Labor’s lone wolf: Anthony Albanese embarks on the fight of his life

Is Albanese ready to be prime minister? And, if he is, can he win? On the road with the stubborn, headstrong and sentimental Labor leader

A little over a year ago, Anthony Albanese thought he was about to die. As he drove home in his Toyota sedan on 8 January 2021, a Range Rover on the wrong side of the road ploughed straight into him. Recounting the crash this week, he says: “I thought, this is how it ends.”

We know the story ended differently. The Labor leader lived, but sustained serious injuries. Recovery took time and protracted medical attention – more than he confessed to at the time.

We are starting here because some of Albanese’s close colleagues say that accident picked him up and set him down in a different place. The reminder that life is short was a prompt from the universe: if you want to be prime minister, then best not to die wondering.

Related: Australian Labor ‘will always be better’ than Coalition on health, Anthony Albanese says

Back at the time of the collision, Scott Morrison was airborne on an approval rating north of 60%. With the prime minister in the ascendancy, there were harbingers of internal mischief on the Labor side. One colleague says the crash triggered more than a “life is precious” epiphany – it got the dander up. That trauma disrupted Albanese’s mental cycling between fight or flight.

Some context might explain this. Albanese is from the human school of politicians. He hasn’t cauterised his emotions to survive. He has normal responses to pressure, expectation and risk. Flight in this context was the Labor leader visualising the worst-case scenario: after a career spanning the best part of three decades, failing to beat Morrison, an opponent Albanese neither likes nor respects. There are easier paths in life than visualising that particular career coda in full technicolour on the back of your eyeballs at 3am.

But the car crash, and the physical and mental reset afterwards, settled things. Henceforth no flight. It would be fight. The colleague says after that accident “it became: I am going to show all of you people.” This small inflection, the sprinkle of grit in the anecdote, the sense of bugger all of you, I’m going for it, feels truer to me. Less authorised history, or pre-campaign myth making.

As we drive between Moruya and Mogo on the south coast of New South Wales this week, I pursue Albanese’s own account of the impact of the accident.

He ponders the question briefly before saying the crash wasn’t “a lightbulb moment”. Nothing is ever that simple. He insists his core strategy to try to unseat Morrison was already locked and loaded, and he was already on a self-improvement path.

But he says the collision sharpened his thinking.

“It made me more determined.”

‘I feel a great responsibility’

As we enter the federal election year, there are two questions to ask about Labor. The first is: does Albanese want to win? Is he battle-ready? The second is: can Labor win? Is there a viable pathway to victory when the election rout in 2019 fattened the government’s margins – particularly in Queensland, the state that generally determines the national government?

Dealing with each in turn, colleagues say Albanese is currently in the best mental and rhetorical shape of his leadership. But they also say there is still a way to go. Polls tell us there’s a chunk of voters who have no fixed view about the Labor leader. Out and about in the civilian world beyond politics and the media, I hear the persistent refrain that Albanese is not visible enough. Covid creates its own hierarchy of visibility – premiers first, Morrison next and Albanese after that. The lack of bandwidth makes it tough to introduce yourself to people who don’t know who you are.

But the fierce competition for attention has given the Labor leader time to attend to project optimisation. As Morrison lost altitude over the past 12 months, mired in controversy over the vaccination “strollout”, battling the Brittany Higgins furore and the consequences of the Delta wave, Albanese lost more than 10kgs.

Bit by bit, as weeks ebbed into months, the wardrobe got sharper. New suits. Old favourites tailored to fit. He waffled less. He also took the hardest decision of his leadership: what Labor would do about climate policy.

What is happening substantively is always more important than parsing a makeover. But in Albanese’s case, project optimisation is the most visible manifestation of his hunger for the win. Albanese’s new glasses aren’t in the least bit interesting. The fact he’s actually agreed to wear them is.

If you know Albanese, it’s hard to imagine how on earth he consented to the optimisation. Some ambitious politicians enter public life wanting to know how to be the product. This cohort bends into optimal shape without a moment’s hesitation. But Albanese can be stubborn, headstrong and sentimental. He’s an old dog for a hard road, not a soul-selling cynic, or a political ingenue in search of a svengali.

