KEY POINTS:
Less than a day after the Australian election, Liberal deputy Peter Costello has dropped a bombshell saying on Sky News he won't contest the Liberal leadership.
That's after John Howard last night twice said he should have it, and after ex-foreign minister Alexander Downer said this morning on ABC that Costello should have it.
Thanks but no thanks, Costello is saying. It needs a new generation of leadership.
He kept that one quiet.
The eyes will turn to newcomer and self-made millionaire, Malcolm Turnbull, or some of the more experienced crew like Tony Abbott, Joe Hockey or even Alexander Downer.
What they really need is an interim leader for the next year and Costello may have been perfect for that.
It may be the best decision. As deputy leader Costello is tainted with the massive defeat.
His decision may take some heat away from the post mortems and bloodletting to come in the party.
History will be rewitten very quickly. It will become perceived wisdom that if Howard had gone earlier, the Coalition could have faced off Labor's "new Leadership" killer message with their own new leadership.
But it is not hard to see why Howard took the gamble to stay on. His personal ratings were high, satisfaction with the management of economy was high, and Costello was extremely unpopular. Hardly ringing reasons for Howard to him to have jacked it in and handed it to Costello.
Maybe the Coalition would have stood a better chance if Howard had never agreed to hand over to Costello in the first place. Rudd expoited it to the maximum.
Downer and the cabinet may have privately willed Howard to go in September, but they couldn't act; knowing the disunity it would create would cause greater grief than Howard staying.
So the party had no choice to go along with Howard's gamble. It lost.
If one thing can be said of Howard, however, it is that he is not driven by personal ego. He will have believed that him staying would get the best result for the Liberals.
Now they have to contend with being out of Government and out of power in every state as well.
The vote is still continuing but under the vagaries of the Australian electoral system of the first preferences (no 1 votes), the differences aren't that great.
Labor got 44.07 per cent and the Coalition 41.33 per cent (Liberals 35.94 and Nationals 41.33).
But after preferences are added it changes to 53.41 for Labor and 46.59 for the Coalition, a swing of 6.15 per cent.
The virtual tally room shows Labor gaining 23 seats, the Coalition losing 30 and nine being doubtful.
