Labor's three-day national conference proved the adage that politics is like sex - you don't have to be good at it to enjoy it.

The operatives enjoyed themselves true to type. The Left won the big arguments, the Right won the big votes.

Prime Minister Julia Gillard, former Victorian Premier Steve Bracks, former NSW Premier Bob Carr, and Federal Senator John Falkner at the ALP National Conference. Credit:Domino Postiglione

The Right protected the prime minister and defeated the Left's attempts at reform. The masochists of the Left got to go home feeling pure, and the enforcers of the Right got to go home victorious. Business as usual.

The problem is that it's anything but business as usual. The party's condition was summarised recently by its former president, the Left's John Faulkner: "We are a small party getting smaller, we are an old party getting older. We have lost some of our base and could lose more. We are facing our first electoral challenge in history from the left, in the Greens . . . It's time to reform."