Federal Opposition Leader Bill Shorten's push to clean up the Labor party has passed its first test with the Victorian branch backing reform proposals.
Victorian ALP State Secretary Noah Carroll said important in-principle resolutions had been passed for rank-and-file participation and weighting in future preselection contests.
"Important initiatives were passed today. They gave full voting rights - the same as local branch members - to central members, that is, people who join online or directly with state office," Mr Carroll told AAP.
"There are currently 3000-odd such members, and they make up about one fifth of the entire party."
The move fits in with Mr Shorten's reform plan outlined in April, which proposed broadening Labor's membership base by letting non-union members join and giving grass-roots members a greater say in pre-selecting candidates.
Any member joining online could be traced via credit card details, as part of attempts to tackle branch stacking.
"Basically, the floor has endorsed Bill Shorten's call for more weight for a local vote, in addition to rank-and-file participation in leadership ballots on a state level to the March 2015 conference," Mr Carroll said.
Addressing the two-day Victorian ALP state conference on Sunday, Mr Shorten said Labor should be a membership-based party first, not a faction-based one.
"We need to have candidates from all walks of life. We need to be genuinely democratic and I also believe that we need to strongly maintain our relationship with the union movement," he said.
"We should not allow the false dividing lines of our conservative enemies to define who Labor represents."
Key proposals considered at the conference included reducing the role of the Public Office Selection Committee, changing preselection voting rights, rank-and-file election of state party presidents and vice-presidents, and allowing member participation in the voting for state parliamentary leader in the event Labor loses an election.
Mr Carroll said not all motions had been passed. Half were put off until after the Victorian November election.
A group of reformers under the banner of the ALP Democracy Project was able to secure the election of more than 20 delegates to the weekend conference.
It hoped reforms, recommended by former ALP official Andrew McKenzie in his Building a 21st Century Labor Party review, would strengthen the ALP and win back disillusioned supporters.
The Victorian ALP is seen as one of the most heavily factionalised state branches in the country and is the power base of many senior federal members, including Mr Shorten.
He opened his address to the conference on Sunday by telling delegates the Abbott government's budget had given Labor back its voice.
"This terrible budget of the Abbott government, it has defined the Labor Party," he said.
"Friends, the Labor party nationally has its voice back."
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