Lost in the hub-hub of Labor’s National Conference was an election result which lays bare the true state of Australia’s oldest political party. The historian Troy Bramston has reported that in the ballot for Labor’s national presidency only 11,665 party members bothered to vote. This represents an average of 78 members for each Federal electorate, evidence of how the ALP has become a virtual party, its grassroots crushed by the concentration of power in the hands of union-based factional chiefs.