Saving Medicare and creating jobs have been Bill Shorten's key message while touring the outskirts of his home city.
On a wet and windy Melbourne afternoon, the opposition leader visited train manufacturer Bombardier in Dandenong.
"I'm very keen for people to know we can still make things in Australia," Mr Shorten told staff on Tuesday.
While taking the opportunity to sit in a newly-produced E-Class tram, he also addressed some 40 workers who gave him a rousing welcome.
He vowed to promote their work on the national stage and Labor's plan for apprentices.
"I think Australians tend to think that our manufacturing days were in the past, and they've also got a very smoke-stack view of it, you know, why on earth would young people want to go into manufacturing," Mr Shorten said.
Earlier, the Labor leader visited the Monash Medical Centre, touring the children's ward where parents didn't have a bad word for the man who is a week-and-a-half away from possibly being Australia's next prime minister.
Being called "beautifully spoken" is probably a first for an election campaign, but that was the view of Nat Ibrihim, mother of four-year-old Elisabeth who has endured leukaemia for most of her short life.
She also believes Mr Shorten has some "great policies".
The opposition leader continues to campaign hard on the issue of Medicare and how only Labor can save it, even though Prime Minister Malcolm Turnbull has repeatedly said he has no intention of privatising the system.
But the Labor leader accused the prime minister of "deliberately misleading" voters during an at times feisty press conference.
He also dismissed new analysis suggesting house prices would drop four per cent under Labor's negative gearing changes, describing it as "nonsense and rubbish".
Back in the calm of the children's hospital ward Mr Shorten had a long chat with eight-year-old Teagan - who had just been diagnosed with type-1 diabetes - about the toy bear she was hugging and what she might call him.
"Bill," offered one obliging journalist in the pursuing media pack.
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