PM inspires while spruiking tax cuts

Skipping university in search of inspiration probably wouldn't be recommended by the prime minister.

Even if that inspiration is the PM himself.

But 19-year-old Jack Hains reckons meeting Malcolm Turnbull will score him better results in his upcoming university exams.

The law and business student spent a fruitless three hours on Monday driving around trying to find the prime minister, who was in Brisbane kicking off his election campaign.

The teenager's fortune changed on Tuesday, when he saw online that Mr Turnbull would be at a hardware store in the Logan suburb of Shailer Park.

Mr Hains raced to meet him and secured a few minutes of one-on-one time, which he says will inspire him to work hard.

"He was such a successful young person," he told AAP after meeting the prime minister.

"As a student, I'm looking for motivation. I thought meeting him, with exams coming up, I might have some sort of inspiration and study harder."

From inspiration to innovation, Mr Turnbull spent the second half of his second day campaigning at Holy Spirit Northside Private Hospital getting hands-on with an orthopaedic robot, which is expected to almost eliminate mistakes in joint replacement surgery.

The prime minister hammered in a fake hip replacement before using a launch of the world-first machine to spruik his government's focus on innovation.

"Here we are, seeing the importance of innovation and its practical application," he told reporters.

The hospital is in the marginal Labor seat of Lilley, held by former treasurer Wayne Swan.

Mr Swan turned up at the hospital as the prime minister and media were leaving, but refused to answer questions about Labor's asylum seeker policy.

Opposition leader Bill Shorten has played down reports of internal tensions over the policy while committing his party to retaining offshore detention and boat turnbacks.

Earlier, Mr Turnbull was keen to talk company tax cuts and his plan to boost the turnover threshold for small businesses from $2 million to $10 million.

The prime minister met local business owners at a Mitre 10 hardware store in the seat of Forde - held by 4.4 points by Liberal MP Bert van Manen.

Its annual turnover is $3.2 million, meaning it would benefit from the small business changes revealed in last week's federal budget.

"We're backing you right up to the hilt," Mr Turnbull told the collection of small business owners.