Bill Shorten will take questions from swing voters in a Brisbane town hall meeting tonight as the opposition swings into election campaigning mode.
The Labor leader will address 150 people identified by polling company Galaxy as swinging voters at the Redcliffe RSL. The venue is in the Brisbane seat of Petrie, which fell to the Coalition in the 2013 election but is held by the wafer-thin margin of 0.5%.
Shorten has held similar “people’s forums” across the country throughout the year, but this is the first to be televised, and the first since the prime minister, Malcolm Turnbull, paved the way for a double dissolution election on 2 July by recalling parliament and bringing forward the budget.
“I think it’s really important to get out and talk to listen to people. I’m talking to Brisbane people, I’m talking to Queenslanders about our education policies. Because education matters,” Shorten told reporters on Thursday morning.
“A lot of Australians feel that their individual involvement in politics isn’t worth doing because they feel they can’t change things. I’m not afraid of meeting people. I don’t need to go to sanitised events where the Liberal party tick off who can come and can’t. Galaxy have picked a whole lot of undecided voters.
“I don’t expect every answer I will give them will be the answer they want to hear. But people are making assessments about what is the character of the leader or the person who wishes to lead a government. I’m prepared to demonstrate I will work hard, answer their questions honestly. I won’t get everything done in the way everyone wants. But no-one will have any doubt what I say is what I mean,” Shorten said.
Labor on Wednesday launched its campaign on public schools, setting up education funding as a key election issue.
The launch comes shortly after Turnbull floated the idea to let states levy their own income taxes in order to pay for public schools. The proposal was dropped following a backlash from state and territory leaders.
The education minister, Simon Birmingham, said Labor was “running a scare campaign” on the Coalition’s education policy.
