Last weekend’s New South Wales election was significant in Australian politics because it halted the seemingly-inexorable momentum of states turning red.

Instead, Labor was red-faced: fuming and more than a little embarrassed that its policy (for want of a better term) platform was discredited by one of its own.

The significance of the NSW domino refusing to fall, following first-term Liberal collapses in Victoria and Queensland and Jay Weatherill’s own ability to hold back the tide of transition here in SA, cannot be understated.

It signals to a somewhat resurgent federal Coalition that the brand can still prevail with the right campaign.

And it’s not like Tony Abbott’s leadership was the biggest of Premier Mike Baird’s problems. The taint of scandal was never far from this fledgling Government: 10 Liberal MPs had been forced from the government benches amid damaging ICAC inquiries. Barry O’Farrell, the man who led them from the wilderness after 16 years, stood down over an undisclosed bottle of wine (Grange, no less, giving the Gago household two reasons to celebrate that day).

But the election result suggested that even a Liberal Government with a greater propensity than most for scandal had a way to go before voters forgot the stench of the previous Labor administration. Some of the architects of its ruin – the likes of Eddie Obeid, Joe Tripodi and Ian Macdonald – were banned from the party for life.

And now, in the fallout of a comfortable election defeat, the ALP is seeking to ban another one-time luminary. But Martin Ferguson didn’t behave corruptly, conceivably keeping his own party out of power for a generation in order to feather his own nest. Rather, all he did was hold firm to policy positions he had long held, and articulate them at a time that probably did his party no favours.

Luke Foley’s Labor ran a campaign that was cynical is its populism: it favoured fear and mendacity over genuine policy debate. Some in SA Labor privately shook their heads at one campaign ad that suggested fracking for coal seam gas would cripple Sydney’s drinking water supply.

Ferguson, a former federal frontbencher and ACTU president, gave an on-camera interview for an energy industry website some weeks back, which was subsequently used by the Liberals in their campaign. In it, he expressed support for Liberal plans to privatise the electricity network and criticised his own party’s fear campaign as a “bald lie”.

Labor senator and former state secretary Sam Dastyari accused Ferguson of “a bastard act”, declaring “there is no place in the Labor party for Martin Ferguson”.

Even Bill Shorten said he expected the matter to be “fully investigated”, suggesting there may have been “an element of working with the Liberal Party to damage Labor’s chances”.

Energy privatisation has long been a fraught proposition for the ALP; it was previously advocated by Labor Premier Morris Iemma and his Treasurer Michael Costa, which ultimately led to both of them being dumped.

But a retired right-winger articulating a long-held policy position is not what damaged Labor’s chances in NSW. Almost two decades of shoddy government and anti-ideology machine politics did that.

It is ironic and sad indeed that a party (and I refer here specifically to the NSW branch) with neither ideological clarity nor political gallantry would move to expel someone for speaking their mind on policy.

So much for the “broad church”.

Ferguson is now the now chairman of the Australian Petroleum Production and Exploration Association, which means his partisan colleagues have happily demonized him as a “lobbyist for big oil”.

Under those strictures, local rising stars such as Tom Koutsantonis’s former adviser Rob Malinauskas and Jay Weatherill’s current chief economic boffin Sam Crafter would be out the door as well, since the former now works for Santos, as did the latter until recently.

Luke Hilakari, Trades Hall Secretary in Ferguson’s native Victoria, told reporters the former union official “is a man who is a lobbyist for big oil, and is trading on his reputation as a Labor minister and former ACTU secretary, who is now throwing workers under the bus”.

“When it comes to penalty rates, or privatising the services we all rely on, this guy has forgotten his Labor roots,” he said.

Ah, there it is. I’m not sure where in the campaign Ferguson mentioned penalty rates, but he’s historically been a critic of the existing structure. So, out he goes!

And, by the same mentality, South Australia’s ALP president Peter Malinauskas would have to join his brother on the outer, since as secretary of the shoppies’ union he’s traded off weekend and public holiday penalty rates for better pay and conditions.

Ferguson has long represented the economically ‘progressive’ wing of the Labor movement. A staunch uranium advocate, he railed against his party’s ludicrously restrictive “three mines” policy back when it was unfashionable to question the orthodoxy, and has pushed debates such as expanding exports and adopting a nuclear industry.

I guess that means they need to kick Jay Weatherill out too.

Truth be told, if Ferguson despaired at his party’s scare campaign on fracking, he was hardly Robinson Crusoe. Plenty in the SA Government, which has pushed hard to facilitate the oil and gas industry’s expansion, were privately apoplectic (though, in fairness, they were diplomatic enough not to say so publicly, and mid-campaign).

But if there’s truly no place for Martin Ferguson in the Australian Labor Party, it is effectively because he strongly holds a range of views that the Weatherill Government has now adopted as policy.

Perhaps SA Labor should secede?

Tom Richardson is a senior reporter with InDaily. His political column is usually published on Friday.