Labor lost the election because it was proposing higher taxes and not because the public rejected bold policy reform, former prime minister Paul Keating said.

Speaking on the ABC's 7.30, Mr Keating said the lesson of Labor's shock loss was not that oppositions could not be brave with their policy agendas, but that the public supported lower taxes.

Paul Keating discusses Labor's election loss on ABC's 7.30. Credit:ABC

"If you're talking about the Labor Party and why it lost the election, it failed to understand the middle-class economy that Bob Hawke and I created for Australia," he said.

"And so much of Labor Party's policies were devoted to the bottom end of the workforce and the community paid for by cuts in tax expenditures.