When I became a journalist I was grateful that Louisa Wright appointed herself my mentor.

Back last century, as we covered a NSW election campaign for the ABC, she taught me how to report properly. Not just casual stories showing the outer layer (what was happening today) but deeper ones, revealing what the events meant (what was really going on). The need to divorce yourself from being caught up in the emotion of the moment and report the flow of the deeper tides.

So when I wrote, a week ago, I was certain Labor would win it wasn’t because I’m partisan. It was because I was using that same analytical method she’d taught me all those years ago. Discard the noise; focus on what was really going on.

That’s why on Friday I insisted we’d know the result by 8pm. David Spears pushed Anthony Green to call the victory early but, because he’s careful and cautious, he would only say it was “very likely” Labor had won.

We had to wait until 8:24 for the final doubts to be jettisoned and for Green’s final proclamation, “Labor has won”.

So let’s, now, separate out fact and meaning in the way Louisa taught me.

The first is that Labor have won not just this election, but their majority virtually ensures they’ve won the next one as well. Anthony Albanese is the first prime minister to win a second term since John Howard in 1998 and the first Labor leader since Bob Hawke in 1984, the second and third longest PM’s in history. Further perspective: in 1983 Labor managed 53.2 per cent, on Saturday the party achieved 55.4 per cent.

Unlike both earlier leaders Albanese has managed to both increase his majority unseat an opposition leader (thanks to Ali France who was, in case you hadn’t heard, a Person with Disability).

The big picture is, however, that although Labor will probably be in office for at least the next six years it will still need to negotiate with the Greens who will probably dominate the Senate.

Australia likes competent, middle-of-the-road governments but this opposition represented change and disruption.

Another issue was demographic change. Virtually no millennials voted for the opposition. People want to see more politicians who are young, female, ethnic, capable, intelligent and who are coming up with solutions to their problems. Old white men need not apply.

And this, perhaps, is the most important point, and that’s what Louisa always taught me never to forget.

While the result might look like Albanese’s victory, it was really Dutton’s defeat.

Labor will need to take care it builds on the weekend’s success, and doesn’t squander it.

As Roman generals rode their chariots through the streets of the city in triumph, the emperor made sure they had a slave standing beside them. Their job was to whisper, ‘memento mori’ - ‘remember everybody must die’.