Labor ‘ran a dead’ campaign to help Kerryn Phelps

Labor “ran dead” in the Wentworth by-election to help independent Kerryn Phelps.

Labor candidate Tim Murray and Deputy Federal Opposition Leader Tanya Plibersek on Friday. Picture: Monique Harmer

While the Liberal Party pushed more than $1 million into Wentworth, including hundreds of thousands of dollars in direct mailouts, Labor “ran dead” to help independent Kerryn Phelps get over the line, not posting a single newspaper or other advertisement for candidate Tim Murray.

As a result, while polling in the seat initially had Labor in the high teens or early 20s, Mr Murray received just 11 per cent of the primary vote, meaning there was never any fear about Dr Phelps not running second — giving her the best chance of taking the seat.

Phelps supporters had believed she needed 25 per cent of the primary vote to win the seat; she won 29 per cent.

If Labor had finished second with Greens preferences, Dr Phelps had recommended preferencing the Liberal Party over Labor, so the ALP could not win the seat.

Labor also made sure it did not deploy any additional resources from other seats — as it did in the Bennelong by-election when Labor had a chance of winning and taking away Malcolm Turnbull’s then one-seat margin.

So although 500 workers turned up on polling booths, there was not as much doorknocking or phone calls.

People working other marginal seats like Reid ahead of the next federal election were not redeployed in the Labor cause and told to continue to campaign where they were.

Liberal workers photographed Mr Murray working pre-poll without the assistance of ­campaign workers.

Another key feature of the tight Wentworth race was the involvement of Left-leaning campaign organisation GetUp, which deployed 300 workers and encouraged people to vote for either Dr Phelps, another independent Licia Heath or the Greens ­candidate.

GetUp national director Paul Oosting said yesterday the campaign would be expanded to help Left-leaning candidates in other safe Liberal seats, where issues such as climate change were big, at the general election.

“There’s a range of seats across the country that could turn from safe seats into marginal seats — Curtin, Brisbane, Kooyong, Warringah,” Mr Oosting said.

“Coming out of the booths, people said the No 1 issue was climate change. We will have a good, long hard look at things now. I think (the vote) has sent a clear message to the major parties: they can’t take the community for granted — people do not accept inaction on climate change.”

Dr Phelps used the experience of former Julia Gillard staffer Darrin Barnett in her campaign. Mr Barnett worked on the recent Braddon by-election campaign for Labor. Sofia Madden, whose company has worked on campaigns for the ALP, unions and GetUp, built Dr Phelps’s campaign website and helped make her launch video.