Combating poverty and boosting equality of opportunity is a core economic strategy, Bill Shorten says, promising a major focus on “unlocking the potential” of Australians if Labor wins on 18 May.

The Labor leader has avoided making an explicit commitment pre-election to increase the Newstart allowance, instead promising a review post election.

But a range of groups, from welfare organisations to the Business Council of Australia, say the Newstart payment – which equates to $38.98 a day for a single person – hasn’t kept up with national living standards for more than a quarter of a century. In an interview with Guardian Australia, Shorten says he has not committed to a root and branch review “to keep Newstart the way it is, or lower it”.

The Labor leader says poverty is the clearest example of inequality in Australian society. “Poverty wastes people, it wastes opportunity,” Shorten says.

“April was the fifth anniversary of the passing of my mother. She was born in 1935. She came from a very poor family. She was the first in her family to go to university. She had to take the teacher’s scholarship, because there were three others and the family had no money.

“She always wanted to do law and did as a mature-aged student. In her 50s she topped the Monash University law school while I was there. She was never bitter, but she could have been a high court judge as far as I am concerned, she was a mind of such acuity and cleverness.

Equality is an economic strategy because it unlocks the potential of all 25 million Australians

“My father left school at 14 and became a fitter. He didn’t want to be at school. Both my parents were far smarter than the opportunities they had.

“This is what I think about poverty: why waste the potential of people? You never know what you’ve got going in society unless you give people a chance.”

Asked what a Labor government would do to engage with the cohort of Australians languishing in poverty, and improve their circumstances, Shorten says he is determined to “look after women who go through divorces – that’s an impoverishing experience”.

He says it is important to give older people dislocated by change and redundancy a chance to get a job in their 50s and 60s, “because that’s an impoverishing thing”.

Shorten says Labor intends to ensure Indigenous children get the same treatment as white children, and ensure people with disabilities “don’t get defined purely by their disability, we need to give them some support so they can participate”.

He says more investment in mental health is critical because “you never know when someone’s going along well, but one bump off the rails and they can’t get back on”.

“Most problems in society come from a lack of money and a lack of power. It’s got to be ability, not age or gender or skin colour. We should have a proper safety net, a proper education system.

“Your income levels should not determine your chances of surviving cancer.

“Equality is an economic strategy because it unlocks the potential of all 25 million Australians.

“Scott Morrison thinks equality means dragging someone else down. I take a different view. The Morrison theory of life is everyone needs to pull themselves up by their bootstraps – if you have a go you get a go.”

Morrison, when he called the federal election, was asked a question about how he would define fairness. “I believe in a fair go for those who have a go, and what that means is part of the promise that we all keep as Australians is that we make a contribution and don’t seek to take one,” the prime minister said.

Shorten says that world view is deficient, because it fails to acknowledge the reality that people aren’t born with equality of opportunity.

While Morrison conceives of fairness as an expression of individual agency, of lifting up by the bootstraps, “my theory of equality recognises that not everyone owns a pair of shoes”, Shorten says.

Reporting in this series is supported by VivCourt through the Guardian Civic Journalism Trust