Classroom by classroom, factory floor by factory floor, Bill Shorten is pitching for votes.
The Labor leader says that after 2033 days in the job, he still loves getting out and talking to real people.
"I like people," he told Melbourne's Nova 100 radio station on Tuesday morning.
"I can't speak for the Liberals. They always look like they've come from another planet and they've found the human race very curious at election time."
He got the chance to show his own curiosity in his fellow humans in Geelong where he spoke with medical students headed for rural placements and former auto industry workers now making top-end carbon fibre wheels.
At Deakin University's medical school Mr Shorten chatted with a quintet of students learning how to treat children having asthma attacks, by practising with child dummies that can simulate coughing, wheezing and other respiratory distress.
The skills they're learning at the Geelong campus will soon be taken into the real world when they take up placements with doctors in rural towns, gaining experience in small hospitals.
"They get to see everything, whether it's women's or children's or mental health, patients that are requiring surgery," lecturer Kellie Britt told AAP.
The opportunity is part of what's making Deakin's medical program very popular, with more than 4000 applications received for the 150 first-year student positions available this year.
Flanked by Labor's candidate for Corangamite, Libby Coker, and sitting member for Corio Richard Marles, Mr Shorten also announced $105 million for hospitals in the Geelong region, including the city's first women's and children's hospital.
Corangamite is held by Liberal Sarah Henderson but after a redistribution is now notionally Labor, with a super-slim margin of 0.03 per cent.
Not everyone was buying Labor's message, with student Catrina Sturmberg quizzing senior frontbencher Penny Wong over the party's plans to open up the coal seam gas resources in Queensland's Galilee Basin.
She wasn't happy with the senator's non-response.
"I don't really expect much more from politicians, to be honest," she told reporters.
"You vote to keep the worst party out, right?"
Just up the hill from the medical school, Mr Shorten met workers at advanced manufacturing business Carbon Revolution - which former prime minister Malcolm Turnbull toured during the 2016 election campaign.
The company makes carbon fibre wheels for Ferraris, Mustang GTs and other top-of-the-range vehicles, and employs 270 people including many picked up from car factories when Australian production ended.
"I'm fascinated by the idea that other countries might be cutting up your wheels to see if they can reverse engineer your brain power," Mr Shorten said to the workers.
But on the big question that fascinated Nova's listeners - would he win the election? - Mr Shorten equivocated.
"I hope so. Probably. Maybe."
