The predicted result in Queensland, was embodied in a perception that Labour had deserted its core values and constituents?
There is a lesson here for federal Labour as it seeks to create a budget surplus?
Things it can cut without any further electoral harm is welfare for the rich?
They could do worse than jettison negative gearing. If landlords threaten as they did the last time this particular can of worms was opened, let them.
Sydney rents are already the most unaffordable in the entire English speaking world; and, further increases at a time of economic contraction, falling tax revenues etc/etc, would only harm the landlords' fiscal positions.
Altogether there is still around 24 billions handed over annually, as welfare for the rich.
People struggling to get by on a miserable $150,000 plus per, may not see themselves as rich!
They will point to the Macmansion and the massive mortgage. The solar hot water service, the solar array, and the two car garage. They will bitch about their private health insurance, private school fees, etc/etc, ad nuseum; and whine like hell about the tax they pay; all while selectively ignoring the privileges they enjoy; and their fellow Australians, 40% of who are living in poverty trap post codes, trying to manage endlessly rising rents and utility costs, on very low fixed incomes!
Welfare for the rich needs to be progressively rolled back; and very doable in a climate of gradually reducing interest rates/tax revenues etc.
With some of it redistributed to real and currently unmet need.
This would be a good start for Labour to reconnect with its core constituents and core values; and in so doing, limit further or future electoral harm.
It is often said, we can judge the real worth of a nation, by just how well it treats its worst off.
Increasing the financial lot of the worst off is good for the economy, which is at least 70% domestic and almost totally reliant on discretionary spending, which can only be improved, with long overdue wealth redistributing finally heading in the right direction. Rhrosty.

Thank you Rhosty.

More advice in the what others should do with their money category.

20-25% of rents go to other expenses not including interest. I recently had a conversation with a former house owner now a renter. Thinks renting is terrific by comparison, no maintenance no high mortgage payments.

Due to social legislation for rental properties I now have one response for everything, put the rent up at the slightest of reasons due to the lack of respect for other peoples property. The attitude of many renters is reinforced by laws that make the owner third in line for decision making. Government first, renter second.

I agree get rid of negative gearing over say a 5 year period. Otherwise the dislocation will be extreme.

No negative gearing and then the rents would be forced to reflect genuine market forces, which will be rents that exceed mortgage payments plus other expenses so that a profit will occur each and every month just as American landlords do. Landlords would no longer have to wait 10-12 years for their speculative properties to become investment properties, ie positive returns.

This would require about a 45% rate of increase in rents in Sydney other wise there would be no affordability for many small investors to invest in real estate. I could then retire early and you could enjoy watching another lefty concept go up in smoke.

Spin-doc; by name and nature? I lived through a time when we were the third wealthiest nation on the planet; when Menzies liberals included economic wets, and leaned a little further to the left than today's New Labour.
Why, Menzies kept all the publicly owned income earning infrastructure; and only reacted to it by allowing a co-existent private duopoly; that then created a real competition model!
Such pragmatism seems absent these days, with over 95% of corporate now head-quartered offshore; as a tax and cost reduction exercise.
We could and should reverse this trend, with real tax reform and the provision of the world's lowest cost energy; all doable, if future vision and our quite massive super savings are accessed; via, thirty year bonds and genuine tax reform.
This would also help our working poor by creating wealth building opportunities; that would simply have to include them!
Real tax reform would allow locally based firms to pocket the 7% of the bottom line; currently ripped out by compliance costs; and, the most complex tax act in the world?
New Labour is filled, with former staffers and people who have come directly from uni or union officialdom; and arrive, with little or no real world experience.
When we were the third wealthiest nation on the planet, we were a creditor nation to boot and able to affordablly embark on nation building vision; as embodied by the Snowy Mountain scheme; and both major parties were filled to the gunwales, with pragmatists with shared centuries of real world experience! Rhrosty.