It will be a walloping, I've given the ALP just 13 seats but they oughtn't be that depressed, this is a party that has been in government 21 of the last twenty three years, the electoral gravity against them is even greater than NSW and it's 16 years of government. People say because of the size of the loss Labor will be in exile for at least three terms or whatever, I think that's crap. The coalition vote is massively inflated by the age of this government and Labor can be sure of a healthy swing back to them in four years time. Some people say it would be better for Labor to have narrowly lost in 2009, I don't think so, if they had narrowly lost they could have expected a powerful re-election, (probably an increased majority) like Carr, Rann, Bracks and Beattie all got. The electoral thrashing gives the new leader of the opposition a nice small number of MP's which he can keep well disciplined and on message whilst polling will pretty much always say he is en route to improve his party from the previous election. By contrast Jeff Kennett and Dean Brown had horrible times of it, after winning in record breaking landslides they had a dozen MP's in notionally safe Labor seats forever acting like dills to try and bolster their public profiles and cling on to the seat which they had little chance of ever winning again. You also have enormous expectations to deliver upon and like they did under Rudd (sort of) people begin to panic that your popularity is in free fall when its merely returning to a manageable level.
Sure it's bad news for many sitting MP's who are not out of a job, but those who cling on have a lot to be optimistic about.