ALP looks to primaries system to re-engage with working class

THE NSW Labor Right will attempt to win back working-class voters in the suburbs by trialling community participation in preselections.

THE NSW Labor Right will attempt to win back working-class voters in the suburbs by trialling community participation in preselections ahead of the 2015 state election.

Candidates in five key seats for the next state election would be preselected using a US-style primaries system under a "Trial of Community Selection Ballots", part of the Right faction's draft rule changes for the party.

"We are undertaking the most radical reforms in 120 years," state secretary Sam Dastyari said.

"We can't win elections until we tackle our internal structures. The preselection process is broken and needs to be opened up to the community."

Labor Party historian Troy Bramston, who is writing a book on Labor Party reform due for release later this year, says "primaries are a step in the right direction but to be really bold and attract new members, the party needs to look to ideas like directly electing the party leader from the conference, like NSW Labor did 70 years ago".

Under the draft guidelines for the preselection process, potential preselectors must sign a declaration that they are a Labor supporter, not a member of any other political party and will assist the candidate at the election.

The Right faction, which is keen to reassert its influence after Labor's devastating state election defeat in March, discussed the changes on Thursday evening, soon after Labor senator John Faulkner delivered the Neville Wran lecture lamenting the need for the party to embrace a "culture of inclusion".

"What Faulkner says is a step in the right direction, but we need to be much more outwardly focused," Mr Dastyari said.

"When it comes to policy, we have to start talking to the suburbs, not just the inner city."

There are concerns in sections of the Right in NSW that Senator Faulkner's proposals emanating from the review he co-chaired into last year's federal election don't provide the party with a platform to re-engage with mainstream voters in outer metropolitan electorates.