Some party members argue that cultural shifts have lessened political engagement across the board, that individuals have less discretionary time than earlier generations and that there are too many competing interests for even the most rudimentary level of political activism such as attending local branch meetings. That, however, does not explain the loyalists walking away from Labor. King's biggest fear in speaking out was that her words might be used to attack the party of which she remains a supporter. "The Labor Party has traditionally had a lot of pretty well educated, pretty well informed people who could help put together policy. Policy committees are just ignored now,'' she says. "Truly, it's been like ripping my arm out not to be renewing my membership [but] it's got to the point I don't think the party knows what it stands for any more." King is hardly alone in doubting Labor's sense of purpose. Six years ago Rodney Cavalier, a former minister in successive NSW governments, warned of a hollowing of Labor's core values. He described a party captured by careerists which had "ceased to exist below". The nurturing of new members, he told a 2005 Fabian Society seminar, was less likely than at any time in Labor's history. "Being in government is almost everything," Cavalier says of modern Labor. "There is no embracing ideology to sustain a Labor Party out of power, no light on the hill, no reserves of character or historical memory … parties which build their governance on being in government have a crisis waiting for them when they forfeit the public service superstructure."

Now Labor's peculiar challenge is that its membership is deserting even as it is in government federally. Asked what reasons defaulting members had offered in recent weeks for leaving, one party activist said flatly: "Disenchantment with [Prime Minister Julia] Gillard. It does not have anything to do with state politics - people have not seen enough of [Victorian leader Daniel] Andrews. A lot of policies in key areas don't match what the membership thinks. The party seems not to stand for anything any more." The federal government has tainted the brand. Complaints about the government's particular policy failings centre on awkward issues for which Labor struggles to make progress, such as climate change, the treatment of asylum seekers or the management of the Murray-Darling basin. "Something desperate needs to be done [for the basin] and we are not prepared to do something desperate," the party activist says. "We have to be prepared to bite the bullet and significantly reduce the water allocation to irrigators. We won't do that." Labor is not alone. Similar complaints have emerged from the Victorian Liberal Party. But what is unusual for Labor is that the disenchantment comes while it is in power. Normally there is some disaffection after losing office or after a long period in opposition. It is not supposed to be like this. In a slight against contemporary politics that cuts across party boundaries but seems particularly apt, former finance minister Lindsay Tanner has argued that the primary motivation for government is merely to look like you are doing something while not offending anyone who matters. It is "all special effects, no plot".

There seems to be a process of disengagement with politics at work. Social commentator Bernard Salt says that while the success of cyber "communities" such as Facebook, Twitter and GetUp show a willingness to connect with others, there are not the embedded links that came with Labor's historic union ties. "Those things that once bound us together as a society have weakened over the last generation," Salt says. "Is it being replaced by cyber associations? I suspect that might be the case, but it's not the same thing; there's not the same investment of your real time. "I think there's real disillusionment with political parties and with leadership. ''I speak around Australia 120 times a year to audiences [from the] public, private, corporate, community [and] government [sectors] and the theme that keeps coming through to me is disillusionment with leadership. Of both sides."

In short, the country lacks for visionaries, he says. Labor specifically is in crisis partly because of an enduring trend of declining membership mixed with disappointment with the party's state, says Monash University politics lecturer Paul Strangio. Occasional spikes of regrowth during this process of underlying decline have so far proved unsustainable. What if it remains so? "Well, it shrinks your gene pool, it concentrates power in a more limited range of hands," Dr Strangio says. "What you have seen in recent years is the concentration of power into the parliamentary parties and particularly the leaders as the bases have shrunk or at the same time you have factional warlords controlling a lot of power. The best antidote to manipulation by factional heavies is an active and strong base. When you don't have that you are more vulnerable. "[The Labor Party] no longer have what they once had, that sense of a social movement. Looking at Labor now, when you don't have that cadre of strong activists, there's a sense of being defenceless. You don't hear many voices springing to their defence. That can be another consequence of losing your base."

