My own background is working-class-turned-managerial, at least so far as family is concerned. My parents are solid life-long Labor people, and I'd probably have joined the ALP myself if it hadn't seemed like the general membership thing weren't kind of vestigial. The Greens are still pretty grass-roots based in a way that the ALP seems to have lost.

I do wonder if the types of people who wind up as Labor MPs aren't very similar to the types of people who wind up as Greens MPs: they're all tertiary-educated, many are lawyers, most were active in student politics, and the ones who weren't practising in a middle- or upper-class profession prior to entering Parliament were instead working in the political system one way or another.

Not a lot of Ben Chifleys around these days, which is a damned shame!