NSW Labor gears for election, starts campaign hiring spree

NSW Labor has put all but urgent business on ice as it moves through its ‘campaign footing gears’, recruiting an army of field directors and campaign staff ahead of the federal election.

NSW Labor’s Sussex St HQ in Sydney has geared for an election. Picture: AAP

Moving to a “campaign footing”, NSW Labor has put all but urgent business on ice ahead of the next election, hiring an army of field ­directors and campaign staff, postponing the Young Labor conference, auditing ALP-held electorates and hiring a former Pal­aszczuk spinner to co-ordinate target seats.

It comes as The Australian revealed how a majority of voters expected a hung parliament as Labor’s primary vote fell, with the ALP and Coalition drawing level at 50-50 on a two-party preferred basis, according to an exclusive Newspoll.

At NSW Labor’s state conference in July, general secretary Dominic Ofner said the party would shift to a “campaign footing” and prepare for a poll as early as November, and although News­poll’s latest figures make an early election less likely, Sussex St is gearing to spring into action.

The party is hiring a swath of full-time field directors ahead of the next election, to co-ordinate and lead campaign teams across the state who could be installed as early as September, according to a report from the administrative committee, an influential decision-making body made up of 44 senior factional heavyweights.

Statewide campaign staff are also being recruited, and it comes after the party hired former Queensland premier Annastacia Palaszczuk’s adviser Peter Duggan as target seats co-ordinator.

Anthony Albanese in Canberra on Monday. Picture: Martin Ollman

NSW Labor general secretary Dominic Ofner. Picture: Facebook

Emily Tyrrell, a staffer for Senator Tim Ayres, started on Monday as one of the state party’s new campaign organisers.

Labor sent a cohort of senior staff to help at – and also learn from – British Labour’s successful July election campaign.

Senior adviser Georgia Kriz worked at Labour’s London headquarters in digital while Amy Knox, a long-term adviser to Anthony Albanese, ventured north to do field work for the Scottish Labour Party, both as part of a campaign exchange.

Mr Ofner told July’s conference that the next election would be “won or lost” in NSW, predicting difficult contests against the Coalition and Greens, but also independents, most likely in southwest Sydney.

The party has started auditing each of its Labor-held NSW electorates to ensure MPs and their local teams have “effective continuous campaign strategies in place”, and the federal joint campaign committee will meet for the first time this month, which includes Senator Ayres, assistant minister Matt Thistlewaite and UnionsNSW boss Mark Morey.

Formality preselections opened and closed for some incumbents, and NSW Labor will start working through each seat to have candidates selected “as early as possible”.

Newspoll’s figures show that only 22 per cent of voters expect Labor will do well enough at the election to retain majority government, with 33 per cent believing the most likely outcome is an ALP minority government.

Freezing all but campaign preparation, NSW Labor has instructed party units to “give priority” to the upcoming federal campaign and has postponed AGMs at each committee level until after the election, on the basis that the poll is next year.

The annual NSW Young Labor conference, last year held in early December, has been postponed until after the election.

Sussex St has also told machinery committees to deal only with federal electoral issues, or “urgent business”, and instructed Labor’s Federal Election Committee to stop meeting to allow MPs and senators to focus on campaigning.