Labor hero Anthony Albanese stamps authority after landslide election win as Liberals take stock of their historic ‘catastrophe’ | Samantha Maiden

It was a disaster from day one but one policy in particular is firming at the heart of the Liberal campaign blame game, writes Samantha Maiden.

The word respect was the Prime Minister’s holy mantra at his first press conference after a historic victory.

He deployed the word 18 times, just in case anyone wasn’t paying attention.

For Anthony Albanese, that word has often seemed in short supply during his first term – respect for himself from voters and for his government.

Stamping his new authority in the job, Mr Albanese declared his top priority was providing student debt relief to a new generation of younger voters.

As he surveys the new political landscape, the Liberal leader Peter Dutton has been blasted from parliament and political life and the Greens leader Adam Bandt looks set to join him.

It’s voters under 40 who were a big part of an unexpected political earthquake that has provided the Prime Minister with a second chance for a new chapter.

By way of comparison, when Kevin Rudd was elected in 2007, he won the election with 83 seats and the Liberals were reduced to 65 seats.

The first prime minister to be re-elected since John Howard, he has ended the revolving door of political leaders and joined the pantheon of Bob Hawke and Gough Whitlam as a Labor leader who has been elected twice.

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This is an honour that Mr Rudd and Julia Gillard failed to achieve. So, victory is clearly sweet.

Despite the thundering nature of his new parliamentary majority, he insisted that he was still open to the views of the crossbench.

“I make this point. I treated people with respect. My door is open to members of any political party, or none, who are elected as members of the House of Representatives or the Senate,’’ he said.

“They all deserve to be treated with respect. If people have good ideas, we’re up for hearing them.”

So where to from here? And what the hell happened to the Liberal Party?

Some of the answers are simple and some of the answers will take more time.

Some of the reasons are bloody obvious. Here’s one of them.

Let’s approach this issue as we would a science experiment or a sponge recipe.

Baking is a science and as any freestyle amateur cook will tell you, it requires all the precision of a chemical experiment.

The ingredient measurements have to be precise to get the chemical reactions you need and if you mess it up you can open your oven to a collapsing cake.

First, as the party of lower, fairer taxes, deciding to not only oppose Labor’s $10-a-week tax cuts but also repeal them was plainly nuts.

Prime Minister Anthony Albanese holds a press conference at Parliament House after his thunderous election victory. Picture: NewsWire / Martin Ollman

Peter Dutton arrives in Canberra after losing the election and his own seat. Picture: NewsWire / Martin Ollman

There were also events the Liberal leader couldn’t control, including the US President going nuts.

For a bloke billed as the hard-man of politics, Mr Dutton could be remarkably timid on policy.

He waited too long to release key policies and then didn’t have TV or digital ads to sell policies until it was too late as a result. A rookie error.

There was deceptive genius to the modest nature of the Prime Minister’s tax cuts.

At first, the media mocked the tax cuts because they were only $5 to $10 a week in the second year.

But Mr Albanese wasn’t worried. That’s why they were called “top-up tax cuts”.

The tax cuts were designed to remind voters of the Albanese government’s decision to renovate the Stage 3 tax cuts to deliver more relief for low and middle-income earners.

This was a move the government believes was one of the best things it did in its first term.

Mr Dutton’s tax cut alternative – a one-off fuel excise cut for a year and a one-off $1200 tax cut promise — were rush-jobs.

“That’s the reason why you are cobbling together very generic ads at the end,’’ a Liberal campaigner laughed grimly.

“Because you don’t know what the policy is, right?”

Another Liberal frontbencher confirmed the fuel excise cut was all very last minute.

“We had assumed Labor wasn’t going to do anything on tax until they did it in the budget,’’ he said.

“And then we, you know, looked at the cupboard and what the options were. And that was one of the easiest ones. But it was very much a reaction to the budget.”

Despite promising to be the party of better, fairer taxes, the Liberal leader overruled his treasury spokesman Angus Taylor on ambitious plans for the indexation of tax thresholds.

“I think what happened was, when we tested the indexation of tax brackets, it was so much more popular, even though the immediate benefit wasn’t there because it was seen as more fundamental and structural reform,’’ a Liberal source said.

Instead, the $6 billion fuel tax cut was scrambled together within 48 hours of the Prime Minister’s surprise tax cuts in the March 25 budget.

The tax offset announced at the campaign launch just weeks later was thrown into the speech as a last-minute addition.

Liberal Senator Jane Hume holds a press conference at Parliament House in Canberra. NewsWire / Martin Ollman

It had a budget cost of $10 billion, adding to the $6 billion cost of the Coalition’s 12-month halving of fuel excise.

But the last-minute $16 billion spend-a-thon then caused delays to announcing policies the party had discussed for months and, in some cases, years.

Ironically, it was Liberal frontbencher Jane Hume, who was the architect of one of Peter Dutton’s biggest disasters when she rolled out her plan to stop public servants working from home.

“Talk about a catastrophe,’’ one Liberal said.

“She didn’t ask, she didn’t seek approval for this, for the five days back in the office.”

But Peter Dutton didn’t expect it to be a big deal. Another big mistake.

“This is a big deal. This is actually a big deal because this is how people run their lives,’’ a Liberal said.

“And we’re telling people the way you run your life is wrong.”

As history now tells us, this didn’t work out well.

For an election that was billed as boring, Australian voters sure know how to bust out the fireworks for a dramatic ending.

Originally published as Labor hero Anthony Albanese stamps authority after landslide election win as Liberals take stock of their historic ‘catastrophe’ | Samantha Maiden