In Greek mythology, Apollo gave Cassandra the power of prophecy in order to seduce her, but when she refused him then gave her the curse of never being believed.  Faulkner's calling for radical change in the structure of the Labor Party is now a more or less annual event, made predictable by the knowledge that each new call will remain as unheeded by his party's factional warlords as the last one.

This may be a little unfair; there are signs Bill Shorten may be taking up some items at least from Faulkner's shopping list for reform.  He has backed a call to allow non-union members to join the party, and supports raising the proportion of party members who preselect candidates, at the expense of union representation.  This is a big step for a leader who rose to national prominence through his base at the Australian Workers Union.

Faulkner's prescription goes much further, however.  He wants to reduce unions' shares of the seats at party conferences from 50 per cent to 20 per cent, and he wants those unionists who make up the 20 per cent to be directly elected, not chosen by the warlords.

This much is eminently sensible.  The clammy hand of union power over so much of the ALP apparatus must be making even the die-hards nervous these days, given the near-continuous media coverage of union corruption, cronyism and thuggery.  This is no parallel to be found in the Liberal Party; business organisations hold no reserved seats in any part of the Liberal or National Party hierarchies.

Two other elements of the Faulkner agenda are more troubling, and have implications for other parties if successful.  First, Faulkner argues for strict "rule of law" principles to be applied to political parties, as organisations that receive massive amounts of taxpayer funds.  He believes internal party matters of fairness and due process must be "justiciable", meaning that the courts should have a role in oversighting internal party democracy.

Such a change would have a seismic effect on a body known for a certain amount of lawlessness in its battles over executive roles and preselections.  Labor historian Rodney Cavalier has argued that public funding has been used to sustain undemocratic features of the Labor Party, saying "the taxpayer has funded the takeover" of some wings of the party's parliamentary representation by factional heavies.

Again, sensible from the perspective of the ALP's turbulent past, but with ramifications for other parties as well.  Political parties have enjoyed a high degree of immunity from accountability mechanisms that other publicly funded bodies have to live with.  For example, parties are exempt from large swathes of the Privacy Act, and can collect and hold detailed information about individual electors that other bodies cannot.

Many in other parties will find the sudden intrusion of daylight into their affairs unsettling.  We should expect a lot more litigation around the conduct of party matters if this reform is played out.

The second troubling element of the Faulkner agenda is the call for more democratic preselections, including for the Senate.  He wants preselections to be the gift of rank-and-file membership, not of factional and union leaders.  Once again, in the context of the ALP's history, the case for this is compelling.  As a senator, he has firsthand experience of the decline in the quality of his own party's representation in the upper house.

My own impression is that the ALP's House of Representatives firepower generally matches – and occasionally exceeds – that of the Coalition, but in the Senate no-one can fail to notice the factional retirees and lightweights now liberally sprinkled over the ALP benches.  That realisation would be keenly impressed on a mind as intelligent as John Faulkner's.

In the case of other parties, however, more "democratic" preselections will be a mixed blessing.  This reform needs to be set against the background that membership of Australian political parties is declining, and the power they exercise in civil society is increasingly out of proportion to the number of people participating in their decision-making.

One might assume that handing greater responsibility to rank-and-file membership is a perfect foil to a declining membership base, but this has generally not been the experience of those branches of parties that have tried it.  It is still possible for factional games to be played out very effectively when the membership at large is enfranchised, and branch-stacking remains a problem in both major parties, even in these circumstances.

The right in the NSW Liberal Party is currently engaged in a push for plebiscites in party affairs, but most observers see this more as a device to wrest control from the moderates than as a sudden affection for more democracy.  Ironically, John Faulkner's renewed call for popular preselections in the ALP will almost certainly fail because the Right sees it as an entree card for more influence from the Left.

Gary Humphries, a former ACT Liberal chief minister and senator, is now a lobbyist.