After facing a historical loss, Australia has begun to try and answer the question; what exactly went wrong the Liberal party and Peter Dutton this election?
The five week campaign was fought hard by Labor's Anthony Albanese, who has scored a massive win for his party and a second term as prime minister.
Meanwhile, for the Opposition leader Peter Dutton, and his party more broadly, this election marked a series of losses that seemed to keep coming.
Across the campaign, both men visited local towns across the nation, spoke to communities and leaders and made promises for better futures and spending.
The five-week period also saw four televised leaders debates, between Dutton and Albanese, run across national television.
But then over the weekend, plenty of blue seats got caught in the red wave of the ALP, including Dutton's own seat of Dickson in Queensland, as it went to Labor's Ali France in her third run as a candidate for the electorate which was held by Dutton since 2001.
Further Queensland losses for the LNP were Bonner, Petreie and Leichardt, in Victoria it was Deakin and Menzies in Melbourne, Hughes in Sydney's south-west and down in Tasmania Bass and Braddon both went to Labor.
Additionally, Independents held onto historically Liberal seats all across the country.
So what happened?
It wouldn't seem it was a lack of spending, with Coalition campaign funds totalling at $20.7 million, just behind Labor's $24 million.
The main issue seems to have been with leadership, an opinion expressed by both those within the Liberal ranks and Australian voters.
Leader of the Nationals, the Liberal's Coalition ally, David Littleproud said Albanese ran a smear campaign against Dutton, which left him effectively unable to win.
“They destroyed the character of Peter Dutton that he became effectively unelectable,” Littleproud said in the wake of the weekend's results.
Within the ranks, Liberal senator Hollie Hughes lay the blame firmly at the feet of her party's treasurer, Angus Taylor, claiming he and his lack of policy work were to blame for the party's election rout.
"I have concerns about his capability. I feel we have zero economic policy to sell," Hughes said in an ABC Radio National interview today.
"I don't know what he's been doing for three years. There was no tax policy, there was no economic narrative."
For Jac Stewart, a 33 year old student paramedic, Greens voter and resident in the seat of Wills, messaging was a key factor.
“A lot of the Labor and the Liberals' election messaging is ‘don't vote for the other guys’, whereas the Greens have more of a vision of something positive…it's ‘do vote for us because of these things that we will do'", Stewart told Azzet.
