Labor Leader Bill Shorten said while state issues were "front and centre of the election" Mr Abbott was a "significant" factor. "Victorians clearly didn't like the way Tony Abbott is taking the nation and they wanted a strong leader in Victoria to stand up," he said in Melbourne. But cabinet minister Scott Morrison hit back and said Mr Shorten sounded "cockish" and was "overreaching" by claiming the election was some sort of referendum on the federal leaders. "He always thinks it's always about him," he told the Ten Network. "What the Victorian election was about yesterday was what was happening in Victoria, and to the extent that there are issues that the federal government has to look at in the context of that, then of course we will," Mr Morrison said.

Labor Leader Bill Shorten said: "There is no doubt Victorians used this election to send Tony Abbott a clear message". Mr Abbott was largely kept out of the state campaign because he was reportedly considered to be "box office poison" by the state coalition. Instead, the popular deputy Liberal leader Julie Bishop was recruited to help campaign in the final days. On Sunday the government's most senior Victorian cabinet minister, Andrew Robb, said Mr Abbott had little or no role in the state loss. "I don't accept that we had a big influence, of course we'll be realistic, we'll have a look at the implications but clearly from my experience and my observations, this was a state election overwhelmingly fought on state issues," he said.

But federal Labor MP Anthony Byrne told Fairfax Media the mood on the booths was "toxic" and aimed at the Prime Minister. He said one voter, who had voted for the Coalition in 2013, told him "God I wish today was the federal election, when is it? I am counting the days until I can get rid of the f---ing bastard". Geoff Ablett, the Liberal trying to oust Labor's Jude Perera in Cranbourne, said on Saturday some voters have told him they would vote Labor because they disliked the Abbott government's budget. "I know that some changes need to be made federally because you can't keep going further into the debt, but that has repercussed to people who have said to me, 'I'm not voting for you because of federal government cutbacks'," Mr Ablett said while campaigning at Courtenay Gardens Primary School on Saturday. Several prominent Liberals including former Victorian premier Jeff Kennett and former federal treasurer Peter Costello have blamed the federal government for contributing to the historic loss.

Mr Kennett described Mr Abbott's government as a "shambles" and said Mr Napthine failed to stand up to the Prime Minister, who imposed an increase to the tax on petrol during the state campaign. "He never called Tony Abbott to account. Tony was putting tax on him after tax on him. He wouldn't have done it in NSW," Mr Kennett said. Mr Costello said the federal budget was "clearly toxic in Victoria". But federal Nationals MP Darren Chester said blaming the federal Coalition "entirely" for the state defeat is "childishly simplistic". "TAFE, ambos, lack of communication and Geoff Shaw also among factors," he tweeted. The federal government is lagging in the polls and federal Labor MPs, buoyed by the success of their Victorian counterparts, are hoping to replicate their win and make Mr Abbott a one-term Prime Minister. But Mr Robb said there were still two years to go before the next federal election, in which time the government's lagging position in the polls could turn around. "If our position is judged to be affected by the time we get towards an election, that's when you'd start to worry about that issue," he said.

Mr Robb struggled to identify the "barnacles" that the Prime Minister told his party room last Tuesday he was preparing to knock off the government's ship ahead of the new political year, amid confused messages about whether the proposed $7 GP fee is considered a barnacle or not. Coalition MPs openly contradicted each other about the government's position, a clear symptom of the chaotic handling of the policy's future in what many insiders privately concede was the Prime Minister's worst week since his election. "Our co-payment policy is the $7 but we are looking at options," Mr Robb clarified on Sunday, pointing out it lacked the necessary support in the Senate. Health Minister Peter Dutton has not attempted to introduce the legislation in the lower house where the government has a majority and the Liberal Democrat crossbencher Senator David Leyonhjelm told Sky he had never been seriously lobbied about potentially supporting the government. "It's almost as if the idea got floated, there was a little bit of talk about it and then they lost heart in it," Mr Leyonhjelm told Sky News.