Australian Prime Minister Julia Gillard said Monday the savage loss endured by her Labor Party in a state election was no reflection on her government or her plans for a carbon tax.
New South Wales (NSW) voters delivered a crushing victory to the right-leaning Liberal/National coalition on Saturday, ousting 25 sitting Labor members from the 93-seat parliament in what has been termed a "massacre".
Gillard, who leads a fragile coalition government with Greens and independent MPs, said the rout — which involved a statewide swing of almost 16 percent — against Labor was unrelated to national politics.
"I believe the people of New South Wales know the difference between state issues and federal issues. This (election result) was a decision a long time in the making," she told reporters in Canberra.
Gillard said voters had made up their minds to end the 16-year state Labor rule some time ago, denying conservative claims it had been in part driven by her recent unveiling of plans to tax carbon emissions.
The prime minister said she would work with the new NSW government as she did with the Liberal-led administrations in Victoria and Western Australia, saying incoming Premier Barry O'Farrell was a "reasonable man".
O'Farrell's emphatic victory saw the Liberals steal seats they had never hoped to win, ending a Labor government beset by scandal upon scandal, including the jailing of a sacked MP for child sex crimes.
Several ministers also resigned from cabinet after their extramarital affairs came to light, and another resigned after cheating on her expenses.
Among those who lost their seats Saturday were an MP dumped as a minister after allegedly dancing in his Parliament House office in his underpants and another who admitted to visiting adult websites using a work computer.
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