It can't be easy complimenting a man you've worked months to defeat.
Opposition Leader Bill Shorten had little choice on Tuesday when he took his campaign pitch to the youth through ABC's Triple J.
Dedicating 15 minutes to the nightly current affairs program Hack, his interview concluded with a challenge many campaigning politicians would run a mile from.
"Can you name three good qualities about Malcolm Turnbull?"
The opposition leader quickly acknowledged the prime minister was articulate, before switching to two attributes that could prove troublesome for Mr Turnbull.
"He's a republican and he believes in marriage equality," Mr Shorten said.
The prime minister has been criticised for a lacklustre commitment to those issues since grabbing the nation's top job, despite his staunch support in the past.
But the bulk of the interview was about Mr Shorten, who was accused of a backflip on scrapping the GST on tampons after his party supported the move last year.
Blaming the states, he said federal Labor had no capacity to remove the tax.
He was also thrown some yes or no questions.
It's a task that makes leaders cringe, but Mr Shorten got through most with simple answers.
"Yes, sometimes, no," to whether he wrote his own `zingers' and "yes" to backing same-sex marriage.
"No" to whether he was scared of a rat offered up as a Chaser prank earlier in his campaign, and again to stopping coal mining.
But things got a bit more complicated when he was asked whether Labor would protect penalty rates even if the Fair Work Commission recommended they be cut.
"That's not right the question," the Labor leader said, adding it would be a mistake to overrule the independent umpire.
He also defended his party's decision not to push for a lowering of the voting age to 16, saying when he floated the idea he wasn't greeted with "overwhelming excitement".
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