During a door-knock in Balmain last week supporters of Verity Firth found themselves face-to-face with an ALP diehard who is so disillusioned with the party that she tried to close the door in their faces.

"But we're not Labor," they protested, "we're Verity Firth."

This is a party which is so on the nose and so demoralised that it dared not speak its name to the electors.

So how does it make a comeback from the political graveyard? Not easily, is the short answer.

Today NSW Labor resembles the scorched earth that follows every major bushfire in the Royal National Park south of Sydney. But after a season of good rain and no frost, the green shoots of recovery spring up and within a few years the park blooms with new life

Labor's long way back starts with its heartland