Jim Chalmers is federal Labor’s most senior Queensland staffer.

Few on his side of the aisle understand the unique political currents of the north better than the Treasurer.

That is why his description of the PNL victory on Saturday is worth noting.

“Decisive,” Chalmers said Monday morning.

The remark – as well as his congratulatory message to Queensland’s new Premier David Crisafulli and his incoming Treasurer David Janetzki – was unsolicited and meaningful.

Some federal Labor insiders are under no illusion that the Queensland state result is anything but deeply worrying for Anthony Albanese.

Chalmer’s remark counters the lazy narrative that has taken hold in the early hours of Saturday’s election count that Labor has done better than it anticipated.

Too many are still of the opinion that Crisafulli’s victory was “narrow” or a case of the PNL falling desperately over the line.

The Treasurer effectively called it nonsense.

The votes are still being counted, but call it what it appears to be: a comprehensive coup by the Miles government.

Crisafulli is on course to secure a statewide swing of more than 7%, giving the PNL an estimated two-party preferred vote of 54.1% to Labour’s 45.9%.

Labor says Saturday’s result is a positive because it could have been much worse.

Outside of Brisbane, it’s hard to see how.

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Some of Queensland’s swings are historic

In TPP terms, Crisafulli appears to have equaled Joh Bjelke-Petersen’s 1986 record, a victory so comprehensive that it allowed the National Party to govern itself for the only time in history.

It is true that Labor held back the tide in the state capital, helped by a backlash against the Greens and apparently the abortion issue that sent progressive voters back to the ALP.

But elsewhere, with only a few notable exceptions, the story has been one of LNP ascendancy.

Some of the swings are truly historic.

Labor has lost once-rusty seats in places like Maryborough, Mackay and Rockhampton, in some cases for the first time in more than a century.

The union-heavy seat of Gladstone, which Labor held securely, saw a swing of 14.1% against the government.

And further north, around Cairns, Cook fell to the LNP by a margin of 12 per cent; Mulgrave is heading in the same direction with a swing of almost 15%.

The primary seat of Barron River is back in LNP hands after a swing of 7.3%.

Conventional political wisdom is that Albanese needs to pick up seats in Queensland at the next election to offset likely losses elsewhere in the country.

Labor holds just five of the state’s 30 federal seats.

With 21 seats, it had long been assumed that the LNP’s federal dominance of the state had reached its peak. Everything is downhill from here, logic says.

But Saturday’s result means it can be wrong.

LNP sources told the ABC they now feel more confident about retaining Leichhardt, which spans the Northern Cape, now that Warren Entsch is standing down. Labor has long had the federal seat in its sights.

So is Flynn, the perennial Labor hope in central Queensland.

Around Brisbane, the sudden shift in the Greens has reignited expectations that the LNP could find a way to win back Ryan’s former blue-blood crown jewel, based in the affluent western suburbs.

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Next year’s federal election is far from certain

Clearly the LNP enjoyed a tailwind from an ‘it’s about time’ factor. Labor dominated the state for almost three decades. Ultimately, voters want change.

But the size of the swing suggests Labor is also struggling to retain lower-income voters worried about crime and the stress of the cost of living.

The abortion issue seems to have dampened some of Crisafulli’s momentum in the last week or so, but it’s not clear that it has cost the PNL many votes.

Parties do not enjoy the kind of double-digit swings experienced by the PNL in the regions if the future prime minister had lost large blocs of voters, as would be the case if abortion were the main voting factor.

If anything, the issue may have helped push reproductive-rights-only voters back to Greens Labor in Brisbane.

Treasurer Chalmers, ever eyeing the biggest prize in federal politics, seems alert to these changing tides.

What lessons the Albanian government takes from the result and how it reacts are essential.

First, Queensland shows that throwing money at cynical voters is no guarantee that the love will be reciprocated.

Miles offered state voters the nation’s most generous energy rebates and made economically dubious promises like opening government-owned gas stations.

For voters struggling with rising mortgages or rents, such measures can be seen as political gimmicks that do nothing to address the underlying economic drivers of inflation.

Chalmers said he did not want to telegraph the lessons Labor was learning from Queensland to the opposition.

But he dropped some early clues, saying governments are “always best when they look at the whole place; regions, suburbs and cities’.

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There are already calls for federal Labor to roll out no-holds-barred promises like Miles’ 50 cents public transport policy.

Chalmers appeared keen to manage expectations down on that front, a sign perhaps the treasurer knows voters want more substantial action on short-term gimmicks.

The next federal election “will never – on our part – be a public spending free-for-all”, Chalmers said.

“It wasn’t going to be before Saturday’s result and it wasn’t going to be after Saturday’s result.”

The Labor Federation still has time to adjust its strategy. Voters are historically reluctant to dump first-term governments.

Albanese’s team will be hoping Queenslanders become more Labor-friendly and put away their baseball bats to revive the images of the late Wayne Goss. The LNP may yet become overconfident.

Next year’s federal election — and yes, it will be next year, after Saturday’s result extinguishes almost any remaining possibility of a pre-Christmas poll — is far from certain.