At the conclusion of last week’s Labor national conference, Nine Newspapers’ Rob Harris made Anthony Albanese’s frustrations clear.

Albanese appeared in the media room of the conference on the final day to complain about the media’s coverage of Ed Husic’s dissent.

As Harris reported, Albanese said:

“I think I know the Labor Party better than whoever you’ve been speaking to, and I don’t even know who they are,” he snapped, determined to frame Husic as a loner without any institutional backing. 

“Four hundred delegates, and he couldn’t find a seconder.”

Harris was right to report the comments. It’s important that people understand the frustrations of their leaders, and in controlling his caucus, Albanese often makes the mistake he can also control the media by unilaterally stating something is off the record without journalist agreement.

But the comments also point to where Albanese is going wrong.

In controlling his caucus, confusing a lack of dissent for the right way, Albanese seems to think he should also control how people feel. 

This is ironic for a number of reasons, not least because Albanese is famously an emotional player. His emotions don’t just hum under the surface, they vibrate. 

He’s can not hide his anger, displeasure, joy or satisfaction. You don’t need to hear Albanese speak to know what’s he is thinking – you feel it as soon as he enters a room.

But the “wide but shallow” victory, as Wayne Swan described the 2022 election win, has Albanese convinced his way is the right way.

After all, he defied expectations to not only hold Labor together after 2019, but won the 2022 election in a landslide after most commentators had written him off. 

As we have discussed before, that gives Albanese an authority that few leaders have held – and he’s made the mistake of thinking that makes him right.

He has not only misread the room at conference, he’s misread the nation, because if Labor doesn’t do populist progressive policy, then One Nation will continue to ride high by offering populist conservative policy. 

Pauline Hanson has won her support cheaply. She’s harvested the grievances Albanese and his cowed caucus refuse to name and now she’s reaping in that anger. 

One Nation is polling in the 20s in Victoria months out from an election, without even a state political leader. It doesn’t need one. 

Hanson, who Albanese barely names let alone fights, is enough to attract those who are tired of Labor not having the fights that matter.

In the absence of anything to believe in, people turn to anger and being told they’re right. Again, the fight doesn’t go away just because someone doesn’t want to have it, it just goes elsewhere.

People are looking for radical change. Hanson is offering that. 

It’s terrible, hurtful and divisive and it will solve nothing, but it’s radical and it pretends it’s different. 

Albanese can’t even do that, convinced that Labor must continue offering more of the same.

And so he complains that one dissenter out of 400 delegates should not be news, but does not consider why 399 people not dissenting is not good news to the people he should be serving. 

In the hunger for radical change is opportunity. Labor has the opportunity to embrace a different way of doing things, but it won’t. 

And before there are complaints that this focuses too much on Albanese and not the party as a whole, do not underestimate the power Albanese currently holds over the party’s direction. 

You’ll see some changes in the near future – Paul Erickson and the national executive will probably become more involved in the party’s messaging, and honing election ready attacks. But all the good comms in the world won’t matter if you’re leader isn’t ready for the fight.

Albanese can’t control how people feel, and they feel like their life is slipping away from them. 

The national mood can be summed up as ‘for God’s sake do something’, but that is not Albanese’s strength. His strength is in the not doing and explaining why that’s best for you.

Hanson and his competitors, meanwhile, hold circus acts down the street and in the absence of action, doing anything can look like a show. 

And that’s where we are now.

Victoria is the first test and it’s one Labor is already nervous over, even away from the leadership change. 

At the moment, Albanese can barely say Hanson’s name. Eventually, he’s going to have to enter the fight. 

His control over the cowards in his caucus does not make him match fit for winning an election. He’d be well advised to listen to those inside the tent urging him to enter the arena with some equal heft to his opponents.

Those offering this advice include Swan, who last month had a message for any who wished to listen, about the dangers of “antiseptic centrism”.

“It drains progressive politics of its purpose and makes centre-left parties look like managers of the existing order,” he said.

“Working-class communities need a voice that not only sounds like theirs, but delivers on their needs. We need to take the rhetorical fight right up to the populist right and reveal them for the disingenuous, false prophets that they are.”