Daniel Andrews is spelling out his manifesto on leadership. ''What people want in leaders,'' he says, leaning into the microphone, ''is someone who's honest, someone who works hard, someone who's passionate and committed to doing everything they can to provide the best example, but on from that, to deliver results.''
It is hard to know how much of this his audience is taking in. The front row is looking fidgety, staring at the ceiling, their feet and each other, but this is the nature of newly minted preps sitting on a school hall floor. The sixth-graders at the back are little more focused, the parents who line the walls more so.
Daniel Andrews with his wife Catherine and children (from left) Joseph, Grace and Noah.Credit: Justin McManus
Andrews is speaking at Albany Rise Primary School in Mulgrave, at the assembly to present badges to the school's leaders, and for the 11th consecutive year the state member for Mulgrave is on the stage, congratulatory handshake at the ready.
The room brims with hope and optimism, and for the various leaders of the school it is a moment to treasure. Leadership is the natural theme of the day and with Andrews here it is one that extends beyond the school yard to the rest of the state.
He leads a Labor Party only a seat away from government and ahead in the polls. The man on the platform has every chance of becoming the 48th premier of Victoria if the next 18 months follow the political script of the previous 2½ years.
So it is both pertinent and fascinating to hear his take on what it is to lead. As he tells the students, the qualities people want in leaders are the same everywhere, school or state.
Andrews clearly feels at home here and moves with ease around the school. At the morning tea in the staff room, he catches up with parents who know him or his wife, Catherine, or have connections with their young family of three children. He has lived in the area for more than a decade.
''I'm very proud of the fact that I don't just get chosen by my constituents, I get chosen by my neighbours,'' he says later.
When he was elected leader of the Labor Party after the shock defeat of the Brumby government in November, 2010, he declared he was ''an ordinary suburban husband and father who has been given extraordinary opportunities''. But is this self-effacing assessment right? Do ordinary people from the suburbs lead Australia's oldest political party? And do they become premiers of Victoria?
After several weeks of watching and talking to Andrews and those around him, it is clear he is more than just a suburban boy. Just how much more will determine whether the premiership will be his.
Andrews has probably stayed a few minutes too long at the morning tea after the assembly, and as his car hits traffic on the Monash, it's apparent he'll be late for the next appointment at the opposition rooms in Spring Street. He has enjoyed this morning's grassroots electoral contact, much of which revolves around schools in the area. He's also looking forward to the debutante ball at Wellington College, which is coming up soon.
It is early March, and Victoria has experienced a tumultuous week, with the toppling of Ted Baillieu and the installation of Denis Napthine as Premier.
Andrews shows a high personal regard for his departed opposite number. On the night of the long knives, they met behind the Speaker's chair during a division and he thanked Baillieu for the way he had conducted himself. The relationship, says Andrews, was courteous and civil, ''perhaps even warmer than that, actually''.
Despite this being a political battle, Andrews sees the way the participants behave as important. ''What we do not want is the kind of toxicity that has taken over Canberra to come here,'' he says. ''That doesn't benefit anyone.''
His three children, aged 10, eight and six, ask about his job and what he does as Opposition Leader. He tells them the Premier's not a bad person, he just has bad ideas.
''And that ought to be the way that you approach it,'' he says.
His contact with Napthine has been limited. But the Coalition is clearly hoping the Portland vet is a game-changer, breaking an era of ''do nothing'' government. For Labor, the message must be that things are still the same. ''In many ways they've changed the captain but the team is exactly the same, really,'' says Andrews.
That Labor and Andrews are even considered a chance speaks volumes about what has been achieved. When Labor lost, there was a presumption the party would act like a government in exile and resume internal wars.
This didn't happen and those within the party credit Andrews' leadership.
''We lost the election,'' he says. ''People voted for change.''
There is enthusiasm for Andrews within the party. Former Labor premier Steve Bracks is among those supporters and captures this mood. Bracks says Andrews is extremely capable, well-organised and collegiate, with a good head for policy.
''There's a good chance that the way Victorian Labor is performing and the way he's leading, this will be the first one-term government since 1956 in Victoria,'' says Bracks.
With the bleak outlook for Labor nationally, the prospect of an Andrews government is regarded by many Labor figures as a glimmer of hope for the ALP. ''It's probably the hope of the side, if you look at what's happening around the nation, and I think he represents that hope,'' says Bracks.
Criticism of Andrews relates more to style than substance: the slight slouch he can adopt and the need for him to stand up straight. He can also appear overly fierce and combative, magnified in the tight shots of the television news. In the age of image, these can make or break a leader, especially in opposition, where it is hard to shake off the predictable tag of negativity. While Andrews celebrates his suburban background, he also acknowledges his years in the bush. Like Bracks and John Brumby, his roots are regional Victoria - Wangaratta via an early, eventful childhood in Melbourne.
His parents, Bob and Jan, ran a series of small businesses in Melbourne's north, culminating in a cafe/mixed business in Glenroy. His father had just arrived home after stacking fridges when the phone rang: there had been an explosion at the supermarket next door, taking out the cafe.
Suddenly, the family had nothing. ''To go from being pretty successful to all of sudden, through no fault of your own, having nothing, that I think gives you a great insight into how tough it is for a lot of people,'' says Andrews ''It gives you, from a very early age, a clear insight that life's not always fair.''
