There’s no doubt the Adani coal mine helped the Liberal National Party win votes in North Queensland but there’s also no doubt it helped them lose a lot of votes – and economic credibility – in Sydney, Melbourne and Adelaide. And while the triumphalism of National Party MPs like George Christensen and Barnaby Joyce is understandable, so is the frustration being expressed by Liberals clinging to the disappearing margins in formerly blue-ribbon seats such as Boothby and Higgins.

When even seats such as Kooyong are at risk, the Coalition will be taking notice. Justin McManus

The Coalition's tension over the definition of their base is nowhere clearer than in the actions of Minister for Resources Matt Canavan. When campaigning to win seats like Herbert in North Queensland, he is can-do Canavan who wants to rip away "green tape" and get things moving. But when campaigning for Nicolle Flint in the now ultra-marginal seat of Boothby in the south Adelaide he becomes a hasten-slowly kind of guy.

On the eve of the election, as the Coalition clung to its narrow route to victory, Canavan announced an entirely new layer of green tape for Equinor, the Norwegian oil company eager to drill in the Great Australian Bight, to cut through. There was no talk of sovereign risk, or the need for investor certainty, and nor was there a hint of irony. In modern Australian politics, when seats are in play, credibility and consistency get spent even faster than money.

For years the Queensland LNP has sneered at "inner-city elites" who take issues like climate change seriously when casting their vote. When those voters were primarily in seats held by Labor and the Greens such tribalism might have made some political sense. But now that once safe seats like Higgins and Kooyong are swinging heavily to the Labor Party and the Greens, crowing from the Queensland Nationals about the joys of subsidising fossil fuels is causing lasting political pain for small ‘l’ Liberal MPs trying to hold onto their economically conservative and socially progressive voters.

When Zali Steggall defeated Tony Abbott she won all but five of the 50 polling booths in Warringah. Not only did she deliver an 18 per cent swing against the former prime minister, she won votes comprehensively across a large, diverse and once safe Liberal seat. In her worst booth she won 45 per cent of the 2PP vote. The result raises some interesting questions. If concern about climate change is an elitist issue, then the pro-Adani faction in the Coalition are a fundamental threat to the Liberal’s ability to hold the traditionally blue-ribbon suburbs.