Q. Did people in a historically solid Labor seat hold their noses over the weekend and vote for the Liberal Party candidate in order to send a message to NSW Labor?
A. Yes. Yes they did.
Q. Is this bad news for Labor in the Federal election?
A. I seriously doubt it. Australian voters are more nuanced and discriminating than just automatically doing the same thing in State and Federal elections.
NSW Labor has been on the nose for years due to its incompetence and corruption, and the voters are sick and tired of their State being run into the ground, otherwise the gnomes of Sussex Street wouldn’t have handed the poisoned chalice of State Premier over to a woman for the first time ever. They know that they’re going to lose the next election even though the Opposition Liberal Party front bench is almost equally unappealing (the NSW ALP would have lost the last one if Opposition Leader Peter Debnam hadn’t been such a galah, and the current Opposition Leader Barry O’Farrell may not be much on the inspiration front but at least he’s no galah). Sussex Street appear to be playing more for the election after this one, and clearly they feel just fine about being able to blame the upcoming loss of office on Kristina Keneally so that they can relegate other women in the party for the next decade just by pointing to her.
But federally? Labor, despite the noise and fury of the MSM over the last few opinion polls, are still ahead in the polls, just not by as much as they were a year ago. How a 52-48 lead federally in the polls is being spun so one-sidedly as the-end-is-nigh, Labor-is-doomed narrative we are seeing everywhere makes no rational sense.
The media climate is so anti-Rudd that Wilson Tuckey felt safe to trot out perhaps his most ridiculous anti-Labor claim ever, that it was Rudd’s fault via the proposed RSPT that some WA mining executives have gone missing in Africa – as if they wouldn’t have been there without it. I confidently predict that when somebody gets around to mentioning that these mining executives go to Africa regularly and have done so for decades (because there’s money to be made!) that Wilson Tuckey will not be apologising to Kevin Rudd.
Anyway, while the polls show that Labor can’t be complacent about the upcoming federal election, the biggest lesson for them was to keep on distancing themselves from NSW Labor, as they have been doing already anyway. The voters know the difference between the state and federal parliamentary Labor parties, and they know the difference for the Liberals as well.
Categories: media, parties and factions
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Hoyden About Town 
Traditionally also, they like to have a Liberal government at one level and a Labor government at the other. This is possibly why State Labor persisted so long despite people being heartily sick of them. I thought for a minute that Kristina might almost pull it off, but then the scandals started. How it is her fault that Ian McDonald lied about things he did long before she was Premier I don’t know, but there you go.
The other important thing is that Barry O’Farrell is not Tony Abbott. Mind you I can be complacent here for a bit, my local member is a National (a coalition partner of the Liberals State and Federally, traditonally supports farmers) and has over 60% of the primary vote because she is very very good at what she does so it doesn’t really matter how I vote, I know that a good candidate is going to get in. Will she get a spot in the Government, I’d hope so but who knows. She is afterall a woman.