the SDA is the party's largest donor so they naturally ought to have a right to preselect who they want under the ALP's own rules.
So much for being "left-wing". You can apparently buy left-wing parties if you have enough money. No wonder than working-class isn't willing to vote for Labor.
I'd have thought more urgent reasons why working-class voters are reluctant to vote for modern social democratic parties might be related to the tendency of modern social democratic parties to:
i) trash the living standards of their own supporters in the name of "sensible" economic "reform" (Hartz IV, etc.),
ii) come across as cynical liars who say one thing during an election campaign and then do the complete opposite in government (hello Irish Labour),
iii) come across as a corrupt, faction-riven mess (particularly applicable to the ALP).
If the supposed alternative of dumping links to organised labour and concentrating on appealing to "urban progressives" (because, after all, where else can the working-class vote go?) was a panacea, then western Europe would have been a social democratic stronghold for the last twenty years.
