Bill Shorten has spent hundreds of hours at town hall meetings talking to small groups and large about anything and everything.
Then there's the countless school fetes, community events and fancy dinners a politician has to attend, not to mention an eight-week long federal election campaign.
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Wake up call for politicians
Australians are dissatisfied with democracy, don't trust politicians or have faith in their ability to fix the economy, new report finds.
So maybe it was a case of overkill that led the 2000 people spoken to as part of the Australian National University's Australian Electoral Study to deliver the most brutal performance review of any leader in the 30 years the study has been asking about characteristics of individual leaders.
Less than ten per cent of the people who participated in the survey said the Labor leader was intelligent or knowledgeable.
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About three times as many people described Malcolm Turnbull in those terms.
Of the nine perceived qualities of political leaders participants were asked about, Mr Shorten ranked higher than the Prime Minister on only one - compassion.
People thought he was less trustworthy, decent, sensible, inspiring or honest than Mr Turnbull.
Just to further emphasise their general lack of enthusiasm for Mr Shorten, fewer people indicated they believed he was capable of strong leadership than Mr Turnbull.
Mr Shorten also has the dubious honour of sharing the lowest individual score of any leader in the past 30 years on any characteristic - only 3.7 per cent of people said they found him an inspiring leader.
He shared this score with Tony Abbott, who attracted this rating after the 2010 election campaign.
But, as they say, it might be a case of "it's not you, it's me".
People's willingness to ascribe positive characteristics to leadership over the past 30 years has been falling, in line with their general disenchantment with politics.
"Until recently Australia's political leaders were elected with a good degree of popularity and support amongst the Australian public. Recent elections, however, have seen a shift with prime ministers elected in spite of low levels of popularity," the study noted.Â
Comparing evaluations of the political leaders over time demonstrates that Kevin Rudd's 2007 election was the last time a newly elected Australian prime minister enjoyed a high level of popularity amongst Australians. The previous three elections have seen Turnbull, Abbott and [Julia] Gillard respectively secure the Parliament despite low levels of popularity, albeit each did so with higher levels of popularity than their opponents who were disliked to a greater extent."
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