‘Arguably we won in January’: The Labor campaign man behind Sydney’s teal wave

The former Labor adviser who helped catapult three Sydney independents into parliament has warned the Liberal Party there are “many other seats” where his playbook for success could be replicated if the Coalition doesn’t respond sufficiently on climate change.

Anthony Reed, who masterminded Kerryn Phelps’ successful byelection campaign in 2018 and Zali Steggall’s emphatic win over Tony Abbott in 2019, also had a subtle warning for Climate 200 founder Simon Holmes a Court that it was time to take a “quieter role” in public debate.

The man behind the machine: former Labor adviser turned teal mastermind Anthony Reed in Sydney on Sunday.Credit: James Alcock

This election, Reed’s communications agency Populares planned the structure, strategy and messaging behind the successful campaigns of Allegra Spender in Wentworth, Kylea Tink in North Sydney and Sophie Scamps in Mackellar.

Reed also assisted Steggall’s re-election campaign in Warringah and handled digital advertising for teal independent Monique Ryan in Josh Frydenberg’s former seat of Kooyong.

Populares is run by a trio of former Labor and GetUp staff: Reed (whose sister is former Labor MP Sharon Bird), Mark Connelly and Ed Coper. It also enlisted strategic media assistance from former Herald journalist Heath Aston.

In an interview with the Herald and The Age on Sunday, Reed said the teal campaign model had not changed much since his early success in Wentworth and Warringah: to capture disaffected Liberals, combined with a few others who might otherwise vote Labor or the Greens.

“Climate was the number one priority across all these seats, and it’s the one where the government, the [Liberal] moderates in particular, refused to listen to their communities,” he said.

“What we needed to do was to really give people a choice - a real choice. These were people who were never going to be prepared to vote for another political party. They very much see themselves as being Liberal.”

After his 2019 Warringah win, Reed wrote in an opinion piece for the Herald that a good campaign message was clear, concise, effective and positive. He did not fear Abbott’s attacks about voting for Steggall and getting Bill Shorten. What he really feared was that a contrite Abbott would apologise for his mistakes and rectify them.

The Liberals seemed not to have learnt that lesson, Reed said on Sunday. Senior moderate Liberal Simon Birmingham also alluded to that on the ABC’s Insiders, saying Abbott’s defeat should have been a canary in the coal mine for the Liberal Party.

“We should have acknowledged that had broader implications than just related to Tony,” he said. “Now we’re paying the price for that.”

Birmingham identified the “unnecessary” same-sex marriage postal survey and the Coalition’s failure to agree on the National Energy Guarantee under Malcolm Turnbull as contributing to the teal wave over the last two terms of parliament.

Spender - who had not claimed victory on Sunday evening but was ahead of Dave Sharma 56-44, with 60 per cent of the vote counted - said Warringah Liberal candidate Katherine Deves and the debate she ignited over transgender rights was a source of the Liberals’ woes in Wentworth.

“The recent targeting of trans kids, this is something that this community really feels and hates,” Spender said.

Reed said the teals were able to build awareness and get a strong foothold over summer through a “really smart digital strategy” that was made possible by seed funding provided by Climate 200.

“Unlike the parties who waited for the final six weeks to advertise, we went out of the blocks early. We spent a lot of money on digital advertising over summer,” he said.

“Arguably we won many of these campaigns in January. We were pretty confident by early February that we were on track.” Nothing the government did in the months before polling day - including a vigorous campaign against the “fake independents” who would end democracy - worked, he said.

One of the government’s central arguments against the teals was that they were a political party in disguise. Reed disagreed with that assessment, though he acknowledged the strategies he planned for them were similar.

“Why is that surprising? These are similar communities with similar concerns. That doesn’t make it a political party,” he said.

Reed said his involvement with the teals ended at the election and he expected to have “very little” to do with them as MPs, though he would provide advice on request.

But he warned there were many other seats in which his campaign playbook could be replicated if the Liberal Party did not improve its position on climate change. “The ball’s really in the Liberal Party’s court,” he said.

Reed had some advice of his own for Holmes a Court, whose constant tweets and a polling booth altercation with Liberal senator Jane Hume frustrated several teal candidates, who wanted the campaign to be about them, not a wealthy philanthropist.

“Simon’s been pretty brave,” Reed said. “When you take on some pretty entrenched vested interests, they’re always going to try to attack someone for standing up. It’s a very difficult situation he was placed in.

“It’s for others to judge what he should or shouldn’t do about all those things. I’m sure he’s going to step back and take a bit of a quieter role. I think he needs to not be as active in terms of his public commentary.”