Good article and I couldn't agree more with the call for the Liberal Party to recognise and formalise factions within its various component bodies. Interestingly, in WA, the factional leaders of the late 1980s and early 1990s were Noel Crichton-Browne and Fred Chaney but people chose to be associated with one faction or the other more on the basis of which of the two people they liked more. Admittedly, Chaney was known as "Red Fred" because some of his policies were to the left of centre, but Crichton-Browne's philosophies were right across the political spectrum, so personalities were far more important in choosing which faction to associate with than policies or political ideology.
In WA, the sooner the Liberal Party formalises the distribution of power between the existing factions, the sooner the party will start working as a coherent opposition able to keep the Carpenter government honest.
Sadly (in my view), this won't happen for a long time and I can see the ALP in power in WA until at least the 2017 election.