Speaker 1: Jason. As you dug deeper into Labour's crushing election victory,
Speaker 1: tell me about the figure Labor inside has kept pointing
Speaker 1: you towards.
Speaker 2: The one name on everyone's lips, Daniel, is Paul Erickson.
Speaker 1: When Jason Kotsukus and I were in the ballroom at
Speaker 1: Anthony Alberize's election like party, watching the Prime Minister claim victory,
Speaker 1: there was a man sitning quietly among the crowd. His
Speaker 1: name is Paul Erickson. And even though he likes to
Speaker 1: keep a low profile, Albaneze he made a point of
Speaker 1: thanking him in his speech.
Speaker 3: So our magnificent campaign director, National Secretary Paul Erickson.
Speaker 2: And you know, in a speech like that, the Prime
Speaker 2: Minister can't name too many people, but one of the
Speaker 2: first people he did name was Paul Erickson. I think
Speaker 2: that shows you the measure of respect that Paul Erickson
Speaker 2: has held.
Speaker 3: In Paul has run an outstanding campaign. Paul, and I
Speaker 3: did tell people May was the right time, and he
Speaker 3: manages to become a dad during the campaign.
Speaker 2: Paul Erickson is someone who does value his privacy and
Speaker 2: prefers to stay in the background.
Speaker 1: From Schwartz Media, I'm Daniel James. This is seven am.
Speaker 1: Today's special correspondent for the Saturday paper, Jason kottsukis on
Speaker 1: the quiet force behind Labour's landslide and the secret to
Speaker 1: his success. It's Friday May sixteenth. Jason, thanks for speaking
Speaker 1: with me. Paul Ericson isn't exactly a household name. Can
Speaker 1: you just lay out for me what he does and
Speaker 1: what his role in the campaign was.
Speaker 2: He's the National secretary of the Australian Labor Party. He's
Speaker 2: not a public figure, hasn't been elected to any public office.
Speaker 2: But he's the campaign director and he's the one that
Speaker 2: everybody is kind of bowing to at the moment. Is
Speaker 2: the architect of this incredible victory. You know, to be
Speaker 2: ready for that campaign, there's a lot of things you've
Speaker 2: got to do beforehand. You've got to think about the
Speaker 2: one hundred and fifty candidates that you're going to pre
Speaker 2: select for the House of Representatives, all the candidates are
Speaker 2: going to be running in the Senate. Logistics of traveling
Speaker 2: across such a huge country, and the advertising in so
Speaker 2: many different markets. I mean, Labor had three different advertising
Speaker 2: firms working on this campaign. They had three different research firms,
Speaker 2: and the ALP had I think thousands more ads online
Speaker 2: than the Coalition did, so they'd clearly put a lot
Speaker 2: of thought into that. So it's something that Paul Erickson
Speaker 2: has clearly mastered and he's pulled off an incredible victory.
Speaker 1: So inside the party head and seeing you figures characterize
Speaker 1: what he's achieved well.
Speaker 2: I spoke to Labour's national president Wayne Swann and he
Speaker 2: said to me that this was the best campaign he's
Speaker 2: ever seen, top to bottom. And I thought coming from
Speaker 2: Wayne Swan, someone who's got so much experience, he's run
Speaker 2: a lot of election campaigns, he's been in and out
Speaker 2: of Labor Party politics since the late nineteen seventies, for
Speaker 2: him to say that, I think tells you something of
Speaker 2: the scale of the achievement that Paul Erickson has completed.
Speaker 1: Here, before we talk more about the campaign itself, let's
Speaker 1: find out a little bit more about Paul Erickson. Where
Speaker 1: did he come from? What's his background?
Speaker 2: Well, Paul Eckson's from Melbourne. His father Tim was a
Speaker 2: champion race walker, one of Australia's best ever, selected to
Speaker 2: represent Australia at the Moscow Olympics in nineteen eighty. Paul
Speaker 2: Erickson's older brother Chris, and he didn't just go to
Speaker 2: one Olympics, he went to three, representing Australia of course
Speaker 2: in the same event.
Speaker 1: High achieving family, yeah, high.
Speaker 2: Achieving family also, I would imagine quite a competitive family.
Speaker 2: Paul studied arts and economics at the Universe of Melbourne.
