the source of the instability. It comes from a sense of inequality". "It comes from exactly the same sort of cynicism in policies that Mr Turnbull's offering Australians at this election. Tax cuts for the rich, nothing for the working and middle-class Australians, telling a generation of young Australians shut out of the housing market to get rich parents, pricing kids out of university, cutting funding from Medicare." The Coalition, he said, wanted Australians to back a "radical, expensive" experiment in the form of a staged, 10-year cut to the company tax rate to 25 per cent that was comparable to the trickle down economics advocated by Ronald Reagan and Margaret Thatcher. "A generation later, we got Trump and we got Brexit. The transition in our economy is not an excuse for cutting money from schools and infrastructure. It's the reason why we need to invest in them," he said. The Opposition Leader called for a consensus approach to governing in the mould of Bob Hawke, and promised to work across party lines to find "the maximum we can agree on".