Labor poll mastermind Paul Erickson ‘completely comfortable’ with Mediscare campaign

The architect of Labor’s 2025 election victory, Paul Erickson, has left the door open to re-using the Mediscare campaign when Australians next go to the polls.

Labor national secretary and election campaign director Paul Erickson gives his campaign director's address to the National Press Club in Canberra. Picture: NewsWire / Martin Ollman

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The architect of Labor’s 2025 election victory, Paul Erickson has left the door open to re-using the Mediscare campaign when Australians next go to the polls, saying he was “completely comfortable” with the strategy and confident it would “sail through” any future laws to regulate truth in political advertising.

Mr Erickson, who has been Labor’s national secretary since 2019, also used his National Press Club address to reveal he would be “having a look” at the threat of teal independents to ALP seats at the next election, after West Australian MP Josh Wilson and ACT MP David Smith narrowly held their seats against independents.

“They’re part of a broader trend … and we will be having a good look at what that means to how we campaign,” Mr Erickson, 41, told a room of party faithful that included Anthony Albanese.

“To me, it reinforces the point there’s no such thing as a safe seat.”

After winning 93 seats so far, with electorates such as Calwell yet to be decided, Labor is facing calls to use its unequivocal mandate to implement an ambitious reform agenda.

Mr Erickson cautioned against unveiling any new policies, advising Labor instead to “stay focused” on what it campaigned on, such as cutting HECS debts by 20 per cent, setting up more urgent care clinics and boosting the bulk-billing rate.

“I think there was a lot of ambition in the plan for the next three years that the Prime Minister and the Labor team put forward in the campaign,” he said.

“So I think that the best approach is for Labor to stay focused on the agenda that we campaigned on, that we sought a mandate for and now we need to deliver. And I think that is what will drive the government’s work and the legislative agenda … over the next three years.”

Anthony Albanese at the National Press Club in Canberra on Wednesday. Picture: NewsWire / Martin Ollman

Chief among the reasons behind Labor’s resounding election victory, Mr Erickson said. was Peter Dutton, who presented an “unacceptable risk”, particularly to healthcare.

“When Mr Dutton was Tony Abbott’s health minister … he took a billion dollars from hospitals, tried to end off billing, he wanted to charge for emergency room visits and he made med­icines more expensive,” he said.

When grilled on the efficacy of a scare campaign that the ­Coalition would cut Medicare and urgent care clinics to pay for its nuclear policy – something Mr Dutton and other frontbenchers stressed they would not do – Mr Erickson said it had been the right move for the campaign and he did not rule out using the tactic again.

“Peter Dutton … went to the election refusing to say what they would cut and from where. I was completely comfortable with the assertion that the risk that he poses to healthcare was too great to accept,” he said.

“It’s been our policy since 2021 that Australia needs a truth in political advertising framework … I’m sure all of the ads that we ran in this campaign would sail through a truth in political advertising framework. We were really very comfortable with the argument we put forward.”

Mr Erickson said the “Labor brand” had never been stronger in some states, particularly in WA, which saw the many blue-ribbon seats flipped by the ALP in 2022 built upon in 2025.