As he told the National Press Club this week, his first political campaign was at the age of 12. He won it. He’s already been the chief tactician in a minority parliament, and a confidante of two prime ministers. He’s already risen to the rank of deputy prime minister. Then there’s the person. Albanese, being human, is a ball of contradictions. He’s Labor, master of an institution, a relentless networker – and a lone wolf. He’s both everywhere, and one step removed. His temperament is both soft and spiky. This complexity is a barrier to malleability.

His default position on zhooshing would be: stop bothering me with this cosmetic bollocks, I know how to win. Trying to tweak him would be fraught for any backroom attempting it. “I’m not manageable,” he offers from the front seat of the car. This is a humblebrag, obviously. But it’s true in the way he means it. What he’s saying is none of this would be happening if he wasn’t absolutely convinced the metamorphosis matters, to the voters, to the colleagues. Perhaps to himself. Perhaps, fundamentally, this is a test of self-discipline, or resolve.

Putting himself firmly in the driver’s seat of project optimisation is also important from an explanatory perspective. If Labor is seeking to beat Morrison by telling voters Albanese is the real deal, it’s best not to subject him to the full Queer Eye treatment.

If he looks like he’s been done over by a migratory flock of advertising gurus and image consultants, then Labor is lurching towards a repeat episode of “Real Julia” – an abject disaster. It would reinforce the claim Morrison intends to hammer over the coming months. Albanese isn’t authentic – he’s a left-wing machine man, Bernie Sanders in a better wardrobe, this socialist will confiscate your property and smother your aspirations. Labor is a risk.

Albanese presents self-improvement as an enduring trait rather than a new affectation, part of his personal continuum. Tom Uren, his political mentor and father figure, told him to learn something new, and grow as a person, every day. Right now he’s learning how to comport himself like an alternative prime minister. His team is helping, but Albanese says there’s no outside advice. “Have I had any speech therapies or what have you? Absolutely not. I’m conscious, for example, about saying Aust-ray-lia. I’m conscious about that. But that’s me.”

After he makes a major speech, he watches back to consider what he could have done better. His inner sanctum includes people he trusts enough to ask for scaffolding – whether it’s a candid performance review, or the wordless prompt of a staffer positioned behind a television camera to give him an line cue.

“People know what I need,” he says. “Tim Gartrell (chief of staff) was my first campaign director in 1996. Jeff Singleton (deputy chief of staff) has worked for me for 20 years. Alex Sanchez (senior economics adviser) was in my tute at Sydney University. Jenny Mason (senior adviser) was on Sydney University’s student representative council with me and Paul Fletcher in 1993. There are people who are lifelong supporters, who get me, who know me, and that gives me comfort.”

I mention a fascinating profile I read a few years back about Barack Obama. It lingered in my mind because it shared steps Obama had taken to simplify mundane choices so he could focus on the complexities of campaigning and holding office. Reducing his wardrobe to only two suit colours was one example. Does he have a version of this? Albanese says he’s organised in his life to the point where people suspect he’s obsessive. He thinks more and says: “I never put anything off that can be done immediately.” There are two new suits. Not ten. “I wear less different colours. It’s simpler when there’s not much time – white, light blue or dark blue shirts, largely, but not always.”

Simplifying and streamlining also extends to articulating his core motivations. He can enunciate those in two sentences.

“I appreciate the incredible privilege and honour that I have of leading the Labor party. I feel a great responsibility to get Labor across the line because I think the country needs a Labor government.”

Can Labor win?

Albanese is doing a street walk in Mogo, in the electorate of Gilmore. It’s a Labor-held seat, but it’s in play. High-profile state Liberal Andrew Constance will try to snatch it.

As we weave in and out of the shops chosen by the advancers – that old campaign standard – I find myself wondering whether the major parties should simplify things for them and for us by producing the coming election on a sound stage at Fox Studios, with green screen and a reality show cast recruited from marginal seats. It would be no more artificial than this. But then John James, a retired concreter in a blue chesty Bonds singlet with a Rabbitohs tattoo on his arm, wanders into Albanese’s campaign practice lap, piercing my whimsy.

Given Albanese often says his mum raised him with three great faiths, the Catholic church, the Labor party and South Sydney Football Club, the arrival of James – who feels more accidental than staged – is a good omen. Albanese looks delighted. The two men have an amiable yack before the caravan rolls into an adjacent hairdresser.

