By backing Bill Shorten as leader, the federal Labor caucus has shunned the party's rank and file - and probably the electorate.
They also rewarded a factional powerbroker who turned on two Labor prime ministers in three years.
In ordinary circumstances, the 55-31 caucus vote would have been a decisive vote of confidence in Shorten's ability to lead a Labor renewal, as he calls it.
But allowing the party's rank and file a vote in the leadership ballot that followed the September 7 election defeat runs the risk of diminishing Shorten's authority inside Labor and with voters.
ALP members gave Anthony Albanese an emphatic 60-40 per cent victory, a result matched by public opinion in the last week of the leadership campaign.
Shorten, in a pointed reference to the rank-and-file vote, said his parliamentary colleagues "knew him best" after seven years in parliament but none in opposition.
He acknowledged he had a job to win over the membership and win back the hundreds of thousands of Australians who deserted Labor on September 7.
"There are still things for me to learn," Shorten said in his first press conference as leader.
To do that, Shorten will have to show that he's the solution to what ails Labor and not part of the problem.
His trade union background and factional powerbroker reputation, as one of Labor's so-called faceless men, are likely to be the targets of government attacks.
That and the new leader's sometimes prickliness.
Shorten's task is more rescue than renewal.
Labor is in dire electoral straits with its stock at an all-time low around the country.
Kicked out after only two terms in government, the second in minority, federal Labor faces another six years in opposition.
Within a year, the party may only be in power in the ACT having lost government in South Australia and Tasmania.
Opposition leaders facing a first-term government have a record of failure, even before they get the chance to face off in an election.
But Shorten knows Labor's new rules allow him the luxury of not having to look constantly over his shoulder for a challenger, unlike his predecessors.
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