Bill Shorten outlines an ambitious first-week agenda as prime minister

Bill Shorten has outlined an ambitious first-week agenda if he becomes prime minister next year.

Opposition Leader Bill Shorten holding a press conference at Parliament House in Canberra. Picture: Kym Smith

Bill Shorten has outlined an ambitious first-week agenda if he becomes prime minister next year but dismissed his unpopularity in the polls, declaring he is liked by the “real people of Australia”.

In his first interview with conservative Sky News commentator Andrew Bolt, the Opposition Leader revealed he had “probably half a dozen things” he wanted to do in his first seven days if he was successful in taking on the top job.

Among them was to hold a kind of summit between employers and workers — something he acknowledged former Labor prime minister Bob Hawke had done before him — and to sit down with indigenous people.

“In the first seven days I’ve probably got half a dozen things. One of them will be for example to get the employers and workers together and saying ‘how do we start working even more cooperatively in the workplace?’” Mr Shorten told The Bolt Report.

“Call it what you want, I say get people together, call it a gathering, a meeting, concert — no it won’t be a concert or a picnic.

“I’m very committed to making sure we sit down with our First Australians and say ‘alright we’ve got to get this right now’. If it’s a process that you never start then you guarantee it’ll never end.”

The prime ministerial hopeful wanted to “break the gridlock on infrastructure” and ask the Coalition to nominate candidates from the business world to sit on the independent statutory body Infrastructure Australia so developments became a “national decision”.

Like employers and workers, he would also “get all the participants in the health system together” to discuss policy.

Mr Shorten blamed the snapshot Australians got of him on the nightly news for his personal popularity rating, which is languishing in Newspoll with a net satisfaction rating of -15 and just 36 per cent of Australians believing he would be a better prime minister than Scott Morrison.

He said he was not worried about being disliked.

“What makes me more tense is letting people down at the next election by not succeeding,” Mr Shorten said.

“When you’re the Opposition Leader you tend to only be on the nightly news for pulling up the government on a mistake so it’s inherently a negative frame.

“I’ve done 75 town hall meetings, anyone can come to them, all over Australia in the last two years. I’ve done hundreds of workplace meetings, I’ve visited many more hospitals than most people and I’ve visited more schools and more universities, I’ve been around to more towns in Australia which is a privilege than many other parliamentarians. When I’m out there with the real people of Australia I get a good reception.”

The federal election is due by May 18.