The people have spoken and the Liberal Party has heard their message | SMH

This week has seen plenty of interpretations of the election outcome.

Some can be quickly dismissed as self-serving, at odds with the facts, or both.

Labor leader Bill Shorten claimed it showed "Labor is back" and the Coalition's economic program "has been rejected by the people of Australia".

In fact, Labor's national first preference vote was about 4 million, compared to 4.8 million for the Coalition. Many more Australians trust the Coalition to govern than trust Labor.

According to Richard di Natale, this election shows the Greens Party is on the march. In fact his party will continue to hold just one lower house seat –and may lose a seat in the Senate.

Others say the Coalition's changes to superannuation were vote changers for the Liberal base. If that were right, you would expect us to lose votes in our strongest Liberal seats such as Curtin and Bradfield – but both seats saw a swing towards us.

Some interpretations have emphasised campaign tactics. Bill Shorten's disgraceful scare campaign on Medicare was undoubtedly a material factor in a number of marginal seats.

But the bigger issue from this election is strategic not tactical: how should politicians engage with the Australian people about the challenges our nation faces?

When Malcolm Turnbull came to the leadership, he spoke of the economic transition Australia is experiencing.

Australia's extraordinary resources investment boom, which saw investment in resources spike to 8 per cent of GDP, is over. To maintain our national prosperity we need to change.

Malcolm Turnbull promised a leadership approach "that explains these complex issues and then sets out the course of action we believe we should take and makes a case for it".

The Coalition's 2016 campaign sought to do just this, explaining these issues and our strategy to deal with them: encouraging innovation as technology disrupts every industry, capturing export opportunities in Asia, investing in defence industries, lowering tax on business to stimulate jobs, a sustainable budget moving back to balance by 2021-22 and guaranteed spending on roads, schools and hospitals.

There are lessons to learn from this election about how best to distill such a message – so that as Australians come to mark their ballot paper they have a clear, simple reason to vote for you.

Our major opponents certainly gave people a clear, simple reason to vote for them: save Medicare. But it was premised on a complete falsehood because there was no threat to Medicare: they might as well have promised to save oxygen, or gravity, or motherhood.

Australians should be very relieved that Bill Shorten and Labor lost this election. What sort of leadership could Shorten have offered if he had slid into government on the basis of a big lie?

Without winning votes you are nowhere in politics. But elections are also about explaining to the Australian people what your priorities will be if you form government – and that is something the Liberal Party took very seriously in this election.

As the Prime Minister has said, the Coalition respects the results of the election. The Australian people have spoken and we need to hear their message.

For example, the Coalition needs to work harder to strengthen the trust of the Australian people in our side of politics when it comes to health.

We also need to understand the message, particularly in the Senate results, that many Australians are anxious about our national economic transition. What does the march of technology mean for their job prospects, for example?

As a government, we must continue to work at explaining how the global economy is changing – and that Australia has no choice but to respond. If we capture the opportunities, we can maintain our prosperity, return to budget balance and continue to fund strong, sustainable health and education systems and the other services Australians rightly expect government to deliver.

But we also need to make sure we do not take away the wrong messages.

Are there tactical lessons to learn for the next election campaign? Of course.

Should we also conclude that Turnbull has erred in seeking to have a serious engagement with the Australian people about our national economic strategy?

That instead Bill Shorten has modelled the right behaviour for someone aspiring to be Prime Minister: pretend the budget position does not matter and there is no need to worry about how we continue to fund our generous social welfare safety net, and instead crow about your tactical cleverness in campaigning based on a massive scare campaign?

I believe that would be the wrong message to take away from this election – and the Coalition would be letting down Australians if we did not persist with a serious economic strategy and a serious process of dialogue with the Australian people about that strategy.

Paul Fletcher is Minister for Major Projects in the Turnbull government and Member for Bradfield on Sydney's north shore.

This article first appeared at http://www.smh.com.au/comment/the-people-have-spoken-and-the-liberal-party-has-heard-their-message-20160707-gq0kob.html