He had been asked through the day if he supported the claim by the Australian Council of Trade Unions for a greater-than-inflation 5.5 per cent rise in the minimum wage.

Each time, he declined to endorse it but did say he didn't want wages to "go backward", implying they should keep pace with price inflation.

On the ABC program, he did not go so far as to say that the government would intervene in any way, if indeed it could.

He painted a picture of an economy under Labor with more intervention to ensure, for example, that casual workers could not undercut the pay of permanent workers in a company. He did not want a "race to the bottom", as he put it, with different groups of workers undercutting the pay of each other.

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He thinks employers will be able to fund higher pay without putting up their prices by increasing productivity (output per worker), and he thinks that can be done by investing in more machinery.

He did not address the question of how productivity could be raised in the short term beyond saying that there would be a "full employment summit", with unions and employers involved, within the first hundred days of a Labor government.

He also said that the fiscal deficit - the excess of government spending over income - could be cut by this increase in productivity.

He also thought that Labor's measures to get more women involved in the economy would raise productivity. He wanted "full economic participation".