Labor MPs have at times worked with leading think-tanks and research groups including Jim Chalmers, who was executive director at the Chifley Research Centre in 2013.

Dr Dyrenfurth said “Labor’s think tanks are all led by people my age and younger – in our 40s.

“I can’t think of a single thought leader on their side who isn’t under 50, if not over 60”.

“In a very real sense, this generation gap is the election margin. People over 60 aren’t trying to buy their first house or raise their children,” he said. “They own their homes, their kids have moved out, they’re superannuated now.

“The swing voters are not represented in the leadership or the thinking of the modern conser­vative movement.

“And if any major party – let alone a conservative one – has nothing to say to parents, nothing to say to workers, nothing to say to those buying houses and building their lives in our community, what is the point of them?

“I spent so long making this point in Labor that it’s extra­ordinary to me to see the Libs ­forget it.”

Dr Dyrenfurth said while Labor had won the recent ­battles, the party must “resist ­complacency”.

“Labor needs to stay the intellectual and political course,” he said. “It needs more working ­people in its ranks. And it needs to commit fully to the current direction – not just in the party but in the parliament and the people who will go into parliament over the next two electoral cycles.”