The party that does have the sense of a social movement about it - The Greens - is seen to have eroded Labor's appeal, particularly in the inner city and particularly with the young. Too much can sometimes be made of this, says Cath Bowtell, Labor's successor to Tanner as the candidate for the federal seat of Melbourne. Bowtell lost to The Greens' Adam Bandt, but it was not for lack of young activists, she says. While she concedes a decline in inner-city membership "there's a very good proportion of members who are young, under 25 and under 30" and a solid core of what she calls "recent joinings". What Labor lacks in the inner-city, Dr Strangio says, is the network of policy communities concerned with social issues such as health and law reform that typified the party during the 1970s. They were active and they linked Labor to community activists, offering a "community of support" for its ideas. "They were issues-based groups that offered innovative policy thinking that was able to be picked up when Labor got into office," he says. One of the beneficiaries of that work was former Victorian premier John Cain, who speaks of the "prodigious" policy development that preceded his time in office. He argues that the failure to undertake policy examination is the main reason behind the shrinking of the party's base. Members are left feeling irrelevant.

"If policy work had been done over the last 10 or 15 years, climate change issues would have been worked through the party," Cain says. "What we have seen from the conservatives and some business groups is them trading on the assertion that everyone except them should pay. If the policy work had been done years ago, this selfishness could have been confronted." Instead, the climate change debate plays out amid a chorus of populism and perceived self interest. Cavalier has a blunt prescription: ''The only way to reverse the decline in membership of the party is to give sovereignty to the membership. You can't use the passive voice to state things like 'the rank and file must be empowered' or weasel words like that. To give power to the membership you have to take it from somewhere else and that means trade union officials and the parliamentary parties. ''I am sorry to be NSW-centric but the most recent figures for trade union membership show 92 per cent of the electorate of NSW do not belong to an affiliated union. Yet union officials exercise total control of the NSW branch. It needs an absolute and total cultural change.'' Labor knows it is in crisis and after last year's federal election eclipsed the 2007 Ruddslide, leaving Labor as a minority government in Canberra, it began a review of its troubled 2010 federal campaign. All of this was before Victorians sacked their generally capable Labor government and the people of NSW euthanised a scandal-ridden one. The 2010 national review by former premiers Steve Bracks and Bob Carr and Senator John Faulkner called for members to be given a direct say in party affairs, for ministers to be held accountable to party conferences on policy implementation and for central office intervention in preselections to be exceptional rather than routine and to occur only as a last, rather than first resort.

The latest membership figures show the rot is continuing. Raw numbers do not reveal how many members are active or how many are the work of branch stackers. A newsletter prepared by factionally unaligned members circulating among ALP branches recently pointed to strong evidence that the stackers remain busy. The signal was the proportion of members signed up on discounted memberships for students or those on incomes of less than $32,000 a year. These discounted memberships are the cheapest, most effective means of stacking. In three federal electorates - Holt, Gorton and Scullin - such discounts comprised more than 90 per cent of members. In Bruce, Calwell, Hotham and Isaacs they exceeded 80 per cent of memberships. In four other electorates they account for more than 70 per cent. So the full story of public abandonment may be worse than it appears. Whether the Faulkner review can pull Labor out of its spiral is uncertain, but the portents are not good. One of its findings - that rank and file members be allowed increased participation by directly electing a component of the national conference - is a direct lift from an earlier reform program. That was back in 2001 when former prime minister Bob Hawke and former NSW premier Neville Wran had the task of mapping the future. Widespread disaffection regardless, the party's power brokers discarded the idea then and may do so again.

Cavalier holds out little hope. ''The Faulkner review is strongly supported by the party membership. It will be rejected because the people who control the ALP have overwhelming material cause to reject it,'' he says. ''A democratic party means most senators and MLCs will have to look to a new career. The decline in the party will take another decade and more; in the meantime, this once great party will continue to harvest just enough votes to maintain their careers. Loading ''Every other crisis of identity or sense of loss of purpose took place when we were in Opposition or immediately after going out of government. This crisis has coincided with Labor in government, so recently in six states and the Commonwealth. The great myth is that this is cyclical. This is not like anything we have seen before.'' Ian Munro is a senior writer