The former treasurer has been using his clout as the ALP's federal president and a senior statesman of the party to hit the airwaves to call for his colleagues to stick to their guns on the issue some pundits have prematurely claimed cost Labor the unlosable election.

Warning climate change would "completely reshape global, national and local politics" in the same way the September 11 attacks rocked the world, Swan has joined other senior party figures in saying Federal Labor should not retreat from its pre-election stance on climate change.

This flies in the face of the conventional wisdom the ALP lost the election in Queensland and Victoria because of its contradictory stances on coal mining and climate change.

Widespread acceptance of that view has seen the Federal parliamentary arm tone down its criticisms of Adani, Queensland Labor clear many of the roadblocks to its approval and Penny Wong back Scott Morrison's rejection of the recent call by Pacific island nations for Australia to set an end date for coal mining.

It also informed Anthony Albanese's position that all of the policies the party took to the election are now up for review.

What Swan appreciates that others may not is that when conducting a post mortem it is important to separate the policy from the way it was sold.

Labor did not lose the 2019 Federal election because voters didn't care about the environment, climate change or the reef. Dozens of polls conducted over the past decade attest to the fact that they do.

Labor lost because it did not take a properly formulated and costed policy to the election. Shorten's inability to say what Labor's climate change and environmental policies would cost gave Scott Morrison numerous clubs to hit him over the head with.

Morrison took joy in suggesting Labor's environmental commitments were superficial, poorly thought through and essentially populist policy making on the run. He was also able to peddle the apparently contradictory line the ALP probably did have a good idea what its policies would cost and that the figure was exorbitant.

He could make up his own figures because Labor hadn't done its homework.

It will be little short of a tragedy if, as a result of the success of these arguments, Labor goes further down the road towards political convergence by going soft on climate change and environment. There is a real danger we could enter the third decade of the 21^st century with two major parties that are more concerned about political expediency than the state of the world we are leaving for our children and our children's children.

What Labor really needs to do is to establish some clear points of difference between itself and the conservative Coalition. There is, after all, little chance that traditional ALP supporters will go for a "Liberal-lite" alternative government headed by Anthony Albanese in 2022 or 2023.

The only way it can do this is by saying what it stands for on the environment, climate change and energy policy. That means coming up with strong policies, supported by well-founded costings that it can take to an election.

Labor has, after all, won government on the back of environmental issues before. 1983 was one example; 2007 was another. Now is no time to blink.