Labor debates internal reform

Another senior Labor Party head has added her voice to calls for its membership be moved beyond unions.

ALP national president Jenny McAllister says Labor's results in the West Australian Senate election re-run showed the party had a long way to go in winning elections, labelling its pre-selection process broken.

She is pushing for reform in the system that allows union bosses to select upper house candidates.

"Union leaders, parliamentarians and faction leaders who exercised enormous power under the old model need to accept that the old ways have to change," Ms McAllister said in an opinion piece for News Corp on Wednesday.

It came on the day unions fall under the spotlight of a royal commission in Sydney, and one day after Labor elder John Faulkner proposed a series of sweeping reforms to stamp out corruption in the NSW branch of the party.

In a letter to NSW Labor members, Mr Faulkner also proposed giving ordinary ALP members the power to select state and federal upper house candidates.

The calls for reform coincide with those of Labor leader Bill Shorten, who wants to scrap rules which require members belong to a union.

ACTU secretary Dave Oliver said he supported the proposal to allow party rank and file members to have a say in the election of senate candidates.

But he wanted to have a look at the whole reform package before formally considering the matter.

"No doubt this will be subject to a lot of debate at a rules conference that will be held next year," he told ABC radio on Wednesday.

Mr Oliver said he hoped the party was not putting too much emphasis on structural reform over the drafting of industrial relations policy.