CONGRATULATIONS to Ted Baillieu and Peter Ryan for their stunning victory on Saturday.

It was a win that went against the flow of nearly all pundits' predictions.

And in the end, it was a clear win borne of an electorate tired of an 11-year-old Labor Government and looking for a new hand on the tiller.

Interestingly, it was the anger in Melbourne's suburbs that finally brought John Brumby undone.

Public transport and law and order have clearly been marked as the issues that most touched a nerve in these seats.

The battleground regional seats around Bendigo, Ballarat and Geelong all stayed with Labor, with the exception of Barwon South.

In Seymour, Ben Hardman found he couldn't fight the plethora of issues - the north-south pipeline, an urban sprawl tax and wind farms - that conspired to destroy his tenure.

One of the triumphs of this election has been the performance of the Nationals in Gippsland.

Notwithstanding the disappointing vote of football hero Stephen Oliver in Bendigo West, the rest of the Nationals performed well.

The Oliver experience may signal a revision of the Nationals' strategy of recruiting high-profile local footballers.

However, champion footballer Russell Northe appears to have bucked that trend in Morwell, the seat he narrowly won in 2006.

The fact that Northe won what was once a safe Labor seat, with 58 per cent of the primary vote to record a 16 per cent swing, was incredible.

So too was the performance of Tim Bull in unseating Craig Ingram in Gippsland East.

Bull charged through Ingram to record a swing of more than 20 per cent.

The message from Gippsland is that rural voters will not tolerate either of the major parties flirting with the Greens.

The ALP primary vote in Morwell fell from 40 per cent in 2006 to 26 per cent on Saturday.

In East Gippsland, the ALP fell from 22 per cent to 14. These falls are directly due to Labor's decision to partially close Hazelwood power station.

The Liberal vote in East Gippsland fell from 22 per cent to 14 per cent.

Insiders say speculation the Liberals would preference the Greens wounded the local candidate, with corporate donations also drying up.

For the new Government, the time has come for the promises to end and the action to begin.

The Liberal-National Government has been elected to not just fix Labor's failings, but to make our state a better place to live for all - city and country.

The hard work begins now.