Labor party members and supporters in recent times have come to more deeply appreciate one of the iron laws of politics: there are no silver medals in federal election campaigns. That gold medal of a fairer society, and a fight against trickle-down economics was within our grasp. Now we know Labor faces three more years of hard work, deep thought and a tough training schedule if we are to have a Labor government in 2022. We can’t be diverted by conservative post-election ideological spin. The time for anger and grieving is over. The time for recovery and potential victory begins. Let’s pick ourselves up again and get better not bitter.

The election loss was a shock but we must keep the result in perspective. The election was actually a close run thing. There were in fact nationwide primary swings against both the Coalition and Labor – although our poor showing in Western Australia and Queensland made victory almost impossible. The result is a Coalition majority not of 10 to 15 seats, but of one seat.

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Our critics may publicly deny it, accusing us of bitterness, but there is simply no disputing the fact that Pauline Hanson and United Australia party preferences helped by Clive Palmer’s campaign spend, had a major effect on the result. That’s not an excuse, and we may have lost regardless, but it cannot be ignored. One may ask: if Scott Morrison’s preference deals were so irrelevant, why did he make them? And if Palmer’s advertising had so little effect, why did he waste $70m on it?

(Oh, and we’re all waiting to see when and how Scott Morrison will pay the Palmer piper back for his $70m of election assistance. When that particular shoe drops, it’s going to be bigger than the never-built replica of the Titanic.)

Although the loss was a shock, our response must be measured and considered, starting with our review. Attributing blame to any one person or policy would be a huge mistake. The important thing is to get it right next time.

We always like our election postmortems minimalist. I know it’s almost impossible to swim against that tide, but swim against it we must, or we will fatally compromise our ability to analyse the lessons. Not everything in the losing campaign was a disaster, and what’s even more certain in this case: far from everything in the winning campaign was genius. We did a lot of things right. We did a few things wrong. The things we did wrong were decisive precisely because it was close. But that makes it all the more important to isolate them and deal with them and not throw everything overboard and start again.

So why did it go so horribly wrong for Labor?

The direction of the review and our response must not and will not be influenced by biased ideological arguments peddled by our opponents. For example, there were disturbing swings against us that we can’t and mustn’t ignore. Why did they occur? The standard Coalition argument is that Labor lost because it pursued “the politics of envy” and employed “class war rhetoric” that drove away aspirational middle-ground voters – in other words, that we went too far to the left and surrendered the centre ground. It’s what our opponents would say, of course, but it’s contradicted by the facts.

What the results actually show is different.

Swinging voters in middle-income areas stayed with Labor, upper-middle-income voters in our cities shifted towards Labor, but lower-income voters in regional and outer-suburban areas shifted to the Coalition. There is also evidence that the “death tax” scare campaign hit hard among lower-income voters who would have benefitted substantially from Labor’s social spending. Aspirational middle-income voters did not desert us, or at least not as decisively as is being repeatedly asserted. The truth is much messier and we have to address it.

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The Coalition on the other hand offered virtually no policies, but if there was one which gained attention at all, it was the $77bn tax cut for high-income earners. It was the most radical policy in the entire election. In fact, the picture is even more alarming: a chaotic government, in hock to the extreme right of Hanson and Palmer, implementing a range of extreme trickle-down tax policies – flattening the personal income tax rates and holding out the prospect of further massive cuts in the corporate tax rate, both initiatives, in the medium to long term, threatening vital funding to health and education.

In contrast our program was in reality a traditional social-democratic one, not more radical than the policies of the Hawke-Keating and Rudd-Gillard eras.

Given the political and economic circumstances of the last six years, it was little wonder international observers, domestic pollsters, and the person on the street concluded that Labor would likely win. There was nothing preordained about Labor’s loss, no matter what some now say with the benefit of hindsight.

So why did it go so horribly wrong for Labor? Why did we stumble in the last 100 metres after trouncing our opponents during the marathon of the previous three years? Was it our leader’s low approval ratings and the relentlessly negative attacks made on him by the Murdoch press, the Coalition and Clive Palmer? Was it some fundamental problem with our policies? Were those policies poorly or insufficiently sold to the voters? Were we simply outgunned in our television, radio and social media campaigns? Have we fallen behind in modern campaigning techniques?

These are tough questions and uncomfortable for many – but they must be addressed if we are to challenge for victory three years from now.

We can take solace from one thing: we are not alone in our disappointment. Right around the world social democratic parties are facing difficult times. The Brexit disaster, the rise of the hard right in Europe and the Trump phenomenon in the US are proving difficult to combat. I believe the answer mustn’t be to jettison our social, economic and environmental mission – the very things that differentiate us as a movement and provide our purpose – but to find ways to make our alternative vision more appealing and to campaign more effectively for it.

Selling our economic message will be especially crucial. Our opponents’ claims that our mainstream tax policies were anti-business and anti-aspiration were simply wrong. Their attempts to cut incomes for those at the bottom and destroy the progressivity of our tax system will reduce consumption and demand and damage our economy, making our nation poorer overall. This is the message we have to get across more effectively. The next three years must be used to show that we have a positive economic strategy that will make the nation wealthier and in doing so provide the means for reducing inequality and unfairness.

Our failure to effectively sell our economic story about the future allowed our opponents to put undue spotlight on our policies on things like negative gearing and franking credits, making us a large policy target. We failed to remind people of our success in keeping Australia growing while the rest of the world went into recession following the global financial crisis, and we allowed the Hawke-Keating tradition to be misrepresented and even turned against us. Hawke and Keating were not neoliberals; they did not get bipartisan support from the Liberals; they were Labor to their bootstraps. We are the inheritors of their tradition – the Coalition most certainly is not.

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In confronting economic policy we must not turn our backs on the fact that inequality is a growing problem in Australia. Labor’s sacred mission is to fight it and create a fairer society. We must continue to oppose the trickle-down economics that is causing so much havoc around the world. The so-called rising tide is not lifting all boats, and corporate tax cuts are not lifting workers’ wages. These are myths and we must continue to dispel them.

Labor has a big task ahead and a proud history to draw on as we examine the causes of our defeat, regroup behind Anthony Albanese and begin devising a new program for victory. This is the task of our campaign review. We can’t let the conservative trickle-downers rewrite history, nor can we go into denial about what went wrong. Making mistakes isn’t a disaster if you set out to learn from them. We won’t abandon our values, but we will put in place a policy framework and a campaign architecture that will deliver us victory and deliver the Australian people hope for a more decent society three years from now.

I encourage all party members to contribute to and take an active interest in the review when it gets under way.

• Wayne Swan is national president of the Australian Labor party