Hidden inside the Hawke-Wran report into the Australian Labor Party is a statistic which should send a shudder through every sitting ALP member in the country.At the 2001 election – the supposed status quo poll in which the seats in the House of Representatives barely changed at all – Federal Labor recorded its lowest primary vote since 1906.That was lower than the 1975 and 1977 humiliations suffered by Gough Whitlam and lower than the 1996 election which smashed Paul Keating’s majority and ende…
