Anthony Albanese shows he’s a big-picture empath – more like Hawke than Rudd or Gillard | Katharine Murphy

It's long forgotten now, but Anthony Albanese arrived in federal politics in 1996 after a campaign some commentators didn't think he could win.

While Grayndler was an otherwise safe Labor seat, aircraft noise was the big issue in Sydney's inner west and the young Labor activist was up against a candidate from the No Aircraft Noise party. Tim Gartrell ran the 1996 campaign, and because Albanese likes concentric circles, he coaxed Gartrell back to run his office when he took the opposition leadership.

My purpose this weekend isn't to revisit ancient history, but to situate us in a moment in time. That year, the tide went out on the Hawke-Keating government.

People tend to think of Albanese as a veteran of the Rudd-Gillard era, and of course he is. But his sensibility and political identity was formed in the Hawke-Keating period. As a politician, Albanese has more in common with someone like Kim Beazley than Kevin Rudd. Rudd was technocratic, Gillard was detail orientated and managerial, and Albanese is big picture empath.

Albanese took me back to his formative period in Makassar this week when he invoked one of Hawke's conventions. The prime minister declined to answer questions about the Reserve Bank's decision to increase the cash rate by 50 basis points, citing Hawke's rule about not answering questions on domestic matters while travelling overseas.

If you watch politics closely, you'll know Albanese has been setting up various feedback loops, echoes and homages to Hawke on his path to the prime ministership. In these opening weeks of his prime ministership, Albanese is also drawing on Labor songlines from the 1980s and 1990s to tell the story of the country he leads - from stressing the importance of domestic consensus, to the shibboleth that Australia seeks its security in Asia as part of a shared region.

Just before he invoked the Hawke convention in Makassar, I watched the new prime minister deliver a speech in a packed lecture theatre at Hasanuddin University. Faculty, alumni and current students had gathered to listen to the first Australian prime minister ever to visit the city.