Right-wing firebrand Andrew Bolt has called on Prime Minister Malcolm Turnbull to resign and accused him of being a disaster, leaving the Liberal Party in ruins and treating the conservative base "like dirt".
Bolt, a favourite blogger and commentator of the Coalition's right flank, said Mr Turnbull could not "seriously claim that this result is better than anything [former prime minister Tony] Abbott could have achieved".
As recriminations began following the government's disappointing performance, Peta Credlin, former chief-of-staff to Mr Abbott, also predicted trouble ahead, telling Sky News "there'll be a lot said about that in the next couple of days and I'll say it then".
"You assassinated a Liberal prime minister, Tony Abbott, who'd won an election by a huge margin," Bolt said, using his blog to directly address the Prime Minister on Saturday night.
"You promised to do even better than him. You then treated the Liberal base like dirt, smashing it with a huge super tax, refusing to speak to conservative journalists, repeatedly humiliating Abbott."
"You have been a disaster. You betrayed Tony Abbott and then led the party to humiliation, stripped of both values and honour. Resign."
Later, in an extraordinary performance on Sky News, Bolt went on to lash Mr Turnbull for delivering "a miserable, miserable return for that investment", and said he should resign to avoid the inevitable "blood-letting".
"This is a disgrace, for what he's done to Tony Abbott. This is all he's got left? The man should resign," Bolt said.
"He's got no authority within the party. He's trashed the brand, he's got no mandate for change. You think the Liberals will just say that's fine? This is just a disgrace, it is absolutely a disgrace."
Bolt said his friend Mr Abbott should be a contender for the Liberal Party leadership. He even called on Liberal Party scrutineers to go back through people's ballot papers and count the number of ballots on which people had written Mr Abbott's name.
As the results continued to get worse for the Turnbull government, Ms Credlin refused to join Bolt in calling for Mr Turnbull's resignation, but said she would have backed Mr Abbott to win more seats.
"I would have backed him in this time round. Because he knows how to campaign, he resonates in those regional seats, he resonates in western Sydney, and in the places where Labor has made ground tonight," she said.
"But you'll never know because he's not in the race.
"One thing that can be said is no one can blame this result on Tony Abbott, who played I think a very fair, a very dignified team game," Ms Credlin said.
Victorian Liberal Party president Michael Kroger singled out for criticism the Coalition's topsy-turvy approach to tax reform, whereby ideas such as a GST hike and state-based income taxes were floated and then junked.
"Turnbull came in with great credibility [but] we let that leadership drain away," he said. "In retrospect … we shouldn't have let that debate go on for eight months."
Maverick right-wing senator Cory Bernardi took top Liberal strategist Mark Textor to task for a recent declaration that conservative voters, according to qualitative evidence, "don't matter" and that the centre is more important.
"Hey Tex, I'm thinking that conservatives actually do matter," Senator Bernardi said on Twitter as the underwhelming performance of the Coalition became clear.
Cabinet Secretary Arthur Sinodinos, a key backroom player in Mr Turnbull's rise, hit back at colleagues' suggestions that the result is no better than what Mr Abbott could have achieved.
"At this stage I have to say anybody in the Liberal Party who thinks they faced a better future under different circumstances is not living in the same planet as the rest of us were last year," he told Channel Nine.
"That is the reality and we spent nine months clawing back, trying to get the trust of the Australian people after some of the events of the early part of the term. That is the truth."
He was backed up by Treasurer Scott Morrison on the ABC, who said the Coalition was still "on track to win this election" – a situation that "a year ago was not looking like that at all".
Asked by host Leigh Sales whether the Coalition could have won under Mr Abbott, Mr Morrison initially said that would never be known, but then added: "I think it's highly unlikely. I think the party room made its own judgement on that last September."
Pressed further on whether the Coalition had done better under Mr Turnbull than was possible under Mr Abbott, the Treasurer said: "I think that's obvious."
