Labor's demise would undoubtedly send a shockwave through the political establishment, but this would not necessarily be the tragic outcome we expect, writes Jonathan Green.

The central themes are already well-rehearsed - perhaps in pre-emptive self defence - but expect there to be a renewed and vigorous discussion on how to save the ALP as its scattering of parliamentary survivors dust themselves off in the aftermath of the September election.

A more important question is probably, why bother? Is it time to wonder whether saving the ALP is either necessary or desirable?

We're living through a moment that is challenging many grand and well-established entities across all walks of modern life. There's no reason to imagine that the forces driving change across the board should exempt the time-worn businesses that ply their trade in public life.

If we can accept, however grudgingly and with whatever sense of loss, that the business model of, say, major newspapers is failing, and that the death of long-established titles is likely, why should we not be able to extend that sense of inevitability and acceptance to politics?

The ALP has a long and worthy pedigree. We assume its presence as one of two key pillars in our political structure ... but so far that is just habit and history.

Does the ALP have a sustaining and sustainable business model ... that's the question for our times, and chances are the party - membership in the low ten thousands, political fortunes modest at best and in decline - would struggle to mount a strong case for the affirmative.

The party owes its presence in the public mind to the fact that it has traditionally represented a body of political belief that strikes a chord with a significant body of Australians. But support for that set of ideas and principles is not analogous to support for any particular political entity. And if that entity was to lose its grip on that ideological and policy package, as some would argue it has in a poll-driven drift to the centre; if it was to lose its sense of political purpose ... well, that way redundancy lies.

The consensus among the good and deeply invested minds who have written on the future of the party - Messrs Bracks, Carr, Faulkner, Latham and others - is that the ALP is in need of reimagining and restructuring; a broadening of its base; a forging of new points of community contact and involvement. Primaries for pre-selections, a break from trade unions as the ALP bedrock ... the prescriptions are often repeated, if not yet implemented.

Some or all of that might work, but the ALP does give the recent appearance of a party adrift and increasingly inward in its outlook. Its domination by union-based factionalism is seen as a central problem, and yet as immediate political pressures mount and misfortunes accumulate, the factional powerplays seem to increasingly to be at the core of party activity, almost as if internal power based on ancient industrial blocs was an end in itself.

To return to the newspaper analogy, does it matter if a particular institution falls victim to this era of quick and dramatic change? In media there are obvious casualties of shifting markets and consumer constituencies, but there is also abundant promise held out by new technologies and connectivities.

We might lose The Age and The Australian in time, but what we may gain through an increasingly interconnected world is incalculable, and as likely as not to present a quicker and more faithful version of events than the traditional tropes of mainstream journalism. Well, that's the hope.

It's pretty easy to argue that the point in politics is not to preserve a particular party or accumulation of interest groups. Harder though to see how current political institutions seek to sublimate that institutional egotism in practice. This seems especially so of the ALP if its rhetoric is to be believed: that party loyalty comes before all, that somehow health of party is equivalent to the successful representation of the entire suite of social democratic thinking.

The point surely is to find a coherent, electable and implementable expression of a set of principles and ideas ... that might come from anywhere, and in this age of instant and constant community, it might well organise itself more broadly and interactively than could ever have been imagined by the shop stewards, branch secretaries and true believers of old.

From this point it seems hard to imagine anything other than an ALP wipeout at the September 14 poll ... and perhaps that defeat will be historically significant. It may mark an end of an era, the era in which carriage of a certain set of political ideas was entrusted exclusively to the ALP, and with that trust came a central position in our politics.

But these ideas do not depend on the ALP for their political expression. Expression of ideas ... well, that's what the 21st century does best.

The threat to the Labor party seems existential ... and not just because its parliamentary numbers look set for a hiding ... more because the ALP seems resolved to learn nothing from its plight.

Look at the candidates for pre-selection in the safe Melbourne seat held until September 14 by Nicola Roxon.

As Fairfax reports:

Among the candidates are Tim Watts, a former staffer of Communications Minister Stephen Conroy and now manager of Telstra's corporate affairs; acting general manager of the embattled Health Services Union Victorian No. 1 branch Kimberley Kitching; and Ms Roxon's former staffer Katie Hall.

Two former staffers and a union official. No regeneration, no self-awareness ... just an internally focussed appointment process for the next generation of political professionals.

Nice work if you can keep on getting it.

Jonathan Green hosts Sunday Extra on Radio National and is the former editor of The Drum. View his full profile here.