His parents tried to shield Andrews, then in grade 1 or 2, and his younger sister, Cynthia. He looks back on the experience - and his parents' reaction - as formative. They picked themselves up and rebuilt the business, before selling it. His father was then offered a job as the Don smallgoods rep in north-east Victoria. ''I'm very proud to think that they both, my mother and father, might have gone a different way, might have given up and thrown their hands in the air and said, 'Well, none of this is our fault.' But they didn't do that.''
The new family life in Wangaratta was a perfect fit. Andrews ''couldn't have been happier to have grown up in a town like Wang''.
Their house was near the golf course and, with a set of old clubs given to him by his uncle, Andrews began a lifelong love affair with the game. For him, there is a therapeutic quality to it: he has been told that without a club in his hand at some point during the week, he gets in a bad mood.
Andrews finds it hard to pinpoint when politics emerged as an interest. His secondary schooling at Galen Catholic College in Wangaratta was in the Hawke-Keating era, a busy government, he says, that knew what it stood for. His parents were strong Labor people but not members of the party.
Andrews' first attempt at politics was at Monash University, where he was studying politics and classics and living at the Catholic Mannix College. He successfully ran for the post of secretary of the Mannix College Student Society; previous occupants were usually the strongest performers of the college football team.
''Let's just say I out-campaigned a number of people and brought a proper disciplined campaign to that election that had not been there previously,'' he says.
He steered clear of student politics, but when he left uni he got involved in Young Labor and worked for federal Labor MP Alan Griffin in the seat of Bruce. He did the Melbourne-Canberra run for three years and, after marrying in 1998, secured a job at ALP head office that eventually led to his becoming state assistant secretary.
He won the seat of Mulgrave in 2002 and, at 30, his potential was immediately recognised with a job as a parliamentary secretary. He was a minister at 34 and a year later took on the toughest of state ministries, health. He impressed with his command of his portfolio, although a mark against him was the revelation that hospitals had been manipulating waiting lists.
As this career path shows, Andrews is a professional politician; apart from student jobs, his working life has been the Labor Party.
''Well, we're all more than our CVs,'' he counters. ''All of us live a life. I think people need to be a little careful when they make assumptions about what people have done in their life and what they've experienced and what they know firsthand and what they don't. We're all complex.''
Throughout the school holidays, he would work with his father. He has loaded, he says, plenty of trucks and milked plenty of cows. ''I've had a fair bit of shit on my boots in my time.''
There are also the character-defining knocks that have come with political life. In Andrews' case, these have sometimes gone to the very core of his beliefs.
He was a leader in the debate that resulted in the decriminalisation of abortion in Victoria. Andrews was raised a Catholic, sends his children to the local parish school, sometimes attends Mass and takes Communion.
The changes to the abortion laws provoked a backlash from some sections of the church. Gavin Jennings, a senior Labor MP and a close friend of the Labor leader, says Andrews and his family were punished by some in the church.
Jennings, who ran the debate in the upper house, says that as an atheist, there were no costs to him. But it was different for Andrews. ''Daniel copped it, his family copped it.''
Andrews admits to a ''little kind of question-mark period'' after the controversy and other contentious social policy issues, such as stem cell research. ''I don't talk about that very much because, frankly, to be honest, these are minor trivial matters really in terms of whether I get the warmest welcome that I might at a Mass on a Sunday or not.''
Andrews says he was sworn in to serve the whole community and he has never tried to be a Catholic health minister, or a Catholic member of Parliament.
''Some would say, 'That's a betrayal, you should be drawing upon your personal experience and your personal values to inform the work that you do.' Well, perhaps I should, except that so many of those teachings don't take me to the place that logic takes me to.''
The reception he receives has improved. ''When Cardinal Pell gave me Communion, I think that I probably moved through a door,'' he says and smiles. ''He may not have recognised me.''
Andrews didn't have a eureka moment when he decided on his political ambition. ''Not that I've got anything against anyone who wakes up one day and says: I'm going to be premier,'' he says. ''But that was not me.''
If there was no dawning moment of ambition, it is not for want of thinking about politics and political leadership.
Extending an interest born in his schooldays, his office bookshelf groans with political biographies, from Curtin to Kennett. He is about to finish the fourth volume of Robert Caro's epic biography of US president Lyndon B. Johnson.
Asked about figures he admires, Andrews looks at the collection and says: ''There's a lot of people there that won elections. There's a lot of people there that won elections and did things with the victory.''
There are two biographies of Paul Keating, who fits into the latter category of doers. Andrews recently spent almost two hours with him at the former prime minister's Sydney office.
Keating encapsulates Andrews' credo about not just occupying an office but doing something with it: Keating won office, used it, and left the place better than he found it.
Labor is working up its policies before the 2014 poll but it seems unlikely it will involve a long list of ambitious, but ultimately unachievable, promises.
''I think there is an appetite,'' says Andrews. ''People don't want to be bullshitted any more - 'I'm gonna fix this and I'm gonna fix that.' All this sort of stuff. That's all cheap, nasty, means nothing.
''People don't want, frankly, bullshit promises that sound good but don't achieve much. What they want is someone who'll be straight and say, 'I reckon I can bring about some improvements here.' That's where we're headed and if people choose it, then we'll be honoured - more than you can believe. If they go another way, well, that's the system.''
Shane Green is an associate editor of The Age.