Tonight, the NSW Right of the Labor Party will do what it does best: revel in a night of backslapping and self-congratulation at the LeMontage restaurant in Sydney.

The event is to commemorate and to celebrate the Young Labor right’s victory over the Left in Young Labor 15 years ago.

Bob Carr and John McCarthy were the last Young Labor Presidents from the Right in the mid-1970s before Joe Tripodi and Reba Meagher led a campaign to win it back, culminating in their narrow conference victory in 1992. Since then, Young Labor has proved a fertile breeding ground for Labor. Not only does it deliver bus loads of people to work on campaigns, organize conscripts to do the grunt work of mail outs and letterboxing, it also provides an opportunity for valuable networking and to learn the trade of politics.

Years later, after a suitable apprenticeship, these people who end up running all things politics. In the 1960s and 1970s NSW Young Labor produced Paul Keating, Ron Dyer, Leo McLeay, Laurie Brereton, Bob Carr and scores of others. The Left produced Anthony Albanese, Pam Allen, Carmel Tebbutt, Luke Foley during the Right’s wilderness years.

Today, it is interesting to see where the leaders from the Young Right who followed them have ended up – almost all are safely employed in the party that nurtured them.

Of course, Young Labor President Reba Meagher is now a Minister in NSW, so is Joe Tripodi, who was the Right’s first Secretary of Young Labor. Consider the other Presidents. Mario Falchoni has been in and out of the party and is now in the private sector. Mark Arbib is the NSW Party’s Secretary and was elected to the Senate last month. Elias Hallaj is in Labor’s National Secretariat. Liz McNamara is a senior public servant in NSW, having been Carl Scully’s Chief of Staff and an employee of the Millionaire’s Factory (Macquarie Bank). Matthew Thistlethwaite is at UnionsNSW, and will succeed John Robertson as Secretary. David Bradbury is now the Federal Member for Lindsay. Troy Bramston is Kevin Rudd’s speechwriter. Sam Moreton is Chief of Staff to Roads Minister Eric Roozendaal. Sam Dastyari is back in the Sussex Street Party office, after a stint with HawkerBritton.

And other Young Labor graduates like new NSW Party Secretary Karl Bitar, State MPs Matt Brown and Paul McLeay, Federal Ministers Tony Burke and Chris Bowen, and Former NSW Minister Cherie Burton, will all be there tonight.

While some may say this lot is a far cry from Keating, Carr et al, they are the ones that matter now. And the machine will keep on churning them out. The Libs, who struggle to field a footy team with the same sort of talent, should take notice.