Johnathan Thurston’s elegant frame is draped against a shopfront waiting for Bill Shorten. The early morning in Townsville feels about as ambient as an armpit. The sun is only just up but obscured by rain clouds that hang low and trap the humidity. Thurston avoids eye contact with the onlookers and limbers up discreetly. The movement is more dancer than rugby league player.

Shorten arrives with a mildly goofy expression. It’s mainly delight given this tacit endorsement from the retired player is a small coup, because Thurston is royalty in this part of the world. Photographers scramble for positions because the two are about to move, and no one can afford to miss the shot.

Shorten doesn’t look like he would travel fast, but after exchanging pleasantries he rumbles off up the street, setting the pace, with Thurston by his side, moving at a clip, legs a bit stiff, but covering territory quickly.

Facebook Twitter Pinterest Bill Shorten goes for a run with retired rugby league player Johnathan Thurston in Townsville. Photograph: Mike Bowers/The Guardian

As the legs work overtime, so do the eyes. The Labor leader’s hustings instincts are well honed. Shorten’s eyes scan the horizon for incoming en route, which could be brickbats or bouquets. This morning there’s just one woman in a sun hat on the Strand who looks absolutely ropeable, but is actually hollering encouragement. Townsville, politically speaking, is a tough crowd, with fractured loyalties and a high propensity for protest votes, and the contest in Herbert is one Labor wants to win.

Shorten liked distance running as a schoolboy, it improved his confidence during the self-consciousness of adolescence, but fell out of the habit until he won his seat in parliament. The running has become a public signature, but it is something he does for himself. It’s time in his own head and a break from the million demands on his attention. It’s also mental discipline. “I find the hardest thing is putting on your running gear, but once you’ve got the gear on, you’ve got to go,” he says.

I’m not a vindictive personality ... I won’t lead by fear and loathing.

The Labor leader is confident when we meet just before Anzac Day, but he also knows the campaign is about to hit the acceleration point, where the practice runs become the taxing sprints to the finish.

What’s obvious at close quarters is he’s in a different place psychologically to the bulk of the travelling media pack. Scott Morrison says Shorten is looking for a “coronation”, and consequently finds the campaign strictures irritating. That’s not quite right. What he’s looking for is a conversation with the voters as he makes the mental transition from being opposition leader to being a person who could be prime minister by the end of May, which is what the party’s internal polling and public surveys point to.

He doesn’t want to be packaged and distant and robotic – which is the Australian campaign standard. He wants to let things run. He wants this election to be an exercise in expansion, rather than watching every word, and painting by numbers. But the journalists, in combat mode, which is the campaign default, and is certainly the default on the Shorten bus – his reception has been tougher than Morrison’s – are indifferent to the cues, and the atmosphere inside the travelling bubble is heightened.

The expectations on Shorten are huge because he’s the frontrunner. On paper, this is the unlosable election. The Coalition has to gain ground in order to stand still.

Facebook Twitter Pinterest The opposition leader, Bill Shorten, arrives at a Volgren bus facility in the federal seat of Cowan in Perth. Photograph: Stefan Postles/Getty Images

If Shorten loses in three weeks’ time, the reckoning inside Labor will be severe. A loss will be the end of his leadership. A political party that has spent six years gluing itself back together to try to atone for the indulgences of the last period in government will also struggle to absorb that setback, because 2019 is supposed to be victory.

Who will be responsible if Labor loses, I ask Shorten as the rain finally rinses the pent-up autumn heat as we drive through the back blocks of Townsville after one of his events. “Let’s not get too in the weeds on that,” he says. “Let me try and win first.”

He doesn’t want to be presented with the worst-case scenario. Not in the back of a car, by a visiting journalist, three weeks before election day.

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I persist anyway. Who will be responsible? Shorten smiles as he shuts me down. “I haven’t lost yet, so I can’t answer”.

Kicking the tyres of a prime ministership

No political leader wants to countenance losing before an election. But it’s risky, too, for opposition leaders to kick the tyres of their putative prime ministership, given one can quickly be accused of hubris, the cardinal Australian sin. Morrison is intent on framing Shorten as smug and complacent, “measuring the curtains for The Lodge”. But not projecting the future is a silly constraint. People need to know who they are voting for and what an alternative prime minister and government might look like.

The importance of this is reinforced when a local engages me on the sidelines of one of the Townsville events. He’s a swinging voter and interested in politics, but he tells me he’s still on the fence about who he’ll vote for, because he can’t get a grip on either of the major leaders and their offerings. “You hear so many different things,” he tells me. “It’s getting harder to know what’s true.” He has clearer views about Clive Palmer, who is investing a fortune in mounting a political comeback, than he does about either Shorten or Scott Morrison.

Facebook Twitter Pinterest Bill Shorten in Townsville. Photograph: Mike Bowers/The Guardian

With this persistent vacancy in the back of my mind, I seek, over a couple of conversations, to explore some territory of a Shorten prime ministership if that’s the way the voters ultimately land on 18 May. We start by canvassing some basic nuts and bolts. Would there be a night of the long knives in Canberra, a wholesale clear out of departmental heads? Labor is clearly unhappy with the current Treasury boss, Phil Gaetjens, a long time Liberal staffer. Perhaps some change, Shorten suggests, but not “wholesale” change. “I don’t have a list of names.”

