Australian political consultants deny involvement in Canadian election campaign

AN AUSTRALIAN election guru reportedly left Canada just days before the party he was working with was dumped. But some say he wasn’t even there.

Canadian Liberal Party leader Justin Trudeau smiles at the end of a press conference in Ottawa on October 20, 2015 after winning the general elections. Liberal leader Justin Trudeau reached out to Canada's traditional allies after winning a landslide election mandate to change tack on global warming and return to the multilateralism sometimes shunned by his predecessor. AFP PHOTO/NICHOLAS KAMM

HE’S the Australian political campaigner behind many of the world’s most stunning electoral victories, a professor of persuasion able to tap into the fears and aspirations of the electorate and translate that into votes.

Dubbed the ‘Wizard of Oz’, Lynton Crosby has the ear of world leaders from Britain’s David Cameron to Canada’s Stephen Harper. But with the latter’s thumping defeat yesterday there is confusion around Mr Crosby’s role in the Canadian election.

Last month, Mr Crosby was said to have decamped from his home in London to “take over framing the campaign message” for Mr Harper’s Conservative party, reported Macleans. It is a claim hotly denied by the Conservatives and Mr Crosby’s business partner Mark Textor.

Lynton Crosby who has managed and advised election campaigns across the world.

But there would have been nothing unexpected in Mr Crosby advising the party, particularly given he has been working with right of centre parties ever since he came to prominence in the late 1990s as a campaign manager for John Howard.

However, by mid-October and just days out from election day, Mr Crosby reportedly flew out of the country. Now, the Canadian Conservatives, who could only muster 29 per cent of the vote, claim Mr Crosby never helped the ill-fated Harper campaign at all.

“He is a really brilliant strategist,” Dr Stephen Mills, an expert in campaign management at the University of Sydney told news.com.au

“One of Crosby’s strengths is sharpening the contrast between his candidate and the other guy.”

Mr Crosby, who once stood as a Liberal Party candidate in Adelaide, was campaign manager for two of Mr Howard’s four election victories. This included the controversial 2001 election where the Tampa Bay controversy, and allegations of children being thrown overboard by refugees families, became front and centre of the campaign. Suggestions that Mr Crosby has used immigration issues as a ‘dog whistle’ to entice floating voters has followed him ever since.

“That’s what campaign management is about,” says Dr Mills. “It’s designed to lead to polarising language because it’s trying to get the attention of voters.”

However, he said, Mr Crosby’s skills were in highlighting issues that were already reverberating.

“His strategy is to pick up research in the electorate and to express them in a way that’s going to maximise the vote.”

In fact, when he worked on the successful campaign to elect Tory larrikin Boris Johnson as Mayor of London, one of the campaign’s key successes was reaching out to voters from ethnic minorities.

Former Canadian Prime Minister Stephen Harper speaks to supporters after conceding defeat to the Liberals on election night in Calgary. Picture: AFP / David Buston

The Guardian reported that in a rare interview in 2005 to the Spectator, Mr Crosby said “Most people don’t have a clue about my ideas. I am at the moderate end of the spectrum.”

“I understand with Harper he was called in [by the Canadian Conservative party] to provide some strategic advice but he was not the campaign manager,” said Dr Mills, who pointed out that would mean he would have far less control over the party’s election plans.

Website ThinkPol said a spokesman for Mr Harper had confirmed: “the Conservative campaign had been getting help from Mr Crosby”.

By early October, when Mr Crosby was supposedly ensconced in Ottawa, the National Post was reporting the Conservative immigration minister’s opposition to a Muslim woman’s bid to wear a niqab headscarf at a citizenship ceremony was paying dividends with the party surging in Quebec as well as its heartland western states.

But by the middle of the month, youthful opposition leader Mr Trudeau had emerged as a front runner and Mr Crosby was said to have left Canada.

Dr Mills told news.com.au as his role was reported as being only advisory, “there was nothing unusual,” in him leaving before election day.

But Mr Crosby’s business partner Mr Textor began tweeting that, actually, neither of them had been involved in the campaign. He was so adamant that the hashtag #notincanada began to trend.

Dr Ian Ward, who specialises in politics and communication at the University of Queensland, said even if Mr Crosby was there, it was unlikely he could have turned an election that was turning against the Tories.

The sheer length of the campaign, he said, caused problems for Mr Harper, giving time for Mr Trudeau to build his profile.

“In the last week [the Conservatives] focused on his haircut and it didn’t work because it drew attention to the change Trudeau promised of young versus old which was similar to Rudd versus Howard.”

A statement supplied from the Conservatives’ national campaign chair Guy Giorno, supplied to news.com.au by the Crosby Textor consultancy, said Mr Crosby, “wasn’t here during the campaign,” and while he was a “talented strategist, neither his talent or his strategy are reflected in the campaign.”

Whether he was in Canada or not, Dr Ward said it was unlikely brand Crosby would be too tarnished by defeat in Canada, “In politics, you win some, you lose some.”

Originally published as Australian political consultants deny involvement in Canadian election campaign