In February this year, Maxine McKew announced that she would seek preselection for the federal seat of Bennelong, the very seat John Howard has held since he entered federal parliament in 1974. An audacious move, I thought, aggressive even, to beard the ageing lion in his den, to remind the nation that the PM is also a local member and his seat not as safe as it once was, and to distract him from the national campaign with the sort of local campaigning he has never had to do. But this is not how McKew sees it. "I have a belief that democracies depend on a strong multi-party system, and parties only thrive when committed individuals are prepared to put their hands up ... I am providing the people of Bennelong with an alternative." And she compares the alternative she provides to Howard in Bennelong with the alternative Kevin Rudd is providing as prime minister.

It is a well-thought-through double act, and it's working like a dream. A Galaxy poll in early August, just after the interest-rate rise, had McKew ahead of Howard, leading 53% to 47% on the two-party-preferred vote. This is less than Labor's overall two-party-preferred lead of 58% to 42% in a Morgan poll of around the same time, but if it holds on election day, it will be enough.

Why, aged 54, has McKew decided to stand for parliament? I ask her, "What is it about politics that gives you a buzz?" "Making connections." She gives the example of getting Peter Garrett to talk to the year-11 geography class at Epping Boys' High on World Environment Day, and then of putting the boys in touch with a local businessman to help them through the fine print of an application for a rainwater tank.

When we talked in early August, she and her campaign team were sky high from a public forum they'd held a few days earlier on ‘Integrity in Government'. "It was amazing. On pretty dry topics, like individual ministerial responsibility, the public service, ministerial advisers. We had Julian Burnside, who'd flown in from Adelaide straight from winning the case for Bruce Trevorrow [for compensation as a stolen child], and Senator John Faulkner. I'd have been happy if we'd drawn 200. We got around 700. The ballroom at the Epping Club was packed, standing room only. The atmosphere was fantastic." They are planning another two forums: one on Australia's foreign policy, for the week before APEC, and one on climate change.

McKew believes that there's something stirring in the electorate, a renewed interest in politics, and that she can help to express that interest and even shape it. She refers to Hugh Mackay's column for the Sydney Morning Herald in late January, in which he sensed that Australians were starting to re-engage with politics. "It's hard to escape the feeling that the Australian electorate might be emerging from its dreamy period. Sitting up. Taking notice. Ready, perhaps, for a little nourishment," he wrote - ready for a re-engagement with "the bigger picture". McKew would have read this on the Australia Day weekend, as she was firming up her plans for Bennelong. If Mackay was right, the times would suit her.

At the heart of McKew's passion for politics is a passion for communication. She says, again and again, that what she wants to do is to give people in the community a voice, to bring them into the national conversation about our future. And she finds, out and about campaigning in Bennelong, that people want to talk: about water, climate change, WorkChoices, health and hospitals, education, honesty in government. Her role is to listen; and then to persuade them that on all these issues and more Kevin Rudd and Labor are an electable alternative to Howard and the Coalition, and that they will provide a "government for the future, for the twenty-first century". "My job is to persuade people to vote Labor, not by denigrating Howard, but by persuading them that I will be a better representative for Bennelong and that Labor will be a better government for Australia. The campaign is about a prime minister who has stopped listening."

She stresses that she respects Howard. "I know how hard people work in public life, and what it takes from people. I have never not respected public life." So she wants no help from the Howard-haters on her campaign, and her volunteers are screened for rudeness and aggression. Before they go out door-knocking, they are reminded by the campaign manager that at all times they should be "polite and courteous, like Maxine".

In this politics of courteous listening and polite persuasion, I wonder, where is the passion? And what about conflict? After all, one of the key purposes of politics is to manage and resolve conflict. So I ask her, "It's all very well to give everyone a voice, but what about when the voices disagree? How do you deal with that and find solutions?" Her answer is frank. "I hate managing conflict. When I do SWOT tests, politics suits my strengths, but it also exposes my weaknesses - and that's one of them." And when I ask her about the ALP's position on old-growth logging, and Rudd's, in my view, disgraceful courting of the Tasmanian logging industry, she simply smiles.