It’s hard to put vision into a tweet.

The peace out disposition persists on the more political diplomatic appointments, George Brandis in London and Joe Hockey in Washington. It’s possible they would remain in situ. “I’m not a vindictive personality. I’ve got a great foreign affairs spokesperson and we’ll carefully consider everything. I won’t lead by fear and loathing, and there are good people from all points in Australian politics. No political party has got a monopoly on wisdom. I’ve learned this over 30 years.”

I test the limits by wondering whether Tony Smith, a Liberal Shorten admires for his professionalism, could be invited stay on in the speakership of the House, perhaps as some kind of gesture that politics doesn’t have to be hyper-partisan. This idea is so nuts he hasn’t countenanced it, but he rolls it around in his mind. “I think Tony’s done a good job and I think he’s been the best Speaker of recent times,” he says. “I haven’t thought about this. My first reaction is the Labor party should elect a Speaker from within the ranks of the Labor party.”

Facebook Twitter Pinterest Shorten says Tony Smith, pictured, has been ‘the best Speaker of recent times’.

The first 50 days

Shorten has set priorities for the first 50 days in office. There will be a summit with business and union leaders, not quite Kevin Rudd’s 2020 summit extravaganza where Lachlan Murdoch rubbed shoulders with Cate Blanchett, and featuring a cameo from an ice core from the Antarctic. “I think it’s fair to say we’ll have more set policies and less butcher’s paper if we get elected.”

In Shorten’s head, the opening pow-wow would be an event to help reset the country and bring the institutional forces of the economy together. Also on the 50 days list are reversing penalty rate cuts, taking the first steps towards consultations on an Indigenous voice, getting income tax cuts legislated and unfreezing Medicare items. Internationally, in the opening phase of a prime ministership, he would want to visit New Zealand, Papua New Guinea, Timor-Leste and Indonesia. “I don’t know what sequence, but that’s the countries I would go to.”

Facebook Twitter Pinterest Bill Shorten at a strategy meeting with his staff and Labor president Wayne Swan in Townsville. Photograph: Mike Bowers/The Guardian

Shorten is conscious of high levels of voter disaffection. Anger bubbles everywhere in this election. He has some thoughts about remedying it. He thinks establishing Labor’s promised integrity commission will be a corrective, as will pursuing donations reform. Beyond that, it’s about building bridges. “You’ve got to involve more people in the process. We need a more diverse media. We need more voices in the debate. I think social media provides opportunities to consult with Australians in a constructive way. I think we need to reach out to sensible people in all political parties to see what we can agree on as well as what we disagree on. I think we’ve got to give civil society a voice so it’s not just the big end of town and vested interests.”

I ask him to unpack the point about media diversity. What does this mean? “It means more investment in the ABC. The Guardian serves a purpose. I think the change in media laws, getting rid of the two out of three rule, hasn’t enhanced diversity.” The Turnbull government scrapped the two out of three regulation, which stopped moguls owning newspaper, radio and television stations in the same city, in 2017. Would you reverse it? Shorten thinks that’s impossible. “It’s hard to put Humpty back together again isn’t it?”

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A coach, not a messiah

We talk about leadership. I ask him whether he thinks Australians, at the end of three decades of economic reform, are over presidential leaders peddling grand visions for the country. Shorten says Australia is now too complex, and the issues are too complex, to “rely on a messiah”. Something else is needed. Do we have vision fatigue? “I do think people want a vision for the nation. I think people want us to aim big, but you’ve got to get that through the disintermediation or the dissonance of the media. We live in a digital age. It’s hard to put vision into a tweet.”

Can he define his personal leadership style? “Coach,” he says, emphatic, before I’ve finished the question. “I think leadership is important but you can have different leadership styles. I think the Liberals like a strongman leader. My leadership style is enabling.”

Facebook Twitter Pinterest Bill Shorten, his wife Chloe, son Rupert, daughter Clementine and deputy Labor leader Tanya Plibersek at a Labor volunteers’ rally at the Southern Cross Vocational College in Burwood in Sydney. Photograph: Lukas Coch/AAP

Where would he sit on the spectrum of Labor prime ministers? He warms to this question. “I’ve thought about this,” he says. “A little bit of each. I love Curtin and Australian identity, the foreign policy. Chifley rolled out some grand programs. Whitlam had the big vision and the rounded sense of Australian identity. He was an enabler. Hawke was one of the best communicators of Labor policies and his communication skills are something to aspire to, and his sense of bringing people together. Keating was whiplash precision, forensic and ferocious command of the reform story, the pieces of that. I think Kevin had a connection with people and there’s something there to learn. I think Julia had a good consensus style internally. She was good at making people work together.

“There’s a little bit in all of them that I can learn from.”

A coalition of the willing?

