It has been a miserable weekend for the Liberals. In Tasmania, an 11 per cent swing left Australia’s last Liberal state government in an even more perilous position than it was when Premier Jeremy Rockliff called the early election to secure a majority.

Meanwhile, in South Australia, Labor looks to have won the Dunstan byelection following the retirement of Steven Marshall. Add to that the Liberal Party’s failure to make any significant headway federally in the Dunkley byelection three weeks ago, and it is obvious that it continues to have a deep problem in southern Australia.

Tasmanian Premier Jeremy Rockliff saw an 11 per cent swing against the Liberal Party at the weekend state election.Credit: Alex Ellinghausen

Coming days will determine the make-up of the Tasmanian parliament; whatever happens, both major parties will be several seats short of a majority. That reality, together with uncertainty about the composition of the crossbench and Jacqui Lambie’s refusal to be drawn on whom her MPs would support to form government, leaves open the remote – though deeply implausible – possibility of a minority Labor government. In that unlikely event, Labor’s “sea of red” would extend across Bass Strait, and Labor would have a clean sweep of every government in Australia.

Except in Brisbane.

The previous weekend, a much bigger election than the Tasmanian election took place: for the city of Brisbane. Its significance was under-appreciated – municipal politics hardly gets the blood racing – despite the fact that nearly five times as many people voted in the Brisbane City Council election as voted in the Tasmanian election. It tells a very different story from the results in Tasmania, Dunkley and Dunstan.

Brisbane is different from other capital cities in having a citywide government which is responsible for many of the services, such as public transport, which elsewhere are state responsibilities. Local government elections are full-scale party contests. In some respects, they resemble state elections. The councillors are full-time politicians whose electorates are roughly the same size as state electorates.

On the same day, there were also state byelections in two of Labor’s safest metropolitan seats: Inala (vacated by former premier Anastasia Palaszczuk) and Ipswich West. Labor suffered swings of 21 per cent and 18 per cent respectively, losing Ipswich West – which just happens to sit largely within its most marginal federal seat (Blair, held by Shayne Newman on 5.2 per cent).

When Queensland swings, it swings big: much more than elsewhere in Australia. When Anna Bligh lost office in 2012, the LNP won 78 of the 89 seats in the parliament. Then, just three years later, Campbell Newman – wrongly assuming his massive majority gave him a free pass to offend just about every constituency imaginable – was turfed out after another massive swing. Palaszczuk took Labor from seven seats to 44 in one go.