This has led quickly to the conventional wisdom that incumbents start strong favourites to be returned to office during pandemics. But the thinking behind this conventional wisdom has not been clearly explained, much less challenged. It can too easily become the lazy explanation.

Incumbents already have great advantages and win more often than they lose anyway. The idea that elections held during the pandemic disproportionately favour incumbent governments contains several different elements.

The first is that the health crisis meant that incumbent political leaders dominated the airtime to the exclusion of opposition leaders. This is certainly true. Even if they were delivering bad news the political leaders in each jurisdiction made daily television reports on the state of the pandemic. They were in our faces much more than usual. They were usually supported by their chief medical officers and health ministers. They also met regularly as part of the new national cabinet.

Opposition leaders were left out in the cold. Even if they were asked for a comment, they had nothing much of a constructive nature to say and had to be careful not to appear too critical during the crisis. Expert medical advice reigned and critics could too easily appear to be ungrateful whingers.

The second element has been that Australia's record in fighting the pandemic successfully has been outstanding. With the early exception of cruise ships and aged care facilities, followed by the major exception of the damaging second wave in Victoria, COVID-19 infections have been relatively low, especially by world standards. Economic activity has suffered badly, and closed borders have been controversial, but incumbent governments have scored highly.

The Northern Territory, the Australian Capital Territory and Queensland have been among the states and territories least affected by the pandemic. Their situations were different. The NT was isolated, ACT had an open border with NSW, while Queensland enforced a hard border. But together they escaped the worst.

The corollary is that citizens were by and large grateful to their governments for protecting them. This third element assumes that anger at job losses and border closures was outweighed by gratitude at being protected from the deathly pandemic. Analysis of the Queensland result has concluded that such gratitude was found especially among older voters, the sector thought to be most at risk.

The conventional wisdom jumps ahead of itself to predict that all incumbent governments, including the Morrison federal Coalition government, will be re-elected for the foreseeable future. That may turn out to be true, assisted by various aspects of the pandemic. But I think we should be cautious.

These three Labor governments are not a random sample. They benefit not just from incumbency but because of the existence of their political opponent, the Morrison Liberal-National Coalition government, at the federal level. In a recent study, published in Inside Story, of 126 state and territory elections since 1950 the political analyst, Peter Brent, argues persuasively that the incumbent federal government casts a long shadow over state elections. Their state colleagues start behind the eight ball.

When Labor is in office federally this invariably advantages state Coalition parties and when the Coalition is in office federally, as the Morrison government is now, this favours state Labor parties. The statistical odds always favoured the return of these three state and territory Labor governments anyway. Their individual circumstances varied, but the odds were in their favour. They should really start to worry if Labor wins federal government.

This is not the full story of course. The three jurisdictions are quite different. In the ACT many other factors have been raised, including the campaign itself, the role of the opposition leader and the opposition's conservative brand. Two new Liberal leaders have quickly been installed and a party election review will follow.

Such reviews, like the Labor review conducted after its loss in last year's pre-pandemic federal election, should be comprehensive. They should not concentrate too much on the pandemic, not just because that will be no help for the future, but because it may deflect attention from necessary self-criticism.

How to Win an Election by Chris Wallace, a new book uncompromisingly directed at the limitations of federal Labor, is a good place to start because it is widely applicable. It should be read not just by the defeated parties in Queensland, ACT and the NT but by all party strategists and leaders.

Wallace offers ten lessons for parties wanting to increase their chances of winning elections. These lessons cover leaders, frontbenchers, policies, polling, relationships and regional strategies, working with the mainstream media, devising cut-through campaign advertisements, improving social media and building confidence in success.

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The overall message is that there are numerous feasible ways to improve electoral performance, but many of them are often disregarded. Parties should concentrate on getting more of them right. The downside is that some are easier said than done.

Take Wallace's first two lessons. Find a leader who can do both the substance and theatre of politics and surround them in key portfolios with talented frontbenchers with the same characteristics who can bring voters along with them. The jury is out on whether any Australian political party has enough of such talent. If not, they must find it quickly if they want to win.