Hardly any observer can pretend to be much surprised by the result of the ACT election. Hardly any interested observer is in much of a position to make much political capital from it.
At least since The Canberra Times published the results of the first of its polls a week ago, the broad nature of the outcome was clear, and even then, it was as much as the professionals expected, whether from their own polling or their instincts.
What they expected, in short, was that Labor would be down, and by some margin, but that the Liberals would gain little benefit.
The prediction, which turned out right, was that the dissatisfaction of those who had voted Labor last time would add to an existing Greens vote base, or that it would flow to a host of new independent groupings, none of whom, however, would get enough votes (protest or otherwise) in their own right.
Counted as Labor and anti-Labor votes, in short, the electorate would more or less decide for a status quo, if with a few extra hobbles on the ALP horses by way of putting in some Green representatives.
That's pretty much what we got.
In some respects, indeed, there is rather more interest in the way voters have chosen from within parties than in the way they chose between parties.
Steve Pratt, for example is out, and so, it seems, is Mick Gentleman.
A number of other sitting members may not be returned; with some, as with, for example, Simon Corbell, they may be returned but relegated by voters to the back of the ALP pack. Corbell is, after the retirement of Wayne Berry, the senior representative of the Labor Left faction which dominates the local ALP machine. But that machine has long had problems both in finding and promoting attractive candidates, and in putting any left brand on ACT Labor policies and programs
Any Liberal Party sense of triumph about Labor's relative humiliation has to be balanced against the Liberals' own loss of votes and the pain they should feel about their failure and seeming incapacity to convert former Labor voters to their cause.
Instead, the protest vote went to the Greens, or to minor parties.
It will take time to see, by examining preference flows, how many old Labor votes drifted to the Liberals in the ultimate contest; most observers last night were predicting that both independent, minor parties and the Greens were but protest way stations, not much affecting what federal psephologists would call the two-party preferred vote.
What that suggests is that the electorate put some significant checks and balances on Labor, but reiterated their preference for a Labor Government.
It does not even necessarily mean that Labor voters wanted specific new environmental policies though perhaps they want more lip service to the importance of climate change. This is because the Greens did not particularly campaign on any specific practical policies.
In some deference to criticisms of Labor that it is ''arrogant'' and visibly irritated by consultation, the Greens are as well off focusing on less arrogance and more consultation, than on appeasing Shane Rattenbury by yet another meaningless (but spiritually satisfying) gesture against whaling, or by some other gesture involving garbage bins, light bulbs or discounts for high-cost yuppie finger-pointing machines.
Perhaps a ban on Kangaroo culling?
Federal Liberals will be struggling to find any sort of particular cheer from the result apart from some sense that Labor's old stranglehold on state and territory government is now on the way out.
That does not mean that they will not try, but even then their efforts will be somewhat compromised by the fact that there is little real ''message'' in the result, particularly at a time when federal politicians are preoccupied with the international financial crisis.
Jon Stanhope has run a fairly successful economy, and on fairly conservative systems, and is hardly open to the sort of charges of profligacy and neglect that applies in places such as NSW.
Its by-election horrors are of an entirely different order, and predictive of an different ultimate fate than ACT Labor's reverse.
Likewise, federal Labor will find neither vindication of its own federal policies, nor specific repudiation of nationally important Labor policies or personalities. It was, if anything, only a typically idiosyncratic Canberra result, if yet another warning, to politicians of all stripes, that nothing can be taken for granted. Some outsiders might contemplate what might have happened had the ACT been a state rather than a sui generis federal territory. Had we run the election either on the British and American first-past-the-post system with single-member electorates, the result would probably have been Labor 17, all others nil.
Although we will find the odd polling booth in which Labor was outpolled, I cannot think of electoral configurations which could have produced more than one or two, at most Liberals. Certainly no Greens. Run on the general Australian preferential system in single-member electorates, the results would have been much the same an overwhelming Labor triumph, thanks to Green preferences.
Instead, Labor is in minority, and will need the cooperation of others. It is hard to think that this reflects the local mood less accurately than a more ''straightforward'' system.