A mother holding her sick baby in hospital might have seemed the perfect audience for Bill Shorten to spruik his hospital funding boost.
It wasn't.
"Are they going to have to pay for this?" concerned mother Judith Fox asked the opposition leader, pointing at her 11-month-old daughter Gemma who'd just had surgery for a cleft palate.
"I just think there's lots of money happening, and they'll suffer."
Mr Shorten visited the children's ward at Townsville Hospital on Sunday where he announced an extra $2 billion for public hospitals.
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He insisted spending needed to be sensible.
"We can't do everything, I know that," he told Ms Fox, while pointing to the billions Prime Minister Malcolm Turnbull proposed to spend on company tax cuts.
But again, wrong audience.
"Big company tax cuts put the money back into the economy - it goes around," Ms Fox later told reporters, admitting she will vote Liberal on July 2.
It wasn't all bad news for Mr Shorten, with baby Gemma taking a shine to the Labor leader, clapping and squealing as he held her in his lap.
"I've never seen this side of her," her mother said.
He also won over Cairns mum Rebecca Graham, whose baby Imogen is recovering from meningitis.
"Bill's got my vote," she told reporters.
"I think the Liberals are spending more money than Labor at this stage."
Mr Shorten has pledged to restore the previous Labor government's 2011 funding agreement with the states and territories, but only for four years.
He's conceded he won't be able to put back the $57 billion he's long accused the coalition of cutting from public hospitals to 2024/25.
"We can't replace every dollar that the Liberals have taken out of the system," he told reporters.
