Prime Minister Anthony Albanese concedes the Labor party has lessons to learn from its humiliating defeat in the once-safe south-west Sydney seat of Fowler in the recent election.
In the lead-up to the federal poll, then-frontbencher Kristina Keneally was controversially parachuted into the multicultural seat, which had been held by the Labor party since 1984.
But independent local candidate Dai Le managed to overturn Labor's 14 per cent margin to secure a shock victory over the former NSW premier, saying the ALP had paid the price for an "arrogant" decision to relocate Ms Keneally from the northern beaches to south-west Sydney.
Mr Albanese told Sky News the ALP was closely examining what went wrong.
"Kristina Keneally is a big loss to our team, she was a valued friend, she was the deputy senate leader, and it is a loss, but you have to accept outcomes in democratic processes.
"But you also have to learn from them and we will take note of the lessons which are there."
At the time, Anthony Albanese had backed the decision to run Kristina Keneally in Fowler over Vietnamese-Australian lawyer Tu Le.
The Labor party was trying to solve two problems at once, by both filling a vacancy left by the retiring member for Fowler, Chris Hayes, and simultaneously retaining one of its star frontbenchers, who would have struggled to be re-elected to the Senate because of a bitter factional battle over the party's NSW ticket.
But the decision led to weeks of internal anger within the ALP and raised questions about why Kristina Keneally was picked over a local, diverse candidate.
In an extended interview with Nine Newspapers on Sunday, Ms Keneally was asked by columnist Peter FitzSimons whether the loss was because she went up against a local candidate while she was a "wealthy white woman from distant parts parachuted in."
"I think the impact of the COVID lockdowns had far more to do with it and was far more at play on the day," Ms Keneally replied.
"Those harsh lockdowns engendered an understandable sense of parochialism that the community had been left behind by both major political parties.
Ms Keneally said she did not regret running in Fowler and offered some personal perspective on her loss.
"In terms of overall pain, this loss doesn't get close to what I have known," she said.
"The greatest loss in my life was when my daughter Caroline was still-born in 1999, the single most defining moment in my life. That's when I felt searing pain, not this," she said.
