The landslide defeat of the NSW Labor government on the weekend raises yet again the question about the impact state elections have on federal politics.

To be sure, the historic nature and the size of Labor’s defeat at the hands of Barry O’Farrell’s Liberal-National coalition, and the subsequent appearance of former Labor prime minister Paul Keating to dump on prospective NSW leader John Robertson gives the impression that the NSW outcome will reverberate at the national level.

The truth of the matter is, however, that Australian voters tend to easily distinguish between state and federal politics, and their voting behaviour varies accordingly. In the last federal election, held a little over seven months ago, Labor did quite well in NSW. While it is true that there was a small swing to the coalition and that Labor only polled 48 percent of the state-wide two party vote, the Gillard government lost only one seat.

Those who have joined the current sport of pillorying Senator Mark Arbib and former national secretary Karl Bitar ought to bear this election-saving feature of the national election in mind.

The fact is that the route endured by the NSW Labor party was due entirely to its own performance. The defeated Labor government had been in power for a long time, had become associated with all sorts of scandals and, worst of all, tore itself apart over a matter of public policy and then proceeded to destabilise the parliamentary leaders.

There were three leaders/premiers between 2006 and 2010. No wonder the voters had totally lost confidence in Labor as a viable party of government. The federal coalition is trying to pin the result on the Gillard government’s announcement of its intention to bring in a carbon tax.

The problem with this claim is that it is not sustained by the polls, which all showed that the NSW Labor government was on track for a landslide defeat well before the carbon tax was announced. Besides, the carbon tax is a federal matter and voters will get their chance to register their feelings on this matter at the next federal poll. In the meantime, the NSW Labor party will have to try to pick up the pieces and commence the thankless task of being in opposition.

It would appear that the burden of this task will fall on the shoulders of John Robertson, formerly head of Unions NSW, a Legislative Councillor and, by all reports, one of the infamous ‘faceless men’ that sections of the Labor party have been unable to contain themselves in raging against. Those doing the denouncements included former premier Morris Iemma (understandable), former minister Frank Sartor (also understandable) and former treasurer Michael Costa (ditto, but whose vitriolic approach when trying to get the NSW ALP to accept electricity privatisation contributed to the disaster).

Also putting his two-bob’s worth was Paul Keating. Paul Keating is the master of bile and his delivery style, including a propensity to say outrageous things that would get anyone else in the Labor party in to big trouble, is loved by the press who can’t wait to give him air time. As hilarious as his tirades against Robertson, Bitar, Abib and others have been, it should be noted that there is a hint of hypocrisy about his denouncement of those who bring down party leaders because disagreements over policy and/or because of their naked political ambition.

Listening to Keating you would think that he was prime minister between 1983 and 1996. He wasn’t of course – for much of that time Bob Hawke was Labor leader and prime minister. Indeed he was – and still is – the most successful federal leader in Labor’s history whose demise occurred not at the hands of the electorate but, rather, as a result of the ambitions of none other than Paul Keating. And it was Hawke’s failure to support Keating’s attempt to bring in a goods and services tax in 1985 that contributed something to the vengefulness of the Keating leadership tilt.

The cult of the Keating leadership that Keating likes to propagate rarely mentions Hawke as prime minister and rarely mentions the election rout that federal Labor endured in 1996 when Keating was leader. On the basis of his record, Mr Keating really should not be in a position to deride his party colleagues for their failures, unless of course one considers that the former prime minister’s own shortcomings makes him an expert on failure generally.