There are thousands of words, small libraries devoted to defining the various malignancies in Australian political life, but Anthony Albanese says at least one root cause is simple to identify. A lot of politicians in 2018 are lonely. The national parliament is isolated from the voters outside, and the occupants are disconnected from each other.

Part of the sense of isolation is created by the architecture of Parliament House. In the Old Parliament House, a temporary, more compact building, with communal facilities, you would meet the prime minister and ministers “literally, in the dunny”, Albanese says in an interview with Guardian Australia’s political podcast.

“Here, that doesn’t happen.”

Albanese says parliamentarians occupy self-contained offices with kitchens and bathrooms, with televisions broadcasting ABC24 and Sky News, with their phones and tablets supplying information through social media feeds that often reinforces their predispositions.

“They don’t have to leave their own office unless the bells ring for a division, or for question time, or to give a speech, or for meetings. A lot of meetings are people coming to them.”

Albanese says “there are people who are pretty lonely in this building”, echoing a similar observation recently from the Liberal MP Craig Laundy, who observed recently the sense of isolation among his colleagues increases as a sense of crisis builds within a government.

“There isn’t a gathering place where people have a drink after work,” Albanese says. “They can get pretty isolated in these corridors.

“I think, quite often, this can reinforce a sense that people believe things to be true that aren’t necessarily the case.”

Albanese insists that Malcolm Turnbull would still be prime minister today had he been able to hang on and survive the last brutal week of his leadership in August, because restive government MPs would have been hammered by their frustrated constituents when they returned to their electorates.

But, instead, the pressure-cooker atmosphere inside the parliament was such that government MPs felt there was “no alternative but to finish it”.

Over the past couple of months, Albanese has taken opportunities to talk about some of the underlying factors driving the coup culture in Canberra, and has raised concerns that in an atmosphere of hyper-polarisation; people in politics are retreating from an essential component of the job – debating ideas with people they disagree with and attempting to resolve competing interests.

Albanese is not the only parliamentarian worried about this, and worried enough to express the view publicly. The Senate president, the Victorian Liberal Scott Ryan, lamented the lost art of engagement, negotiation and compromise in Australian politics in a major speech earlier this year.

The revolving door of prime ministers, Albanese says, offends the dignity of politics. Given he was in the middle of the leadership changes during the Rudd and Gillard period, does he agree the coup culture has to stop? He says political parties will discuss leadership from time to time but the events of the last decade are indefensible: “Of course it has to stop.”

As well as the churn of leaders, Albanese says there is increased polarisation, both inside politics and among the voting public. He insists this is an observable phenomenon, with people he interacts with now noticeably less tolerant of views they don’t agree with. Albanese says people now approach him regularly to express a personal view, prefacing it with “everybody thinks”.

Albanese says part of the reason for this is technological disruption. Technology gives people the option of screening out opposing points of view.

He says an intolerance for opposing views isn’t just a personal inconvenience for the political class, it threatens progress. Change happens, Albanese says, when people change their minds. “If everyone just talks to everyone they agree with right now, by definition, change will not occur.”

He says progressive people are, by definition, optimists, and a critical component of optimism is believing that a compelling argument still has the power to persuade. “A critical component of progress is engaging with people you don’t agree with – everything else is the status quo.”

Despite his concerns about culture, both inside politics and outside it, Albanese says he is not particularly depressed about the state of play but he says addressing the deficiencies does require protagonists to be honest about the complex dynamics of public life to “break through”.

He says having an honest conversation about the challenges is particularly urgent for the major parties, which are losing support to independents and micro-parties.

Albanese says he believes the Victorian premier, Daniel Andrews, presents something of a model for screening out the noise and cutting through with the voting public. He says Andrews won the state election because he was bold on policy and he kept faith with his commitments.