The ALP Conference this week will be carefully managed, but Labor’s deeper problem is a hollowed-out party increasingly driven by factions, polling and caution.

A critical issue for this year’s ALP Conference in Adelaide is the decline in the party’s membership and voter support.

Labor’s membership used to be about 100,000 when I joined the ALP in Adelaide 70 years ago. Wayne Swan tells me that membership is now about 50,000. I thought it was much less. In any event no “official” figure is published. It is a dismal record of membership decline considering that our population has trebled in those 70 years.

To contain the loss of broad membership support, Labor has increasingly committed itself to focus groups and marginal seat strategies. Values and vision have given way to marketing. Money has replaced membership as the driving force of campaigns.

The trade unions remain the most important institutional Labor supporters. They have a proud record, but their influence is out of proportion to their role in the community and the Labor constituency.

The ALP no longer represents the people who vote for it. It is controlled by an unrepresentative coterie of factional heavies and officials. Party members have little influence. Factions control Labor pre-selections. “Captain’s picks” are common. Networks of political professionals, union officials and staffers, rather than membership, are supreme. Internal politics is conducted almost........

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