Unworthy even of an E for effort

The Labor Party isn't even trying and it's sad to watch. Labor started the campaign behind, but not as far as many people think.

However, instead of trying to crawl back over the line, it has spent the past week trying to set the political high bar way beyond record heights for Barry O'Farrell.

It is trying to manipulate expectations so that if O'Farrell doesn't set a new Australian election record, plus win the upper house, the ALP will say: ''Look at us. Didn't we campaign brilliantly!''

What drivel. Already, this is acknowledged around the country as the worst Labor campaign in almost 20 years.

To win by just one seat, O'Farrell has to achieve the sixth biggest swing recorded anywhere in Australia by an opposition removing a government.

A 7 per cent swing to deliver a one-seat victory would put O'Farrell just behind Malcolm Fraser, who knocked over the discredited Whitlam government (1975); Wayne Goss, who led Labor's comeback in Queensland (1989); Nick Greiner's Coalition win in NSW (1988); David Tonkin's Liberal victory in South Australia (1979); and Dean Brown's Liberal win in South Australia (1993), when the government-owned State Bank collapsed.

He would smash every record in Australia if he achieved even half of the swing that the polls suggest is coming.

The Australian record is a 10.7 per cent swing achieved by Joh Bjelke-Petersen in 1974 - the year of the other big flood in Queensland, when Bjelke-Petersen, as premier, stood north of the border and shouted at Gough Whitlam for being a goose, and Queenslanders agreed with him.

Labor did have a chance in this NSW election, but as any good campaigner knows, if you start a campaign a little behind, you have to win the communications war and dominate the front pages on most days.

Last week the front pages focused on a racehorse owner shot dead, gay marriages, the cost for families of Julia Gillard's carbon tax, a staged people's parliament and the actions of a few rugby league dills.