Albanese is absolutely determined to give the next election his best shot. It won't be enough.

A great deal will happen between now and May 21, 2022, when the next half-Senate ballot absolutely must be held. Scott Morrison might spontaneously self-combust. He may demand, "how good is that?" once too often. His entire ministry could prove completely incompetent or an economic crisis that can be directly linked back to the government, but I doubt it. Labor's problem is, although the Coalition initially took office way back in 2013, it's cycled successively through so many prime ministers and ministers that it looks like a first-term administration. The last time the electorate dispatched one of these was way back in 1932.

Then there's Albanese himself. As a rule, we prefer to vote in younger challengers. It's true Bob Hawke was six months older than Malcolm Fraser, but in 1983 his opponent had been in office nearly a decade. The other exception in the past 60 years was John Howard, who was also five years older than his rival. By the time of the election, however, Albanese will be one of the oldest opposition leaders ever to put themselves forward as a candidate for PM.

That's dangerous, because it offers the whisperers something to work with. For example the coalition had a field day hinting - never directly asserting - that Kim Beazley wasn't fit enough for the job. That's why we're seeing pictures of Albanese pulling on footy boots and charging about like a sports fanatic. Labor identified this critical weak point (age) and is seeking to inoculate the leader by making him look young and energetic. It's working so far: keeping up the pace for the next three years won't be easy.

Which is exactly the problem. Over the next three gruelling years Albanese won't just face challenges from the front; he'll have to convince those behind him that he's the right person to take them to an election. He can probably survive one minor stumble but the minute he makes a big slip; the minute a more plausible rival comes along (and they will), the spotlight will turn. Opposition leadership is always a good story. Plenty of people are willing to brief journalists on the leader's foibles.

So what should Albanese do? Giving up is not an option, precisely because there is no alternative leader ready to step up. In the interim, he's got two tasks.

The first is policy.

There was nothing ideologically wrong with the platform the party took to the last election. The problem was political. It handed too many policy hostages (like scrapping dividend imputation) to the government. Its real problem, however, was the voters Labor ignored. Clive Palmer/Pauline Hanson voters represent an increasingly large proportion of the electorate. Labor can continue to simply dismiss their (valid) concerns if it wants. Doing so consigns the party to perpetual opposition.

It's simple mathematics. Labor needs preferences from somewhere: the easiest group to mine for these are those disillusioned voters who already don't like what the government's doing. Unless the party comes up with a strategy to achieve this it will be wasting its time. It simply won't be able to appeal to enough voters to gain a majority.

Voters don't simply want technocratic change, they want answers to big questions. Like 'growth' and 'immigration'. These concepts don't intersect with the lived experience of an increasingly large number of Australians. Many people don't feel their lives are getting better. The key is to find a sustainable way forward. Doing this will require deeper thinking than junking a couple of unpopular policies, because shuffling money from one pile to another won't provide an answer.

If Albanese really wants to achieve something he needs to completely re-cast what Labor stands for. If he just recasts the old appeal to "the workers" he'll fail. He needs to reach out to the disillusioned voters that abandoned Labor last time. No-one expects the party platform to definitively answer existential questions, or reveal the purpose of life. A reader should, nonetheless, be able to get a pretty good idea of what a party thinks this is by reading its policies. Shorten's didn't - it was all about 'fixes'. Australia needs big ideas.

These will be vital if Labor wants to win in October 2021 or March 2022.

Albanese's second task will be far more personally challenging, because it will be finding someone to replace him and take the party to the election. Someone who can win. If he really wants to build a place in the pantheon of great Australians, he needs to accept that he can't win. What he can do, however, is create a solid platform for a new leader to take over before the next election. He can shape a new party and lay out policies to take the country into the future. He needs to abandon the minutiae of daily politics and concentrate on the future.

Albanese needs to prove he's young by doing more than pulling on football jerseys. Finding new policies and installing a new leader is just what the party needs.