The election of the ALP to government in NSW last weekend gives the party an almost clean sweep of the board across Australian States and in Canberra. The one outlier is Tasmania where a conservative government remains in power.

It is hard to fathom why such a calamity has visited the Coalition (Liberal and National Parties) except to say that we have reached the end of one cycle and the beginning of another. I remember back in the noughties when a similar issue arose and the newspapers were full of gloomy predictions about the future of the conservative parties. And I'm sure that they will be at it again.

If I might pipe in with an unwarranted opinion, I don't think its necessarily the party programs that are turning voters off, at least not at a state level. The Canberra Coalition have been in climate denial for over a decade and this has cost them dearly in the present. But what seems to be happening across Western democracies is that a particularly objectionable kind of conservative has emerged in some quarters - boorish, nasty egotists who want their own way, who act unreasonably once in power, who are uncompromising in the face of issues that are eminently worthy of compromise. I don't need to mention their names but they are a blight on the body politic.

The Liberals and their National allies will return to power everywhere at some point as the cycle shifts in their favour and incumbent governments grow stale. The NSW Government had been in power for 12 years and that was probably what tipped the scales.