Speaker 2: He got involved in labor politics on campus. There he
Speaker 2: joined the ALP Club, which is a kind of a
Speaker 2: left wing faction. There's a separate club which is called
Speaker 2: the Labor Club, but apparently that's a stronghold of the
Speaker 2: right faction. And by two thousand and three Paul was
Speaker 2: president of the ALP Club. So clearly he learned how
Speaker 2: to organize numbers at a pretty early age.
Speaker 1: And who spotted his talent for campaigning? Here did he
Speaker 1: start working in campaigning and cutting his political teeth in
Speaker 1: the machinery that he's the a LP.
Speaker 2: Well, I think even when you're a campus politician, the
Speaker 2: people in the actual organizational side of the party are
Speaker 2: still looking pretty closely at who's emerging in these sorts
Speaker 2: of clubs, because that's where they recruit a lot of
Speaker 2: their talent. And so I think Paul Ericson did come
Speaker 2: to the attention of people like Andrew Giles, who's now
Speaker 2: the Minister for Skills and Training. He's one of the
Speaker 2: left factional heavyweights in the Albaneze government. After he graduated,
Speaker 2: Paul was employed by Victorian Labor MB Richard Win and
Speaker 2: that was the beginning of a very long friendship between
Speaker 2: Richard Win and Paul Erickson. Richard was probably one of
Speaker 2: his first real kind of mentors in the party and
Speaker 2: Paul worked for him on and off for about ten years.
Speaker 2: I think another really interesting thing that Richard told me
Speaker 2: was that working together with Paul inner City Melbourne, they
Speaker 2: spent a lot of their time thinking about how can
Speaker 2: the Labor Party fend off this kind of very long
Speaker 2: term challenge that's coming from the Australian Greens. And they
Speaker 2: fought a number of these important but relatively small contests
Speaker 2: inner City Melbourne against the Greens. And that's another thing
Speaker 2: you can see in the election results, especially the seat
Speaker 2: of Melbourne, which I think holds a special place for
Speaker 2: Paul Erickson.
Speaker 1: And was there a moment that alivat onto the national stage.
Speaker 2: Paul Erickson joined the national organizational wing of the Australian
Speaker 2: Labor Party in twenty fourteen as an assistant national secretary
Speaker 2: and he would have been closely involved in the twenty
Speaker 2: sixteen federal election campaign. But then in twenty eighteen, when
Speaker 2: David Feeney stepped down from as the member for Batman
Speaker 2: and Jed Carney was pre selected as the Labor candidate
Speaker 2: in Batman. This is one of these inner city Melbourne electorates.
Speaker 2: Jed asked Paul Erickson to come in and manage that
Speaker 2: campaign and it was a crucial by election for Labor
Speaker 2: to win because they were under such a challenge from
Speaker 2: the Greens. But they did end up prevailing, was quite
Speaker 2: comfortable in the end, and that was a real breakthrough
Speaker 2: moment for Paul Erickson in kind of national politics. And
Speaker 2: he was then picked to kind of really oversee a
Speaker 2: lot of the five by elections that resulted from this
Speaker 2: Section forty four fiasco.
Speaker 4: Since attention focused on the clause, seven MPs have been
Speaker 4: found to be dual citizens. Not all have resigned. Some
Speaker 4: think not knowing another country considered them citizens, that the
Speaker 4: clause shouldn't apply.
Speaker 2: Where so many MPs were found to have dual's citizenship
Speaker 2: and had to step down, so there was five by
Speaker 2: elections on the one day. It's kind of now known
Speaker 2: as Super Saturday, and I think Paul Erickson was sent
Speaker 2: down to Brandon in Tasmania to manage that seed in particular,
Speaker 2: and again Labor it was able to prevail there and
Speaker 2: so that was I guess another moment that confirmed that
Speaker 2: Paul Erickson was playing at the national level and winning.
Speaker 1: Coming up after the break, what will Paul Erickson do next? So, Jason,
Speaker 1: let's talk about Paul Erickson's involvement in the most recent election.
Speaker 1: What first struck you about the y ericson ran the campaign?
Speaker 2: Well, it was a very disciplined campaign from the moment
Speaker 2: after the twenty twenty four budget was handed down in
Speaker 2: May last year. That's when the Labor campaign proper really began.
Speaker 2: And I guess another sign of just how committed Paul
Speaker 2: Erickson is to this role is that his campaign routine
Speaker 2: saw him getting up at about four am every day.
