Regardless of who ends up being premier in either South Australia or Tasmania, both elections saw Labor cop a beating.

The Labor governments in South Australia and Tasmania are both long-term state governments, and thus in a much different position to the first-term Federal Government.

But the Rudd Government can learn lessons from the campaigns, particularly in South Australia, where Premier Mike Rann lost votes in safe seats but managed to protect its marginals.

Mr Rann is still the frontrunner with the ABC’s election computer predicting Labor will hold 25 seats in the 47-seat House of Assembly.

The Liberals are forecast to hold 18, with four independents.

In Tasmania, Labor had a bad last week of the campaign, highlighting the need to campaign right until the end.

The make-up of the Tasmanian Parliament after yesterday’s election appears to be 10 seats to Labor, 10 to the Liberals and five Greens, although several seats are still in doubt.

The Greens are very happy with the lift in their vote, and the Federal Coalition is taking heart that voters are willing to look at changing governments.

Senior Liberal frontbencher Eric Abetz told AM he thinks the Liberal Party ran a great campaign in his home state of Tasmania.

“Will Hodgman’s leadership shone throughout the whole campaign,” he said.

“He ran the cleanest and the most positive campaign out of the three parties, so a lot of messages there that good leadership will deliver, good policies will deliver.”

But he does not believe the Greens – who got over 20 per cent of the vote – will necessarily match that effort on a federal level.

“This election was largely fought on the state issues,” he said.

“I don’t think it has any federal implications other than the Liberal Party machine in Tasmania is clearly back in action, well-oiled, and the people of Tasmania are willing to listen to it.”

Senator Abetz told ABC TV’s Insiders program the Liberal Party came from a low base of seven seats, which was not helped by the retirement of sitting members Michael Hodgman and Sue Napier.

“We only had seven members in the Parliament,” he said.

“We had two substantial vote-getters unfortunately having to announce their retirement close to the election because of ill health.

“So we had five active people in the field and that is a very, very bad situation to start with.”

‘Dirty tricks’

Senator Abetz says Labor’s dirty tricks campaign did it no favours.

“First of all they started with the Liberals, when that didn’t really work they started on the Greens and Labor had a very negative campaign,” he said.

“Clearly it did have an impact, but the Liberal party did gain a 7 per cent swing to it. That is a substantial shift in sentiment by anybody’s measure.”

Federal Senator Nick Minchin says there are lessons for the federal sphere from the election in South Australia.

“It just reinforces the old rule, you do have to get the swings where you need them,” he said.

“Labor managed through massive trade union funding and frankly some dirty tricks campaigns to hang onto a couple of the key marginals that we were hoping we could get.

“I think the key lessons federally are that when a leader loses the trust of the electorate he’s in big trouble and this is a big bloody nose for Mike Rann.”

But he says no federal issues were at play.

“I think it does go to more style of government, trust in government, trust in your leaders, those things do have federal implications, and I think augur well for the Liberal Party at the next federal election,” he said.

“Mr Rudd has clearly modelled his style of government and his style of leadership on Mike Rann and that has come completely unstuck.”

The Federal Government expected that in Tasmania there would be a minority government, probably not formed by Labor.

It is much happier with the South Australian result, but remains cautious because South Australian Opposition Leader Isobel Redmond is not yet conceding.

Federal Infrastructure Minister Anthony Albanese says it is a better result for the Labor Party than predicted.

“Tony Abbott and the Liberal Party … were predicting that today we’d be announcing two new Liberal governments in majority form in both states,” he said.

“It’s clear that that hasn’t happened.”

He says the lessons for the federal sphere are more about the style and nature of campaigning than the issues that the elections were fought on.

“There are obviously some lessons in general terms about politics, local matters,” he said.

“In South Australia what you’ve seen is outstanding results in some key marginal seats.”

Health agenda

Mr Albanese says the Federal Government is not worried about having to negotiate its health reform package with Liberal premiers.

“The Prime Minister has shown that he has an ability to negotiate with premiers across the political spectrum,” he said.

“He has a good relationship with [WA Premier] Colin Barnett.

“It’s pretty clear that what we want is health reform and that the Prime Minister will be prepared to sit down and talk with the respective premiers and chief ministers regardless of their political origin.”

Prime Minister Kevin Rudd will this week debate Tony Abbott on health.

“The Prime Minister wants to talk about health and hospital reform,” said Mr Albanese.

“And he wants to talk about it north, south, east, west, he wants to talk about it with state premiers and chief ministers, and he wants to debate it with Tony Abbott.”

The Government wants all the states and territories to agree by next month to the deal, which will put 30 per cent of GST revenue towards public hospitals.

Government frontbencher Craig Emerson told Channel Ten that Tasmanians understand that health reform must happen.

“On that basis alone, of a Tasmanian Government understanding that it can’t really stand in the way of reform of health, I think regardless of the political persuasion of that Government, they’ll understand that imperative,” he said.