KEY POINTS:
Australian voters have begun rolling up Labor's wall-to-wall carpet, turning against long-running state governments in a trend that could make life more difficult for Prime Minister Kevin Rudd's reformist agenda.
While bitter divisions within the federal Liberal Party and the robust youth of Rudd's 10-month-old government insulate Labor in Canberra, opposition parties elsewhere are gaining strength.
At the weekend the rural-based National Party in Western Australia finally agreed to side with the Liberals, despite rejecting a formal coalition and the accompanying offer of at least four Cabinet seats.
The decision came after a bizarre round of talks that saw the Nationals negotiate a possible deal with Labor, ending an extended cliffhanger election and ending former Premier Alan Carpenter's reign over the booming mining state.
This was Labor's first loss in a state or territory election since 1995.
In New South Wales, where the ruling Labor Government had earlier decapitated itself, installed a new Premier and Cabinet, and immediately plunged into a new scandal, the weekend delivered more bad news for the party through local government elections.
Although these are harder to read in terms of voting intentions for state polls, the scale of the swing to Liberals, independents and minor parties suggests new Premier Nathan Rees will have his work cut out when he faces voters in 2011.
Rudd agrees, telling reporters that voters in the nation's most populous state had told their Government that it had only a very short time to get its act together. "The people of NSW are just fed up with any government which seems to be more concerned about itself than it is about the future of the state," he said.
In the Northern Territory, whose politics have been complicated by the former Liberal Prime Minister John Howard's intervention in Aboriginal communities, Labor was given a serious fright in their recent election.
While a backhander from voters had been expected, the scale was not: Labor's 15-seat majority over the Country Liberal Party was slashed to just two.
The loss of WA and vulnerable Labor administrations in NSW, Victoria and Tasmania have eroded the party's apparent national unity and the power many believed would be handed to Rudd and his plan to reform federalism, already apparent in education and health agendas.
But the concept of a carpet of state Labor administrations buckling to the will of federal Labor Government was always more illusory than real.
State governments of the same party as the ruling Canberra administration have frequently fought extended and bitter campaigns to protect their rights, at times in concert with ideologically opposed governments in other states.
With polls still strongly in his favour and the Liberals still hacking at their political intestines over Brendan Nelson's doomed leadership, Rudd's own position remains strong. And while the bells in the states are not tolling for him, no leader can ignore the rumblings from the provinces.
