Ed Husic has taken on the role of Labor’s conscience. Will it last?

Anthony Albanese let his guard down last week when asked about former minister Ed Husic’s suggestion that Labor was going soft on big artificial intelligence firms.

The government’s AI regulation was “something that Ed wouldn’t be familiar with because this has been a cabinet process”, the prime minister retorted.

The jab brought into public view a tense relationship that broke down when Husic was pushed out of the cabinet last year in a factional cull.

Far from sulking on the sidelines, Husic has turned into the chief irritant within Labor’s caucus and, as this week’s national conference has highlighted, the lead advocate on nearly all the issues of importance to the Labor base: AUKUS, gas tax, Gaza, Indigenous reconciliation after the Voice.

The Middle East conflict is one of the most animating issues. On Thursday, Husic said many people would agree with the term “apartheid” to describe Israeli policy toward Palestinians.

Labor ministers are hoping for a moment of unity at this week’s conference that will settle the party’s position on the Gaza conflict: Melbourne MPs Josh Burns, a Jew, and Basem Abdo, who has Palestinian heritage, will speak together on the party’s wording on Friday. Both have been under huge pressure from their respective communities.

Husic has threatened to intervene. He said on ABC TV that he was pushing for the party’s national platform to oppose the sale of military equipment to Israel and Australian-Israeli dual nationals serving with the Israeli Defence Forces.

“If what had happened to Palestinian families and their kids happened to us… We would want the rest of the world to do something about it, and I don’t think we have done anywhere near enough,” he said.

The western Sydney MP, who was the first Muslim to enter cabinet, has morphed from a lower-profile minister to a backbencher who generates more media attention, often by criticising the direction of the cabinet in which he served. These criticisms sound louder given the strict discipline of Albanese’s caucus, who show no appetite for rocking the boat while the party remains so dominant.

While several of his colleagues sat inside the official conference room on Thursday, sponsoring motions and giving speeches to the floor, Husic spoke at a press conference on a range of topics and was one of very few MPs scheduled to address the “fringe” section of the national forum.

As its name suggests, it’s where the edgier issues are raised. Husic sat on a panel hosted by the left-leaning Australia Institute to argue for a gas tax – an issue that Treasurer Jim Chalmers and Prime Minister Anthony Albanese earlier in the day downplayed.

“We’ve got to move quicker on these things,” Husic told the room of fewer than 100 people on the sidelines. “It shouldn’t take 10 bloody years to get these major reforms done.”

Asked how he would act if he were the treasurer, Husic quipped: “That’s what I need, to upset the treasurer again.”

It was one of several jokes – about lack of debate on the floor of conference, and his own tendency to push limits and speak out of turn – that demonstrated his fresh appetite for candour.

“I’ll just leave that there, don’t need to say anything further, don’t say it Husic,” he joked, as an aside, at one point. Then later: “In the best of Yes, Minister – it is a very brave government that would ignore the views of the public on this.”

When he was being serious, Husic gave something of a rallying cry to members in the audience – urging them to exert maximum pressure on his own colleagues. “That is the type of activism that is required out of the rank and file of the party, where you’re saying to your MPs and your senators: our expectation’s a better deal,” he said.

He said cutting funds to vulnerable people in programs like the National Disability Insurance Scheme would not fly with the public if they thought companies were getting off scot-free. “We should seize the moment, and have the steel and spine to do so,” he said.

Ministers often vent in private about Husic, and MPs loyal to Deputy Prime Minister Richard Marles, the Victorian Right faction leader whom Husic blamed for dumping him from cabinet, emphasise it was Husic’s own allies in NSW who ultimately removed him.

Husic, according to his critics, was too slow to execute the government’s industrial policies as minister and did not live up to the job. They grumble about what they perceive to be his attention-seeking, maximalist style, which fails to grapple with policy trade-offs.

But there is no doubt about the effectiveness with which Husic has championed Labor’s progressive instincts. At a national conference that has come to exemplify Albanese’s yearning for control, Husic has added colour – and a sense of jeopardy.

How he handles Friday’s sensitive debate over Israel and Gaza – as his colleagues seek a moment of unity – will test his position as the party’s new conscience.

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