DANIEL:

Jason, as you dug deeper into Labor's crushing election victory, tell me about the figure Labor insiders kept pointing you towards.

JASON:

The one name on everyone's lips, Daniel, is Paul Erickson.

DANIEL:

When Jason Koutsoukis and I were in the ballroom at Anthony Albanese’s election night party watching the prime minister claim victory – there was a man sitting quietly among the crowd.

His name is Paul Erickson – and even though he likes to keep a low profile – Albanese made a point of thanking him in his speech.

Audio excerpt – Anthony Albanese:

“To our magnificent campaign director, National Secretary Paul Erickson.”

JASON:

And 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 is held in.

Audio excerpt – Anthony Albanese:

“Paul has run an outstanding campaign. Paul and I did tell people May was the right time. And he managed to become a dad during the campaign.”

JASON:

Paul Erickson is someone who values his privacy and prefers to stay in the background.

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DANIEL:

From Schwartz Media, I’m Daniel James, this is 7am.

Today, special correspondent for The Saturday Paper Jason Koutsoukis on the quiet force behind Labor’s landslide – and the secret to his success.

It’s Friday May 16.

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DANIEL:

Jason, thanks for speaking with me. Paul Erickson isn’t exactly a household name. Can you just lay out for me what he does – and what his role in the campaign was?

JASON:

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 one that everybody is kind of bowing to at the moment as the architect of this incredible victory.

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 150 candidates that you're going to pre-select for the House of Representatives, all the candidates you're gonna be running in the Senate, logistics of travelling 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 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.

DANIEL:

So inside the party, how did senior figures characterise what he's achieved?

JASON:

Well, I spoke to Labor's national president, Wayne Swan, 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 1970s. For him to say that, I think tells you something of the scale of the achievement that Paul Erickson has completed here.

DANIEL:

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?

JASON:

Paul Erickson'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 1980. Paul Erickson's older brother, Chris, he didn't just go to one Olympics, he went to three, representing Australia, of course, in the same event.

DANIEL:

A high achieving family!

JASON:

Yeah, high achieving family. Also, I would imagine quite a competitive family. Paul studied arts and economics at the University 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 2003, Paul was president of the ALP Club. So clearly he learned how to organise numbers at a pretty early age.

DANIEL:

And who spotted his talent for campaigning, how did he start working in campaigning and cutting his political teeth in the machinery that is the ALP?

JASON:

Well, I think even when you're a campus politician, the people in the actual organisational 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 Erickson 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 Albanese government. After he graduated, Paul was employed by a Victorian Labor MP, Richard Wynne. And that was the beginning of a very long friendship between Richard Wynn and Paul Erikson. Richard was probably one of his first real kind of mentors in the party and Paul worked for him on and off for about 10 years, I think. Another really interesting thing that Richard told me was that working together with Paul in inner city Melbourne, 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 in 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 Erikson.

DANIEL:

And was there a moment that elevated him onto the national stage?

JASON:

Paul Erickson joined the National Organisational Wing of the Australian Labor Party in 2014 as an Assistant National Secretary. He would have been closely involved in the 2016 federal election campaign. But then in 2018, when David Feeney stepped down as the member for Batman and Ged Kearney was pre-selected as the Labor candidate in Batman. This is one of these inner city Melbourne electorates. Ged asked Paul Erikson 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 Eirkson 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 44 fiasco.

Audio excerpt – Reporter:

“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 meant the clause shouldn't apply.”

JASON:

Where so many MPs were found to have dual citizenship and had to step down. And 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 Braddon in Tasmania to manage that seat in particular. And again, Labor was able to prevail there. And so that was, I guess, another moment that kind of confirmed that Paul Erickson was playing at the national level and winning.

DANIEL:

Coming up after the break - what will Paul Erickson do next?

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DANIEL:

So Jason, let's talk about Paul Erickson's involvement in the most recent election. What first struck you about the way Erickston ran the campaign?

JASON:

Well, it was a very disciplined campaign. From the moment after the 2024 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 4 a.m. 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 6.15, he'd be on the phone to the prime minister to brief him. And then by 8 a.m., 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 8 am, pretty much the entire message for that day was locked down and ready to go.

DANIEL:

So beyond his discipline and his energy, what strategy did Erickson bring to the campaign?

JASON:

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 Astin by-elections, the Labor Party was not expected to win that. It had been a Liberal seat for about 30 years. And No one really gave them much of a chance, but they they triumphed there and then in Dunkley, which was an out-of-suburban Melbourne seat again Commentators expected that Peter Dutton's pitch to outer suburban voters would be effective But again, they failed and and the Labor campaign which focused on Dutton and Dutton's record showed that voters didn't really trust Dutton, they don't like Peter Dutton and that's the angle that they pursued in this election campaign. They hammered Peter Dutton's record and I think it was decisive.

DANIEL:

So, if he's a talented guy, like, with a high IQ and a high EQ, why hasn't he ever run for office himself?

JASON:

Wayne Swan said 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 Wynne said to me that in all the years that he's known Paul, he's never seen in Paul the desire to get into federal parliament or state parliament. And another person said to me that one thing that's characterised 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 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.

DANIEL:

The world is his oyster. Thank you so much for speaking with us again Jason.

JASON:

Daniel, it's an absolute pleasure.

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DANIEL:

Also in the news today…

Larissa Waters is the new leader of the Australian Greens. Mehreen Faruqi will be her deputy.

Sarah Hanson Young, who had been touted as a possible leader, will remain as the Greens manager of business.

Senator Waters has been a deputy under two leaders and has held several portfolios including the environment, mining and women.

In her first press conference after taking the leadership uncontested, the Queenslander said she plans to “get shit done”.

AND

Anthony Albanese 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 the visit to discuss defence cooperation and global trade with his counter-part President Prabowo Subianto.

7am is the daily show from Schwartz Media and The Saturday Paper. It's made by Atticus Bastow, Cheyne Anderson, Chris Dengate, Erik Jensen, Ruby Jones, Sarah McVeigh, Travis Evans, Zoltan Fecso and me, Daniel James. Our theme music is by Ned Beckley and Josh Hogan of Envelope Audio.”

7am will be back on Monday, have a great weekend.

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