It's a win-win for spinmeister

IN what has long been known to be an unwinnable election for NSW Labor, the party's state secretary has rhetorically set himself up so that he can't lose, whatever happens.

Earlier this month, Sam Dastyari said Opposition Leader Barry O'Farrell was going to "win this thing and win it big".

Labor sources have been telling anyone who will listen that they will be lucky to win enough seats to field a football team.

Premier Kristina Keneally called Dastyari a "fool", but that couldn't be further from the truth. He knew exactly what he was doing. If Labor does underwhelm and win only a dozen or so seats, he will say I told you so. If, as is more likely, Labor scraps its way to 25-30 seats, he will be hailed a hero for running a campaign that helped a wrecked party exceed expectations - ensuring he is safe to continue on as state secretary with his reputation intact.

Dastyari has mounted the ultimate straw-man argument: a fallacy based on misrepresentation. The fallacy is that two dozen seats would be a good result; it wouldn't. The misrepresentation is that a dozen seats is a realistic low for Labor; it would be unprecedented in modern politics.

In 1999, when Liberal leader Kerry Chikarovski led the Coalition to a wipeout, locking in the long-term Labor government that voters now want to get rid of, she still managed to win 33 seats in a parliament of 93.

The last two times long-term tainted Labor governments went to the polls with new female leadership - circumstances just like in NSW now - was in Victoria in 1992 and Western Australia in 1993. Victorian Labor virtually bankrupted the state and WA Labor had just gone through the Brian Burke scandals. Joan Kirner still won 27 seats in Victoria's 88-seat Legislative Assembly and Carmen Lawrence won 24 seats in WA's 57-seat lower house.

Labor powerbroker and Dastyari mentor Graham Richardson started the dozen-seat hypothesis months ago, providing his protege with cover before the campaign even started. Dastyari simply continued to manage expectations.

All state secretaries whose party is lurching towards certain defeat talk down their chances of winning, but Dastyari has gone further than most. You would think that finding volunteers to hand out how-to-vote cards or donors to stump up for campaign spending has been made harder because the man charged with inspiring the troops has told them that the battle is lost.

The theme of self-interest in Labor's campaign, as well as planning for the long wilderness years in opposition, extends to the nominated leader-in-waiting for Labor, former union hard man John Robertson. His campaign for the safe Labor seat of Blacktown has bled much-needed resources away from the central party to ensure he is around to win his party's nomination and lead what's left of Labor.

Robertson will win his seat despite a large swing against him, and probably would have anyway without the cash and resources sent his way. But that didn't stop the Transport Minister insisting he secure a lion's share of what was available, made easier by his former chief of staff, Chris Minns, now serving as the assistant state secretary to Dastyari.

Labor is spinning hard to convince us all that any result is a good result - that's how bad the situation is. If on election night I am wrong and Labor wins only a dozen seats, I'll concede that the dire predictions weren't just spin but rather a desperate party trying to get the truth out there. It would be a first for a government that has spent 16 years mastering the art of spin over substance.