As Labor parliamentarians fled Canberra late this week for their long winter break, they could reassure themselves the bruises sustained in a difficult budget session were fading.

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Broken promises might inflict some long-term damage on the prime minister, and the jury's still out on the effect of the controversial tax changes. But Anthony Albanese is confident his belated embrace of boldness has paid off, as he moves on to the next big thing which, in party terms, is Labor's national conference in Adelaide on July 23-25.

This was already in Albanese's mind when he addressed Tuesday's caucus, declaring the conference would be "a real opportunity to bring the whole Labor movement with us on our direction".

It would be a chance to "showcase ourselves as an inclusive, open, democratic party", he said, contrasting the "schmozzle" on the other side of politics.

This week the Australian Labor Party (ALP) national secretariat dispatched Labor's draft platform and conference agenda to the some 400 delegates to what will be the party's 50th national conference.

Held every three years, the modern conference is a dramatically different affair from the so-called "36 faceless men" conclaves of olden days.

In recent decades, national conferences have become increasingly micromanaged and distinctly less gritty, with a little dissent built in as a gesture to a party rank-and-file more radical than a now quiescent parliamentary caucus.

Long gone are the days when a Labor national conference could dictate to the parliamentarians, as did the famous special one held in 1963 over the North-West Cape communications facility that services US submarines.

Labor, then in opposition, paid a heavy political price when its leaders, Arthur Calwell and Gough Whitlam, were photographed waiting outside for the conference (that included one woman among its faceless men) to make its decision. As Nick Dyrenfurth and Frank Bongiorno write in A Little History of the Australian Labor Party, "what had once been taken for granted as an expression of Labor democracy seemed now to belong to another age".

Also passé are the days when a Labor government sought permission from a national conference for actions taken or proposed, as did the Hawke government on several key issues, including the entry of foreign banks and privatisation.

"It's a pantomime," rails a former senior Labor man from the left, about the coming conference. Behind........

© Canberra Times