The voting is over. It will take some time for the full extent of the new reality to sink in, but one thing is certain: the result has been decisive. Like it or not, Labor is in power.

Prime Minister Paul Keating said, ‘when you change the government you change the country’. This election has offered Labor the chance to remake Australia.

Anthony Albanese has already had three years in office and not a great deal has changed. This emphatic victory has rewarded his slow and steady approach so far. The big question for this term is whether he will be able to seize the opportunity and reshape the country.

Labor’s dramatic success at the election makes it almost impossible to conceive of the opposition coming back within one term. The Liberal party has been shattered. The danger it faces is that it has lost so many moderates that regaining the centre will be difficult.

The risk it faces is that unless it finds a way to change it will become increasingly trapped in the grip of an old and fading membership who don’t understand how the country has changed.

The Greens, too, will need to change. Labor will have no interest in changing the electoral system that has delivered it victory and so, once again, the Greens will be pushed to decide if they are a left-wing party or want to concentrate on specific issues.

Until now it has always chosen to represent the left. It seems unlikely it will change now.

The independents will remain a political force but will need to find a way of converting that into power. Unless they prove they can acomplish things for their constituents they will become increasingly irrelevant as the term continues.

Slowly, inperceptably, the country will change. So will Labor and Albanese. Political power changes people and alters the way things are done.

abilityNEWS will now concentrate on reporting exactly how this political earthquake is - or is not - being reflected in disability policy.