The road to Labor’s election triumph was paved with ambition, practice and countless coalition missteps, the party’s campaign architect says.
Labor’s national secretary Paul Erickson has outlined the secret ingredients behind a campaign that delivered one of the largest majorities in Australian history while ousting two rival party leaders.
Mr Erickson said Labor had been written off months before the May 3 election due to a global voter movement against incumbents.
“There was a conventional wisdom that undervalued Labor’s capacity to use our record … and it underestimated the capacity of the Australian electorate to assess how their leaders were responding to changing circumstances,” he told the National Press Club on Wednesday.
He said five critical factors contributed to the eventual victory: first-term delivery and second-term ambition, placing Medicare at the heart of the campaign, Labor’s ascendancy on the economic front in a cost-of-living contest, Prime Minister Anthony Albanese’s performance, and the risk Opposition Leader Peter Dutton represented.
The coalition’s strategy was wrapped up in a rhetoric of “fear and myopia” and was held together only by a hostility to Labor, Mr Erickson said.
“While the prime minister was telling a positive story about who we are and where we’re going, Peter Dutton was gloomy about the country, downcast about the future, and most animated when magnifying the problems facing Australia,” he said.
“The contrast was as clear as night and day: the prime minister offered authentic, measured and firm leadership, and Peter Dutton never missed an opportunity to miss an opportunity.”
He said Mr Albanese was in the “form of a lifetime” as he campaigned across Australia’s schools and pre-polling booths.
The secretary also took a swipe at the Greens, whose leader Adam Bandt lost his seat to Labor in one of the election’s biggest upsets.
“Perceptions of the Greens were defined by blocking tactics and aggressive attacks on Labor,” he said.
“Until late in the piece, they seemed confident of a dividend from this behaviour.”
The Greens’ success was a sore point from the 2022 election and Labor responded by confronting the challenge posed by the minor party, Mr Erickson said.
Mr Albanese was on hand for the speech after arriving back in Canberra from his first overseas visit since being re-elected.
The trip included stops in Singapore, Indonesia and the Vatican City, where he met with the Pope and other world leaders including Ukrainian President Volodomyr Zelenskiy.
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