Labor has certainly lost the election, and, probably by a fraction more than 30 seats. But its losses have been kept to manageable levels - and Labor will be in the next parliament with about twice the representation that some were expecting under Gillard.

There are, of course, those of the Gillard fold who will insist that her team had a strategy which could even have won this election, and certainly done at least as well. Perhaps the formal campaign might have reduced the differential, but it must be said that there was no evidence either that Gillard was gaining ground, or that her arguments for Labor were starting to make an impression on voters.

To the contrary, voters had stopped listening to her. In any event it was not her case which was wanting, but her ability to prosecute it.

But the criticism of Rudd will be bitter - and not only from Gillardites. There were some early signs of a certain Rudd magic with the electorate - absurd as that seemed to anyone with experience of his personality or management style - and they got their hopes up. The early favourable reaction to his accession created a hope for victory, which was, even before Saturday, pulled away by Rudd's reversal to the real Rudd.

The polls indicated that voters who had given up on Labor were willing to look at it again. In only a little over four weeks, however, Rudd completely squandered that opportunity, and from about two weeks ago, his fate seem sealed.

He had been reconsidered and again found wanting; indeed he was giving daily proof of his unfitness for office with absurd thought bubbles masquerading as policy, a want of a coherent story of what Labor was promising, and an entirely negative campaign based on the notion that a coalition government under Tony Abbott would attack and reduce government services, perhaps particularly to the middle class.

(Not explicitly to the poor or the really poor, who did not get a single look-in throughout the campaign, whether from Labor or the coalition. No doubt they particularly benefit from public health care and education, but no one was saying so, and any number of specific policies either promised ''tougher love'' for welfare cases, or policies targeted at people such as single mothers, university students, Aborigines and boat people.)

So indefensible, even in Labor constituencies, were many of Rudd's proposals that many voters disinclined to vote for the coalition felt ''permissioned'' to do so by the sheer cynicism and betrayal involved. Once, indeed, ideas about tax-free zones in the Northern Territory, fast trains down the east coast, and crude appeals to populist nationalism were part of the Labor plan, it seemed clear that Labor neither expected nor hoped to win. And knew it did not deserve to.

And it seemed almost deliberate that Labor made almost no ''moral'' case for Labor to win, based on emotional issues such as the state of the environment, human rights, indigenous policy, or refugees.

In all of this, the remarkable thing is how little it hurt with voters. Labor was certainly punished by voters, but the swings, locally, regionally and nationally were generally of manageable proportions, and Labor has lost only about 20 per cent of its representation in the House of Representatives. In all of the circumstances that puts clear limits on the type of mandate that Tony Abbott can claim - indeed it suggests that he made virtually no headway in the past 18 months of his time in opposition. It also suggests that Labor may be largely over the worst of the fallout of its problems with corruption, incompetence and organisation collapse in NSW - even before it has done anything systemic to cure the problem.

No doubt the stench from Sussex Street contributed to the anti-Labor swing in NSW - and to the places, particularly in the western suburbs where it was concentrated - but the movement was not in the proportions of the popular rejection of state Labor, and the carnage not nearly as terrible, for Labor, as it could have been.

The party thus has some base from which to reform itself, and to rebuild. By necessity this will be under new leaders, indeed a new leadership generation, if only because Rudd has nothing whatever, other than sheer persistence, to contribute.

Had he led Labor honourably to the sword - defending fundamental but unpopular Labor philosophy - in something of the manner of Arthur Calwell in 1966, there might have been some place for him, presuming that, as ever, he was unable to take the hint. Losing after making the election all about him, and after having turned Labor policy and achievement to mush, deprives him of a seat on the board.

Tony Abbott can claim that the electorate has decisively rejected Labor and opted for ''change'' under his leadership, even if he must admit, at least privately, that it is not clear what positive change they actually want.

Certainly they want some impression of, and feeling that they are getting, competent and efficient government. Abbott denounced Labor competence and efficiency up and down dale, and turned some Labor programs - such as school halls and roof insulation - into shorthand terms for waste and hopelessless. Whether they were or not is immaterial, if only because Labor's leaders and ministers were so hopeless and inept in defending their actions, and, mostly, did not even try to.

And they want action on boats, and, however vaguely, on levels of government spending, deficits and debts. By campaign's end, Abbott was not promising a fiscal policy, or levels of spending, that was in any material way different from Labor's. It was only the slightest ''tinge'' more conservative in its bottom lines. He had also, in effect, committed himself to a continuation of expensive Labor policies on education, hospitals and health care, and the development of disability services.

He promises massive change to the national broadband network - the implementation of which will not be popular, even if ''mandated'' - but this will have little effect on budget figures, and faces higher expenditure on his paid parental leave scheme, and his ''direct action'' proposals on climate change. He also claims a mandate - likely to be bitterly disputed by Labor and the Greens - on his abolition of carbon taxes and taxes on the superprofits of mining.

Little of this artwork comes from the usual ''small government'' canvas, but Abbott made so much of Gillard's repudiation of election promises that he will feel under particular pressure to deliver even on policies that are no longer right or appropriate.

The present senate, including senators rejected on Saturday, retain their seats until June 30 next year. It was not clear from the senate figures that Abbott will face a more friendly senate from July.

He has threatened a double dissolution if Labor and the Greens reject his carbon and mining tax policies. But it is unlikely there could be such an election before August, and by then, the political, and economic environment, may well have changed significantly.

Even then, of course, Abbott will have the advantage of incumbency, and voters given some opportunity to see if he really has been the ogre that Labor, and some of his Liberal enemies, have so long claimed.