Speaker 2: He'd spend the first two hours of the morning going
Speaker 2: through the media, the national media, local media, trying to
Speaker 2: work out what messages are running hot that day. By
Speaker 2: six point fifteen he be on the phone to the
Speaker 2: Prime Minister to brief him and then by eight am
Speaker 2: he's on a zoom call or on the having a
Speaker 2: meeting with the other kind of senior campaign officials at
Speaker 2: campaign headquarters in Sydney, and by eight am pretty much
Speaker 2: the entire message for that day was lockdown and ready
Speaker 2: to go.
Speaker 1: So beyond his discipline and his energy, what strategy did
Speaker 1: Erickson bring to the campaign.
Speaker 2: Well, I think if you look back to the aston
Speaker 2: by election or the Dunkley by election, you could see
Speaker 2: that the Labor Party tried a campaign that in both
Speaker 2: seats that was very much focused on Peter Dutton and
Speaker 2: Peter Dutton's record as Health Minister, and I think they
Speaker 2: were trial runs for the election campaign because the Aston
Speaker 2: by election, the Labour Party was not expected to win
Speaker 2: that it had been a Liberal seat for about thirty
Speaker 2: years and no one really gave them much of a chance,
Speaker 2: but they triumphed there. And then in Dunkley, which is
Speaker 2: an out of suburban Melbourne seat, again commentators expected that
Speaker 2: Peter Dutton's pitch to out of suburban voters would be effective,
Speaker 2: but again they failed and the Labor campaign, which focused
Speaker 2: on Dutton and Dutton's record, showed that voters didn't really
Speaker 2: trust Dutton, that don't like Peter Dutt, and that's the
Speaker 2: angle that they pursued in this election campaign. They hammered
Speaker 2: Peter Dutton's record, and I think it was decisive.
Speaker 1: So if he's a telling a guy like with a
Speaker 1: high RQ and a high EQ, why hasn't he ever
Speaker 1: run for office himself?
Speaker 2: Well, Wayne Swann said that he'd be more than welcome
Speaker 2: to enter federal Parliament if that's what he wanted to do,
Speaker 2: or if he wanted to go into some other area
Speaker 2: of government service. But Richard Wynn said to me that
Speaker 2: in all the years that he's known Paul, he's never
Speaker 2: seen in Paull the desire to get into federal parliament
Speaker 2: or state parliament. And another person said to me that
Speaker 2: one thing that characterized Paul's career so far is a
Speaker 2: complete lack of interest in going into the private sector
Speaker 2: to really sort of make a lot of money. But
Speaker 2: I think a lot of labor MPs are hoping that
Speaker 2: he'll stay exactly where he is and go for a
Speaker 2: run a third election campaign. But given how exhausting this
Speaker 2: role is, I wonder whether he'll have the fire in
Speaker 2: the belly.
Speaker 1: To do that. The world is his oyster. Thank you
Speaker 1: so much for speaking with us again. Jason Daniel, It's
Speaker 1: an absolute pleasure. Also in the news today, Larissa Waters
Speaker 1: is the new leader of the Australian Greens. Marien Ferruki
Speaker 1: will be her deputy. Sarah Hansy Young, who had been
Speaker 1: touted as a possible leader, will remain as the Green's
Speaker 1: Manager of Business. Senator Waters has been a deputy under
Speaker 1: two leaders and has held several portfolios, including the environment,
Speaker 1: mining and women. In a first press conference after taking
Speaker 1: the leadership uncontested, the Queensland has says she plans to
Speaker 1: get shit done and Anthony Alberanezi says there is no
Speaker 1: relationship more important to Australia than our relationship with Indonesia.
Speaker 1: The Prime Minister's visit to Jakarta is his first international
Speaker 1: trip since winning re election. He described Indonesia as an
Speaker 1: indispensable partner and used a visit to discuss defense cooperation
Speaker 1: and global trade with his counterpart, President Baboo. Subianto seven
Speaker 1: Am is a daily show from Schwartz Media and The
Speaker 1: Saturday Paper. It's made by Atticus Batstow, Shane Anderson, Chris Danegate,
Speaker 1: Eric Jensen, Ruby Jones, Sarah mcveee, Travis Evans, Zoltenfecho and
Speaker 1: me Daniel James. Our theme music is by Ned Beckley
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Speaker 1: back on Monday. Have a great weekend.