The recent landslide in NSW is being touted as a revolt against the carbon tax.
In fact it is a revolt against the idea of global warming. If we vote against the carbon tax, global warming will go away and we will be safe in our preferred way of life.
It is all part of denial that most terminal patients go through.
As global warming effects get worse, compounded by peak oil attitudes will change to “why us” and then anger.
Only then will the popular vote be cast for a party that is trying to combat the inevitable.
In the meantime the “new broom” L/N government will get into bed with big business as usual and we will see an increase in mining in the Hunter and elsewhere, huge new development programs on prime agricultural land, immense roadwork’s, clear felling in state forest and all the usual manifestations of a government run by the BUA lobby groups.
I would not like to be a citizen of Sydney from here on. The traffic and pollution will get worse, more population will be packed into the city decreasing the lifestyle even more.
It will only be as conditions worsen that the voter will ask, “Who can we turn to, to save us”?
The only alternative will be the Greens.
Even though the propaganda campaign against them will be running at it’s strongest, there will be an awakening that there is no alternative.
More labor?
I don’t think so. Continue with Liberal Nationals? People will have seen the empty promises left abandoned.
Will it be too late by then to save anything? Probably.
As for a rosy future where we all live in Mac Castles, drive even bigger SUV’s, live the life of an Australian billionaire, forget it.
Just 400 people in the US have 50% of the assets of the whole country or 155 million of the population and that’s the way we are headed.

I think people in NSW over state their importance these days, despite it's population it has it has a ever decreasing role in the Mining states of Australia.

Author is right no one won in NSW yesterday and it will take a little while for NSW people to see they're still the loosers.

...I think the problem with NSW Labor was much simpler. All evidence pointed towards an executive of state Government intent on advertising very publicly, personality flaws and particularly the very adverse effects of “boozing” and alcohol addiction.

...The minimum public expectation for a Politician is to exhibit respectability and self-control.

...Politicians need to remember that today 2.2million Australians are close to starving (todays news) while Politicians ignore this reality and Booze-on in their world of dislocated obscenity and luxury.

Rodney you say, "governments that cling to power long after they have exhausted their usefulness"

This implies that the Labor government ever had some usefulness. From the day Bob Carr was inflicted on this State as Premier, that was never the case. They lurched from one disaster to another, and could never be accused of doing anything useful, or honest, or sensible.

From Carr's decision not to increase the dam capacity of the State by adding a very economical wall to an existing Dam, to the disastrous decision by another fool to purchase an incredibly expenzive and useless desalination plant, they have been an absolute detriment.

Carr considered the increased capacity of the dam would inundate the bushwalking tracks that he preferred. This imbecile considered himself an intellectual, and the self destructive electorate voted him in a second time.

The electorate has not only woken up to the disaster that is Labor, but has put itself behind a Leader who will stand up to Labor Federally, as well as sort out its vandalisation of the State of NSW.

Labor lost, and Liberal won, resoundingly

As for your inappropriate comment" let its tired and worn-out members off the hook and take a well-earned rest." In view of the damage they have perpetrated most of them should have been sent to the knackery sixteen years ago, to avoid them taking office.

There is, of course, the occasional constructive and uncharacteristic member, such as John Hatsistergos, who are the exceptions.

It looks as though federal Labor has got there in record time.

More spin from a Labor Hack.

Why don't these people learn that it is this type of labor centric spin people are sick to death of?

Rodney political parties also are capable of descending into irrelevance and if you'd care to contemplate the uttering of Keating about Robertson I think you'd change your views.

As for the length of time it takes governments to lose their way and don't renew consider this the Liberal Party federally were in power from 1949 to 1983 with a blip of Whitlams 4 years? 30 odd years! Old Joh held sway over a Coalition that was entrenched for over 20 years in Qld. It seems that on the evidence it takes longer for entrenched Liberal govenments to lose direction than entrenched Labor governments.

Given that Liberal National Governments have Governed Australia for far greater periods federal than the Labor Party your logic would suggest that is what is normal for Australia.

But you labor spin hacks choke on these details and look for 'finer' reasons and rationale.

Voters don't.