Judgment Day. By sunset, Labor will have suffered such a crushing defeat that it can never rise again in its present form. And good riddance. Gone at long last the touts and urgers, the cheats and liars, the knaves and bullies and developers' hustlers, the spongers and careerists, the backstabbers and branch stackers, the underpants dancers and shiraz-pickled lunchers and expense account rorters and porn-sniffing web surfers - all that rabble of fools and incompetents who brought this once great party to its knees in NSW.

Or so you would hope. Certainly the ALP will be reduced to a rump in Macquarie Street, with perhaps just 13 of the 93 lower house seats if the pollsters' more dire predictions are realised. But it's Labor's Sussex Street machine and all its dark arts that must be destroyed. That self-serving oligarchy has to be swept away if the party is ever to be reclaimed by the decent folk who were once its first, best hope.

It's those good Labor people I feel sorry for. Down in the grass roots, they are the true loyalists who attend branch meetings, make the jams and cakes for the fund-raising raffles, go door-knocking for the local candidate and hand out the leaflets on polling day. They have suffered the greatest betrayal of all. Their numbers have dwindled to a few thousand. Nothing short of radical reform, root and branch, can save them and their party now.

Not that Barry O'Farrell and the Tories should take any comfort from this. Ho, they will be making merry this evening, and understandably so. But there is no particular enthusiasm for them in the wider electorate. They will be elected not for their inherent shining virtues but because the Coalition is the only alternative. All politicians are on the nose in NSW at the moment. O'Farrell and company will have a very short honeymoon before they are expected to deliver big time.

Mike Carlton