Most of the time, it can be difficult to differentiate LNP MP Ted O’Brien from a beige wall.

A persistent underachiever, he has nevertheless proved that being among the last standing can still overcome mediocrity.

But desperate times create desperate measures, and O’Brien, having reached a career high as deputy Liberal leader and shadow treasurer under the short-lived Ley Liberal rule, has held on to a shadow bench position purely by being one of the more forgettable Queenslanders.

So it wasn’t a surprise to see O’Brien attempt to recapture some sort of personality through a National Press club Address – the last time he held one, it was to reset the Coalition’s economic policy through the lens of “Jess” the average Australian voter the LNP was desperate to capture.

Jess was never mentioned again following that Press Club speech. We hope she’s living her best life somewhere.

Much of what O’Brien yapped on about on Wednesday was a beige imitation of where he thinks his party is positioned on issues. What Australia is about through the eyes of a middle-aged beige man who has spent most of his career as a big fish in a small pond and who has mistaken confidence and fitting the mould for ability and competence.

But towards the very end, just as everyone was about to find something more productive to do and nod off, Nine’s Andrew Probyn roused O’Brien into finding a personality. Probyn wanted to know what O’Brien made of One Nation preference deals, given Pauline Hanson’s calls for a monoculture (which is a complete furphy of a concept from the get-go) and the struggles of O’Brien’s leader Angus Taylor to articulate whether he agrees with it or not.

Pushed by Probyn, O’Brien got to the heart of what drives him in politics:

“Let me be very clear. Our objective is to save this country from a very bad Labor government, and that is something I take very seriously. That’s what gets me fired up. This country is going the wrong direction, and I’m fighting for it, and I believe the Coalition is the only party, the only group that can save the country, which means our No.1 job from a political perspective is to maximise our primary vote,” he said.

“That’s what I’m interested in, because the only way this country is going to be saved from this socialist mob that is getting us poorer by the day is through a Coalition government. So my view very staunchly is we go out there and we maximise the vote of the Coalition, that’s our job.”

Is the socialism in the room with us now?

Beyond the obvious joke that modest tax reform and slightly increased subsidies for privatised services is about as socialist as Milton Friedman’s underpants, O’Brien’s instinctual answer also points to just how out of depth most Australian politicians are when it comes to meeting this obvious inflection moment.

Whether they recognise it or not, Australians like socialism. They don’t tend to like the term after decades of propaganda, but by and large, they want public services, they want universal health and education, they don’t like monopolies, they want government assistance and they would tell you they believe in a fair go.

O’Brien’s predecessors, helped along by a Labor Party that saw its role more as the destroyer of the Greens and defender of the market, rather than any socialist workers’ party, have successfully convinced Australians that socialism is any sort of tax reform that might slightly increase the tax burden on the wealthy.

That makes dissing socialism, or any sort of progressive reform, exceptionally easy – after all, most Australians are conditioned to think it is taking something from you, rather than giving something to most.

But it is also telling how little Labor has sought to echo the success of open progressives, like Zohran Mamdani, who not only doesn’t shy away from a socialist label, he defends it.

Mamdani’s picks for New York House primaries have cruised to victory. They include Brad Lander, who won a primary against incumbent Dan Goldman in a district with the highest congressional Jewish vote in the US (about 25 per cent) on a platform that included calling a genocide a genocide and wanting an ends to arms shipments with Israel.

The new supporters flocking to One Nation are not so much attracted to the policies but the emotion – and especially the chance to punish the major parties for their inaction in the past few decades, but particularly the past five or so years.

Regular readers of this column will be familiar with the warnings that Labor’s continual march to the right vacated by the Liberals (who have gone further right) will leave voters who have hoped for more disillusioned and angry.

Labor still has time to reverse the flow before it hardens into votes. The Coalition is incapable of meeting this moment. It can’t even defend multiculturalism, despite the damage it knows it is causing itself.

Like the lackey to an ’80s movie bully, it just can’t stop punching itself in the face. O’Brien’s latest refusal to recognise reality is just more proof of that.

But Labor has a small opportunity to show people how government can work when it’s focused on the people, not the bosses. There are some very small signs of some within Labor waking up to reality; all of them would still be petrified of openly championing anything remotely as progressive as actual socialism, but you have to wonder what they’re scared of. Anything that terrifies the O’Briens of the world can only be good for the people.

Amy Remeikis is a contributing editor for The New Daily and chief political analyst for The Australia Institute