'Blaming the captain is never the solution', Andrew Leigh says after Labor post-mortem

Dr Leigh copped blame for some of the economic policies that fell flat with voters at the election, but the review released on Thursday suggested it was the salesman, the size and the complexity of their platform which ultimately hurt Labor at the polls in May.

But the Canberra politician said all of the blame should not be laid at the feet of Mr Shorten.

"I think we all have to take responsibility as part of the Labor team," Dr Leigh told The Canberra Times.

"This is a team game and blaming the captain is never the right solution."

Dr Leigh said Labor's cluttered policy agenda was an attempt to "take on" the challenges Australia faced.

"Just because we lost the election doesn't mean that problems with Australia's productivity and wage growth have gone away. Climate change is still a huge issue for Australians as is housing affordability and it was our desire to tackle those big issues that led to the breadth of the policy suite," Dr Leigh said.

The tightrope walk Labor now faced of reconnecting with blue collar workers without isolating inner-city white-collar workers was one progressive parties all over had always faced, Dr Leigh said.

"It's not solved by a slick messaging campaign, we're able to connect without regional roots and our suburban electors by having strong policies and effective leadership," Dr Leigh said.

But Dr Leigh said there needed to be changes to election campaign spending laws in order to stop another wipeout in 2022.

He said the sheer amount of money spent by Clive Palmer "hampered" Labor's ability to have a fact-based conversation on those issues.

"I think we need to have real-time reporting of donations we need to bring down the donations disclosure threshold and ban big anonymous donations. Those reforms to clean up democracy are more urgent now than ever," Dr Leigh said.

And while he acknowledged Labor was too slow to react to fake news circulating online about death taxes, Dr Leigh said social networks had a responsibility to stamp out misinformation.

"Misinformation is a massive issue for progressive parties right around the world. I'm disappointed in Australia Facebook doesn't provide the same level of transparency that it does in many other countries including India and Brazil, I've spoken about that in parliament and urged Facebook to provide the same level in its political ad database that it does in other countries," Dr Leigh said.

"I note Facebook has said it won't allow lies to be perpetrated about the 2020 US census - that suggests to me they are able to draw a line between what's true and what's false and I think we need to work with those big digital platforms about making sure that campaigns are based around ethics, values and ideas, not around who've got the savviest scare campaign."

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Mr Shorten has tried to blame his "tarnished public standing" on the relentless attacks from the Liberals and Clive Palmer.

But in a tweet one hour before the review was released, he also said in hindsight, he should have gone bigger with proposed tax cuts.

"Were the universe to grant reruns, I would campaign with fewer messages, more greatly emphasise the jobs opportunities win renewable energies and take a different position on franking credits," Mr Shorten said.

But one of the reviewers, South Australian premier Jay Weatherill said the big agenda presented by Labor "paradoxically frightened the very people we were trying to support".

He called for a spending cap for high wealth individuals and truth in advertising laws to deal with the two issues.

Labor right power-broker Don Farrell said on Thursday the party had veered too far to the left during the campaign. "We have to drag ourselves back into the centre of politics, be competitive in that space and I think that's the direction that Anthony Albanese is pulling us," Senator Farrell said.

- with Sally Whyte