Back out on the street, James asks us whether he is going to be on television. In the ensuing back and forth with the stragglers, the concreter volunteers that he feels sorry for Morrison. Why sorry, we wonder? The prime minister has had the bushfires to deal with, then the pandemic. The retiree says everyone is whingeing, but pandemics and bushfires aren’t Morrison’s fault. What about Albanese, one reporter asks? A side step follows. “Mate, I don’t follow politics that much,” he says. “I’m not into it, I don’t argue about it, I don’t go to church, I don’t follow politics, I mind my own business and stay happy.”

Now obviously this is just one person, vox popped on one main street, in one Australian region. We haven’t just cracked the secret code that predicts the federal election outcome. But the cameo is memorable. Sticking with my sound stage whimsy, James looks like he’s just wandered out of a separate casting call for the quiet Australians. He’s exactly the voter Morrison actively recruits.

In 2019, the year he beat Bill Shorten, the prime minister charted his pathway to victory just two hours up the road at the Shoalhaven Heads Hotel. He spent a break decanting the feelings of his quiet Australians over fish and chips. Without committing himself, our retiree in Mogo has just articulated an apologia for the devil you know. If James represents a default view of disengaged voters who decide election outcomes – poor old PM – not really his fault right – bloody hell people are hard to please – Morrison’s pitch will work. Labor could easily fall short.

Morrison has lost a lot of lustre during the past 12 months, particularly in the closing months of last year, and voters are cranky after freedom summer became the Omicron summer. The Coalition’s base is split about vaccines, mandates, and handouts. That, and the unforced errors, makes it hard for Morrison to recline comfortably into incumbency and campaign on his record during the pandemic. He will pivot to the economy and risk.

For his part, Albanese has spent the summer traipsing through cane fields and speaking to tourism operators up and down the Queensland coast. The atmosphere for Labor north of the Tweed feels less negative. One government MP characterises the major party arm-wrestle in the state as “alive, but tight”. He says: “We’d lose if the election was now, but it’s not now. It’s down the track, so it’s still there to be won.”

Courtesy of the rout in 2019, the Coalition has insurance. It enjoys a substantial buffer in the state. Most government-held seats are held by large margins. When you look at the electoral map, a truism quickly emerges – to secure majority government, Labor needs to pick up seats in Queensland, and given most elections aren’t landslides, all the gains will be hardscrabble. Labor could easily lose the election in Queensland, which explains Albanese’s travel itinerary.

Rather than spreading finite resources too thinly, Labor is targeting three Coalition-held seats in Queensland: Longman (3% margin), Flynn (8.7%) and Leichhardt (4.2%). Brisbane (4.9%) is also in the mix. Strategists are crossing their fingers Clive Palmer makes good on a threat to preference against sitting members. The LNP is worried about that eventuality. Given Labor holds such a small amount of territory in Queensland, an orchestrated up yours to incumbents could help.

Looking at the national picture, Labor hopes to pick up three seats in Western Australia. (Strategists familiar with the terrain think two is more realistic). Eyes are also on Boothby in South Australia (marginal, but always hard), the northern Tasmanian seats of Bass and Braddon (always volatile), and Chisholm in Victoria. Some think Casey could be in the mix given the retirement of Liberal and former House speaker Tony Smith. New South Wales – where the party machines are currently stretched by a run of state byelections – is looking like a mixed bag for both sides. Labor could lose Gilmore, for example, but pick up the Sydney seat of Reid. The National party is hunting Labor-held seats in the Hunter Valley. Labor would like to make gains on the Central Coast.

The pathway to minority government, or to victory, requires a lot of things to go right. It assumes that a national pitch resonates at a time when Australia’s politics have assumed a pre-federation sensibility because of the ascendancy of the premiers. It also assumes voters are interested in a conversation about the future when managing here and now feels hard enough. Of course if voters are sick of Morrison and the Coalition, if the prime minister’s time is up, then the minute seat-by-seat calculations I’ve just shared falls away because a swing takes him out.

I ask Albanese, assuming this is a hardscrabble rather than an “it’s time” election, whether there is any possible pathway to victory if Labor can’t win additional seats in Queensland. I struggle to see one. “We will get gains in Queensland,” he says. With those big government margins? “Longman isn’t a big margin,” he says. “Flynn is a big margin, but I am confident about Flynn. We’ll try in Leichhardt. Brisbane, I think, is a real goer.

“There’s a potential tipping point here for Morrison. But it is always a challenge for Labor to form government. We’ve formed government from opposition three times since the second world war.

“It’s a mountain to climb, but I’m determined to climb it.”