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The Liberal knives were out before polls had even closed.

It gathered momentum as the quantum of the Liberal defeat stunned even those insiders who had realisedlong ago that the party was out the door.

Four ministers lost their seats as part of a massive 16 per cent swing against the Liberals, the biggest swing against a sitting government on record and a backlash that left some insiders stunned on Sunday.

Most expected to lose. But not by this much.

Ministers John Day, Albert Jacob, Paul Miles and Andrea Mitchell lost seats and Joe Francis was in doubt in Jandakot.Former ministers Tony Simpson and Murray Cowper and Speaker Michael Sutherland alsolost their seats.

There is deep regret and anger over the controversial preference deal with Pauline Hanson's One Nation a decision that hurtthe primary vote for both parties.

The dealderailed the Liberals' campaign by starving the party of oxygen the Premier faced questions over it right up until Saturday and it provided an effective line of attack for Labor, which argued a vote for One Nation was a vote for Colin Barnett.

Make no mistake, it played a role. It sent more people to Labor. But the preference deal was not the only culprit.It wasn't even the main one. It simply made a dismal performance worse.

The Liberals ran a terrible campaign.It lacked big policy initiatives beyond its signature item the partial privatisation of the state's electricity distribution network Western Power.

Privatisations are hard to sell even when premiers are popular.After making it the signature policy to repair the state's parlous financial position and fuel jobs and economic growth from a $3 billion infrastructure spend, the government played dead on the issue during the campaign.

There's was no massive pitch to voters beyond the sober lines of needing to sell half the asset to continue to "get the job done" .

Labor had a field day.On a near daily basis Labor leader Mark McGowan attacked the sale, warning power prices would go, the state would lose an income stream and only Labor would stop the sale.

The problem for the Liberals is that up until about six months ago Barnett was not just against privatising Western Power he was staunchly opposed to it.

It made it hard for the Premier to campaign for it when Labor had a thick file of quotes from Barnett arguing why it should be in government hands.

It's why Liberal insiders argue the sale should have been put forward at the 2013 election, when negative sentiment was running high against Labor due to former prime minister Julia Gillard's carbon and mining taxes.

It is also why some argue the party should have changed leaders a year ago.

But the party cannot escape the fact there were few viable options. Deputy Premier Liza Harvey was viewed as needing more time to develop while the man who made a ham-fisted attempt to steal the leadership, former transport minister Dean Nalder, had only been in office three years.

The Liberals ran a campaign based around trading off past glories (building stuff) and tried to spook voters that Labor couldn't be trusted with the finances, especially because the party refused to submit its costings to Treasury.

Ordinarily voters would be sceptical of an opposition bypassing Treasury.

But it didn't resonate. Largely because the Liberals were arguing they were the better fiscal manager only to have saddled the state with record debt and deficit despite a once-in-a-generation mining boom.

The boom is long gone and the biggest issue for voters was jobs. The state has the highest unemployment rate in the country, business investment is weak and house prices are falling. The economy was a big issue but Barnett was telling voters the economy was "basically strong". It didn't resonate.

The lack of big policies by the Liberals (nervous candidates retreated to minuscule local issues like campaigning to return post boxes to a local shopping centre) allowed the media to focus on the preference swap.

And it annoyed Barnett, who just like the Western Power sale, didn't have his heart in the deal. While he supported his party's position he confirmed he was "personally uncomfortable" with it.

The lack of any major new policies or direction failed to dampen the time for change attitude among voters.

Hindsight is a wonderful beast.

There will be plenty of reflection and finger pointing in the weeks ahead.

At the same time the focus will shift to who has to clean up the mess.

Barnett will go to the backbench. He has been grooming Harvey for the top job he intended to pass over the baton during a third term.

But Francis is widely expected to contest the leadership. Of course, he needs to win his Kalamunda seat first, which was too close to call at time of printing.

The rest is here:
WA election: How the Liberals blew it - The Australian Financial Review