LABOR REFLECTS ON WHAT WENT WRONG
What do key figures in the Australian Labor Party think helped Scott Morrison's Liberal-National team retain government at the May 18 election?
TANYA PLIBERSEK (Deputy leader, Member for Sydney, NSW)
"We do need to take a serious look at our policies.
"We need to listen. We need to connect with people. We need to carefully lay out our agenda.
"We need to explain clearly and convince - win hearts and minds. We need to campaign, not just at election time, but all the time.
"And we need to be relentless in taking the fight up to the Liberals - including on jobs and the economy.
"I believe that as the party of working people, Labor's single most important task is to ensure every Australian has a good job with decent pay and conditions.
"Good jobs allow people to get ahead in Australia - and that must have our laser focus."
CHRIS BOWEN (Shadow treasurer, Member for McMahon, NSW)
"Let's talk about the elephant in the room. Some say Labor lost the election because of franking credits, which was a policy I designed. It is true, it was my policy. I designed it to invest more in schools and hospitals and give Labor a good program of investment.
"We lost this election for a whole range of reasons, some of which we probably haven't even yet determined. Franking credits was a controversial policy, for which no doubt we lost some votes. But I don't accept it's why we lost the election in entirety.
"We also lost the election because of policies we don't have, like a death tax. I had more people raising the death tax on polling booths with me than ever raised franking credits.
"We need to consider our policies, we need to consider our campaign tactics, advertising budget, the quality of our ads, all those things.
"We were outgunned by, not only the Liberal Party, but also, millions of dollars' worth of advertising by Clive Palmer."
PENNY WONG (Opposition leader in the Senate, Senator for SA)
"We need to consider our policies, what we can do better and, as importantly, how we can communicate them better. Most of all, we need to listen.
"I would encourage everyone - and I see there's a lot of people out with their particular pet theories - to take our time before we rush to judgment and to not engage in easy scapegoating of any policy or any individual.
"We have to face up to that and we need to consider very carefully the message the Australian people have sent, both in terms of our policy framework, and also how we communicate."
TONY BURKE (Frontbencher, Member for Watson, NSW)
"I spent more time fielding complaints about Labor's death tax - that didn't exist - than I did about any of our actual taxation policies.
"Part of that may well be the concept that we simply had too many different strategies, too many policies for people to keep track of.
"With respect to climate change policy ... I don't have a fixed view on what the alternative is, but effectively the Right and the environmental movement have shifted to a direct action model. Every other theory will tell you it is less efficient."
CLARE O'NEIL (Frontbencher, Member for Hotham, Victoria)
"I think we had a bit of a crowded policy agenda, there was a lot going on.
"One of the things I've been reflecting on is that you can do one or two complex things at once but maybe not five or six.
"I think it was too much change too quickly, it was too complex, we weren't distilling it the way that we needed to do.
"I think we need to be much clearer and simpler both in our agenda and how we communicate it."
JOEL FITZGIBBON (Frontbencher, Member for Hunter, NSW)
"We certainly have to get back to the centre and we have to reconnect to our working class base, reconnect with those blue collar workers, talk more about them and their cost of living pressures and less about some of those issues that are more acknowledge or aligned with the left side of the debate.
"Adani (coal mine) became a problem to us. We equivocated over it."
ANDREW LEIGH (Frontbencher, Member for Fenner, ACT)
"The scare campaigns, the lies - we faced them in greater number than I think any opposition has had to in the past.
"Policymaking is like a muscle, so we've grown stronger as a party through this period under Bill Shorten's leadership, developing positive policies and working on the ideas agenda.
"We'll continue to do that under any of the leaders we choose."
LINDA BURNEY (Frontbencher, Member for Barton, NSW)
"Clearly there were a lot of policies and all of them all really hard worked on. All of them designed to make Australia a better place including policies on climate change.
"But somehow or other, people either didn't hear them or didn't understand them, and I also think there was the massive issue in Queensland about jobs and the symbolism of the Adani mine and what that meant."
STEPHEN JONES (Frontbencher, Member for Whitlam, NSW)
"It is true that our primary vote is far too low we need to do whatever we can to ensure that we are lifting that primary vote over the next three years, but it's also a mistake to treat every regional seat in Australia as a homogeneous block.
"It's true that we've got a problem in central Queensland and we've got to deal with that problem. We've got a problem in northern Tasmania, and we've got to deal with that problem."
(Sources: ABC, Sky, media doorstops)