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If Labor wins, and the polls suggest that’s more likely than not, Shorten may not win outright. Given the major party vote is declining and the share of the minor party vote is up, Australians might wake up on 19 May to a minority government. Shorten will certainly not control the Senate. “Your psephological foresight is phenomenal,” he says when I bowl these insights up while we are sitting on a bench outside a hamburger joint in the centre of town.

He’s cheerful despite the backhander, but we are outside because Shorten needs some fresh air. It’s a mystery to me how political leaders endure the enclosed spaces of election campaigns – the hotel rooms with windows that don’t open, pressurised cabins on planes, cars crammed with cops and multi-tasking staff and the fly-in-fly-out sherpas (which at the time of my visit are party president Wayne Swan, frontbencher Jason Clare and Brendan O’Connor, as well as Peter Barron, a legendary Labor fixer, message massager and confidant of leaders since the 1970s, and a key figure in Shorten’s backroom orbit).

Facebook Twitter Pinterest Bill Shorten speaks to the media at a press conference in Darwin. Photograph: Lukas Coch/AAP

The ceaseless stimulation and continuous motion would be unendurable for many people. But this is his natural milieu, and the Labor leader has been tearing around the country, doing the laps from north to south and west during this strange, mildly surly preamble to a campaign that is yet to find any real sense of occasion, or produce anything like a killer moment. Given that the campaign feels stuck, and a bit rote, getting some air can’t hurt. After we sit and talk, we walk and talk, which is a bit unusual for a campaign interview, but it allows him to maintain the schedule.

I persist with minority government. Shorten says he’s pragmatic and used to fighting his way out of corners. He insists there will be no coalitionism with the Greens, no multi-party committees to develop a new climate change policy, which is what Richard Di Natale has already signalled he wants.

Shorten, who at key moments during this period in opposition has insisted Labor stay the course on climate change when the inclination elsewhere was to reposition, contends the Greens “stuffed up climate change in the 43rd parliament [in 2009] by their terms” and he doesn’t intend to repeat that experience. It’s not clear what the next experience will be, but the Labor leader wants it known that it won’t be that.

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Then there’s the Senate, and what it might do to the broader policy agenda, including the big revenue measures such as negative gearing and dividend imputation – the most progressive economic policies in a generation. With the Liberals opposed, and likely crossbenchers expressing mixed views, these reforms face an uncertain path.

Shorten doesn’t want to acknowledge the obvious problem if Labor fails to legislate its program, an eventuality that would punch a massive hole in their fiscals. “Do you think it’s impossible for me to put together a progressive coalition on key issues that will benefit the national interest,” he asks. “I think it is possible.”

If the promised coalition of the willing fails to materialise, then the options will be to keep plugging away, or recalibrate the measures, or dump them. Shorten will be in the same place Kevin Rudd was when he was forced into a do-or-dump decision on the carbon pollution reduction scheme – a decision Rudd fumbled.

Facebook Twitter Pinterest Bill Shorten chats with staff in the corridor of his hotel in Townsville. Photograph: Mike Bowers/The Guardian

So what will it be, I ask him: keep the rejected measures, recalibrate, or drop them? Shorten won’t engage. “That’s a hypothetical and I don’t give up.”

By the time we’ve walked from our bench across the bridge in the direction of a favoured pub, we’ve arrived at wages growth. Given Shorten has made that issue a key element of his election pitch, I ask if he can nominate specific benchmarks against which progress can be measured. He has a list, and the list gives us a segue to labour market regulation.

Will he commit to releasing all of his policy on industrial relations before election day, including where a Labor government would draw the line around industry-wide bargaining? The answer is – sort of. “Brendan O’Connor will have more to say about a couple of areas, including that, but some of the detail can only come after consultation in government.”

Facebook Twitter Pinterest Bill Shorten arriving to launch Labor’s policy to lift the equality of Australian women during a visit to the Queen Victoria Women’s Centre in Melbourne. Photograph: Darren England/AAP

Shorten says the incipient huffing and puffing from business about the return of union militancy is overblown. “For businesses worried about some outbreak in industrial militancy, that’s not our plan. We don’t share that view. Union membership is in the low teens, workplaces are very different to what they were in the 1970s, so I think the concern about massive industrial action is overcooked completely.”

The home stretch

The acceleration to the end of the campaign began on Friday. By Monday, the sprint will be on. There are two leaders’ debates over the course of the coming week, and the continued criss-crossing of the country will culminate in Labor’s official campaign launch next Sunday.

Shorten knows the toughest phase of the campaign remains in front of him. He feels the weight of the task, but he doesn’t feel a need to second-guess his own instincts. In his mind, there is only one way to bring the 2019 pitch home.

He has spent two terms being collaborative, and when necessary, taking political risks, trusting his ability to read the play. This has become his mode of leadership. It’s too late now to shape shift, even if that was a temptation.

There might be safer ways to get there, but Shorten can only visualise one pathway. “When the caravan stops, and all this fuss stops, I have to live with myself.”

Shorten tells me he’s forged his own path to becoming a Labor prime minister, and whether he gets there or not is ultimately down to Australian voters, but there’s only one way to finish this adventure. “We need to be bold,” he says.