Liberals smell a rat in Wentworth as ALP campaigner ‘switches sides’

The man heading the campaign team for Kerryn Phelps is Darrin Barnett, a professional Labor operative.

Former prime minister Julia Gillard with then Labor staffer Darrin Barnett.

When Scott Morrison faces his first test with voters next month at the by-election forced by Malcolm Turnbull’s resignation, he will be a new prime minister with an old problem.

The man heading the campaign team for Kerryn Phelps, rated a good chance of beating the Liberal candidate in Turnbull’s former seat of Wentworth, is Darrin Barnett. Barnett is one of the professional Labor campaign operatives who helped the ALP win two of the July “Super Saturday” by-elections that signalled the end for Turnbull’s leadership.

This time Barnett will be working in Turnbull’s former backyard, but his involvement comes with a twist. In campaigning for Phelps, an independent, the man behind Labor’s Tasmanian by-election win in Braddon has switched sides — to work opposite Labor’s Wentworth candidate, Tim Murray.

Party sources close to Liberal candidate Dave Sharma allege political mischief, accusing Labor of co-operating behind the scenes with Phelps to ensure a Liberal ­defeat in the party’s traditional stronghold in Sydney’s east.

MORE: Labor operator joins Kerryn Phelps

MORE: Wentworth in play, says John Hewson

Barnett strongly denies he is working for Labor. He says he is a local and his wife is a doctor and friend of Phelps, a former president of the Australian Medical Association. But Labor insiders say Barnett, director of Sydney-based political public-relations firm Watson Consultants, must have received ALP head office dispensation to pop up opposite Murray.

Liberal scepticism is fuelled by Barnett’s pedigree. He has worked on many Labor campaigns and is a former adviser to prime ministers Kevin Rudd and Julia Gillard. Then there’s his full-time role: contracted to the Maritime Union of Australia, an ALP affiliate, as its media spokesman. When Barnett helped run Labor’s campaign in Braddon, he based the headquarters of candidate Justine Keay in the MUA’s Devonport office.

Murray told The Australian yesterday he did not know Barnett, nor anybody connected to Labor’s Sussex Street head office, and had not been warned that Barnett was working for Phelps.

He did concede he faced an uphill battle, and said Phelps could win with Labor preferences.

“I ­don’t know the bloke at all … I was endorsed as candidate in May,” he said. “There could be some mischievous things going on without my knowledge. I’m ­get­ting no financial support, and I’m fine with that.

“A Kerryn Phelps win would be good for the Labor Party.”

In Braddon, Barnett headed the campaign for Keay on local issues, especially better funding for the main hospital in Tasmania’s northwest. He ignored mainstream news outlets, pitching to the local newspaper and radio ­station. Similarly for Phelps, connections to community interests could be critical to a victory.

Barnett told The Australian: “A team of volunteers knocked on thousands of doors and made tens of thousands of phone calls to ­remind voters that taxpayers’ money could be better spent on schools and hospitals, not tax cuts for the big banks. There is no reason to think this template won’t be rolled out for the federal election.”

Hiring professionals such as Barnett has proved a powerful formula for Labor’s superior campaign machine, which has been on high alert for an early election. Labor insiders say Barnett is expected back in the Labor camp as a hired gun when the time comes.

Working alongside Barnett will surely be campaign professional and longtime friend Eamonn Fitzpatrick, who spearheaded Susan Lamb’s campaign in Labor’s other critical July by-election win, Longman in Queensland.

Fitzpatrick, like Barnett a veteran of the Rudd-Gillard era and a former adviser to NSW ex-premier Morris Iemma, is the larger-than-life director of Labor-friendly PR firm Hawker Britton.

Fitzpatrick is a fly-in, fly-out campaign hitman who campaigns hard to win. He was once branded an “agent of infection” by Liberal National Party critics in Queensland because of his alleged specialty in campaign dirty tricks and was recruited for Longman on Shorten’s say-so by ALP assistant national secretary Paul Erickson.

It was Fitzpatrick who brought Barnett into Braddon — recommending him to help Erickson, the Braddon campaign director — while Fitzpatrick concentrated on Longman.

Other outsiders tipped to play important roles in Labor’s national campaign include Dee Madigan, the creative director of advertising marketing firm Campaign Edge and a familiar face at Labor HQ during recent federal and state campaigns, and Tim Gleason, a former senior ALP adviser who has worked on seven election campaigns, served as media adviser to Rudd and now runs Gleason Communications.

Fitzpatrick said his brief in Longman was to blitz the Coalition by keeping Labor focused on what it could “offer voters”. The message was simple, blunt, local and ultimately lethal: vote Labor for more spending on schools and hospitals, not tax cuts for banks.

Fitzpatrick said the decision of Turnbull and then treasurer Morrison to shackle the Coalition to unpopular company tax cuts was a blunder because it reminded voters of the LNP’s “warped” policy priorities. “People doing it tough want to know the person or party they’re voting gets it, which is why the LNP’s primary vote suffered a hit,” he says.

Fitzpatrick believes more funding for hospitals and schools is likely to be the centrepiece of the Shorten-Labor federal election pitch. There will be no 2016-style “Mediscare” campaign about unfounded Coalition plans to privatise public healthcare.

The experience in Longman suggests that, even without a “Mediscare” rerun, a campaign based on better funding for hospitals and schools billed as a straight-shooting operation could be no less audacious, nor more truthful.

Turnbull and then health minister Greg Hunt struggled to rebut claims the government had ripped out $2.9 million over three years from Caboolture Hospital, accusing Labor of “lies” and pointing to Coalition funding increases “year on year”. Labor refused to back away, citing $2.9 million cuts based on an expected agreement.

Labor calculations were based on figures from the parliamentary budget office, and singling out Caboolture Hospital by assuming it accounted for 9 per cent of Brisbane’s total Metro North area funding allocation, as a proportion of Queensland’s total allocation. Such back-of-an-envelope estimates were difficult for Turnbull and his health minister to refute.

Shorten reinforced the message with stories of women forced to travel from Longman’s outer suburbs to Royal Brisbane Hospital because Caboolture had no chemotherapy unit for specialised cancer treatment. It was powerful, emotive rhetoric, but ignored key facts: public hospital spending is the responsibility of Anastasia Palaszczuk’s Labor government because Canberra allocates global funding for hospitals and the states determine how the money is spent. It was Palaszczuk, not Turnbull, who included no oncology unit in her government’s recent revamp of Caboolture Hospital.

The school funding debate in Longman, secondary to hospitals but hotly contested as a local issue, was another muddied by the budget reality that Canberra gives financial allocations to the states and they work out the detail. Like health, it was difficult for Longman voters to assess the truth. Labor capitalised on the federal feud with the Catholic education sector by claiming $57 million would be ripped out of Queensland’s systemic Catholic schools over two years.

The other key to Labor’s by-election success was organisation — an army of volunteers and union officials, dispatched for doorknocking, phone calls and election booths. Morrison faces a similar onslaught in Wentworth — and next year’s main game.