Dang, Labor lost Sydney,if I heard correctly,I always imagined that Sydney would be really left-leaning? Could I have misunderstood that?
Surprisingly, Syndey is moderate in orientation - a bit like a cross between blue and red tate. Unlike Melbourne, Toronto, Montreal, or indeed most inner US metros, it doesn't turn out true leftists even when it elects Labor. I can't see how many US metros with population of 3 million or more that are this conervative.
I have an extract from Paddy McGuinness (from the SMH) about Sydney and Melbourne difference:
There is a harder edge, a tougher minded approach to many issues in Sydney compared with Melbourne. There you tend to get more of the politics of the warm inner glow, along with pretensions to intellectual, cultural and moral superiority. Typically, the Fabian Society - wishy-washy socialism for idealistic and ineffectual intellectuals - flourishes there while it never did in Sydney.
Also I wrote this on another thread:
My guess in general is that New South Wales - which is the largest state - (including Sydney!) is moderately conservative Labor and conservative Liberal/National - even the Labor MPs (analogous to Representatives in the US) aren't the knee-jerk anti-Americans. By US standards it will be a cross between blue and red state.
Queensland and Western Australia are out and out red states (they are the 3rd and 4th largest states respectively). I'm not too sure about South Australia (with Adelaide as largest city and capital) though, but intitutively it isn't too liberal either and I would call it a moderate red state.
Now, the bad news. The second largest state, Victoria (including its capital and largest city, Melbourne, which is also Australia's second largest city), is a typical liberal big city in US standards. You can think of it as Ontario (and Melbourne as Toronto) in Australia. Tasmania (the sixth and smallest state) is out and out nutty left in the Washington state and British Columbia model - it is the most left-wing jurdisdiction in Australia. Both two states elect Labor candidates that would be considered liberals by US standards.
And we are left with two territories. Canberra (the Australian Capital Territory, a bit like Washington DC) elects the usual degrees-holding-professional-liberal/realpolitik-bureaucrats, and Northern Territory is schipozeric - the Europeans elect conservatives, while Aborginals elect "brownie activists" just like South Dakota in the US does.
Final words must be said about Australia's party spectrum. Labor is the main party on the left. Its Left faction is equal to Canada's Liberal Party and its Right truly moderates (its right is pro-US, and Mark Latham is currently using Paul Martin rhetoric for campaigns - but still he is considered too anti-US and he is losing support precisely because of his foreign policy stance). The main two parties on the Right, Liberal and National parties, are like urban-suburban and country versions of the US Republicans (except maybe they have more pork from time to time), etc. The Green party and Australian Democratic Party are the fringe-loony left parties in Australia. They are equal to Canada's New Democratic Party and Green Party but unlike Canada's NDP which gets 20% in the recent Canadian election, in Australia both combined gets around 4% of support. (A note of interest is Tasmania's share of votes for these two left-wing parties is similar to the figure for Canada's NDP nationally)
In short, Australia's political orientation is about 75 to the right of Canada and 25 to the left of the US.