At a federal level, when the ALP fights elections on class issues like IR, they win. When they go all trendy, they lose.
State elections are about competence and this was reflected in the recent NSW election.

Kerry,

You are making the same error as the Labor Party, such as the rump it is now.

Nowhere in your article did you mention the workingpeople the labor party should represent. They've been left high and dry and at the mercy of the unscrupulous ... and they know it and experience it daily.

They are subjected to the same sorts of behaviours and attitudes as a couple of my working greatgrand parents and grandparents suffered.

You don't recognise them nor does the middleclass labor party.

They are the under-employed and casual workers. They've been conned by the Labor Party and are looking to the Liberals to at least make their lives a little easier instead of looking with hope for equal working rights enjoyed by the unionised, the fully employed, the fulltime employed and public service elites. Very few of these types work in the service industries whereas most of the casual and under-employed do. And that is where our economy has grown in recent years.

Note which groups you think the labor party represents. In the days of my grandparets they would have told the middleclass sympathizers who wished to join them ... 'how can you? You won't be true to yourself and eventually you won't be true to us'.

Wherever did you get the idea of a 'middle class' Labor Party keith?

Reliable sources have it that 17 out of the 19 ministers in the Hawke-Keating regime were millionaires ...you know, 'millionaire Bob', 'millionaire Paul', 'Richo' and so on.

Blind Freddie can see that the parliamentary and behind-the-scenes 'leaders' of the modern-day ALP if not millionaires are most definitely 'aspirationals', working assiduously to gain that elite, anti-social, anti-democratic, beggar thy neighbour, look after number one, status.

Don't agree? Then just think back to all the corporate welfare they doled out to their wealthy 'mates' at the 'top end of town' as they re-structured and de-regulated The Economy, and did little if anything to stop the export of Australian working class jobs to Special Economic Zones in 'low wage' countries overseas. And Keating had the gall to shout to out-of-work protestors to "get a job!"

Working class indentity has been fractured with the decline of manufacturing and Fordist work practices. Such practices consolidated class consciousness through shared experience, and the communication and association that drove working class organisation.

But while working class identity has declined, the working class as a class IN ITSELF (rather than FOR itself) has not.

Interestingly, though, the growing white collar working class in areas such as market research, customer service, telemarketing - face work practices as alienating as any faced by the old industrial working class. But the conservatives try and keep us divided by encouraging white collar and clerical workers to think of themselves as 'middle class.'

Working class Australians still have an INTEREST in a more progressive tax system, a regulated labour market, a strong social wage, and a strong welfare safety net.

But even under Hawke class identity and class struggle faced stigma with moves for 'conciliation', and a view of industrial action simply as 'disruptive'. This was a long-term strategic mistake by Labor. And even more so under Howard (and now Abbott) social justice faced stigma as 'the politics of envy'.

Labor could do well by appealing again to class interest; And simply bringing this into public focus could help re-build a modernised working class identity.

But consolidating an effective bloc must mean addressing environmental and 'lifestyle' issues as well. It can't be 'either' 'or'; It must be BOTH.

Not that long ago the highest elected Liberal office-holder in the country was the Lord Mayor of Melbourne. These things go in cycles, that's all. Now Liberal State governments are in power, people will have a chance to get disenchanted with them all over again. As long as the two parties continue to combine savagely against anyone who threatens their cosy duopoly, we can expect business as usual.

Oops -- that should be Lord Mayor of Brisbane, of course.