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