The starting point is understanding and responding to Australia's key political conundrum, our ''paradox of plenty''. As the Credit Suisse 2013 Global Wealth Report revealed recently, Australia's median per capita wealth is the highest in the world. Over the past two to three decades a significant amount of wealth has been generated within the Australian economy. Australian household income has steadily outstripped price rises over the past 27 years, meaning the average family is effectively $224 a week better off. This might suggest, as the onetime Labor leader Mark Latham argues, that Australian workers have prospered to the extent that they have outgrown unions, progressive politics and even each other. A new generation of aspirational small business owners has left Labor behind and throngs of mobile, flexible individual workers are following the jobs. But, if we have never had it so good, why, then, do so many Australians genuinely feel they are both disenfranchised and struggling? The 120,000 or so members of United Voice, formerly the Liquor, Hospitality and Miscellaneous Union, work mainly in low-paid and precarious - but essential - jobs. We are childcare and aged care workers, cleaners, waiters, bar tenders, hotel staff and security guards, among other things. Many of our jobs are casual, insecure and unpredictable. Many of our members are recently arrived migrants and many are women.

From where we sit, an important sub-group is emerging among working Australians: the long-term insecure, or what Americans term ''the working poor''. One in five Australians is a casual employee - from cleaners to academics - and that means no holiday pay, no sick leave and little job security. One in six Australians relies on the minimum wage and many more, despite years of enterprise bargaining, sit only marginally above the minimum wage. In many cases these groups overlap, creating new, acute pressures on workers and their families when insecurity and low pay collide. A close look at Australian consumption patterns and household costs reveals that while incomes have been rising, so too has the share of fixed household costs that those incomes must cover: housing, childcare, education, healthcare, transport etc. That so many people - low paid and middle class - feel stalked by financial burden is no surprise; in the mid-1980s household debt was about 40 per cent of income; today, it's closer to 150 per cent. The biggest driver of soaring household debt levels is housing; arguably having a place to call home is the most fundamental pre-condition of a decent life. Australian average house prices increased 147 per cent over the past 10 years, for example, compared to a 57 per cent increase in household incomes. In the past five years rents in capital cities rose twice as fast as inflation. Last year only 31 per cent of Australians owned their homes outright, down from 42 per cent in 1994, and 44 per cent of lower-income earners who rent were officially living in ''housing stress'', defined as spending more than 30 per cent of household income on housing costs.

How does progressive politics now respond to this complex, and often contradictory, modern Australia? In 2011, United Voice changed direction to broaden its role as a union and so reach beyond traditional, narrowly focused workplace bargaining. One of the first things it did was to start up thousands of conversations with members. Literally. To make these conversations meaningful and valuable we set out with a big question: what is it that makes a good life? Detailed responses from 26,000 members produced unprecedented personal insights into what it means to be working class in Australia today. It's easy enough to make encouraging noises about engaging with the grassroots. In reality, it's a long, hard, detailed job that never ends. It is this kind of shift the ALP must make. The party must become more accessible. The branch structure needs to change. There must be a genuinely greater role for the rank and file, not reform as a front for politicians and staffers. At the 2011 Labor national conference, 60 per cent of the supposed rank-and-file delegates were past or present members of parliament or staff. All candidates in elections - new and sitting, House of Representatives and Senate - should face open preselection or reindorsement. And, although we firmly believe that the party's affiliation with unions should remain a defining hallmark of Labor, unions themselves must create new avenues for their members to engage in party activities and leadership. Of course, a large, ALP-affiliated union like United Voice has a lot of institutional power at stake in any reforms the party adopts. But, having power within an organisation that fails to properly represent our members, which is incapable of winning voters' trust and provides no real impetus for workers' engagement, is an empty reality. Reform is critical and it cannot merely deal with structures and electoral systems. Resolving what Labor stands for, and who Labor stands with, needs to be the primary focus.

One of the big unresolved dilemmas for social democratic parties worldwide is their place in a neo-liberal world. As neo-liberalism has attempted to redefine community values - from the communal to the individual and from citizen to consumer and investor - historical Labor values have been increasingly challenged. Does the ALP today have a foundation of agreed values? This is a very live question. The answer goes to the very heart of the party's appeal, its contract with working people and the future of progressive politics in Australia. Louise Tarrant is national secretary of United Voice. Her chapter on the future of progressive politics will be published in Not Dead Yet: What Future for Labor? (Black Inc) is published on Wednesday.