Election 2016: Union volunteers staff Labor’s ‘ground war’

On the last Sunday in May, union members were doorknocking Perth’s northern suburbs.

ACTU campaign director Sally McManus, front, with union campaign volunteers outside Sydney’s Concord Hospital. Picture: John Feder.

On the last Sunday in May, union members were doorknocking Perth’s northern suburbs urging voters to put MP Luke Simpkins last in the seat he holds for the government by a 4.5 per cent margin.

At the same time in Corangamite on Victoria’s surf coast, volunteers in the streets of Liberal Sarah Henderson’s seat, which she holds by a wobbly 3.9 per cent, campaigned in favour of Labor’s Gonski education reforms.

At the helm of the attack, which includes dozens more marginal seats, was Labor’s secret weapon, the union boss who controls the opposition’s blitz on marginal seats in a bigger campaign than the 2007 Work Choices juggernaut.

ACTU vice-president Sally McManus is leading a 5000-strong volunteer union army of members and supporters, ­recruited from Labor strongholds, including local councils and trades halls, to target voters in their homes, train stations, shopping centres and even TAFEs.

Ms McManus, who is also ACTU campaign director, has travelled the country training and monitoring the effort, refining messages and meeting volunteers.

Talking to The Australian in the marginal seat of Reid, held by Liberal MP Craig Laundy by 3.3 per cent, Ms McManus said volunteers had been instructed to go out and have “conversations with ­people in their communities and have fun with like-minded people”. “They do this at shopping centres, train stations, the side of the road, doorknocking, phone calling and holding events and ­rallies,” she said.

That’s because “in a tight election, the focus of a campaign should be on marginal seats”.

“We’ve had volunteers from Darwin to Launceston, most days of the week and every weekend out there, campaigning,” Ms McManus said. “Even though union members hold diverse views, all these people are united by a desire to change the direction of the country.”

The next phase of the campaign, which will bring in teachers, nurses and emergency service workers to doorknock undecided voters, is based on information gathered from more than 20,000 calls to homes.

Callers asked voters if they picked Labor in any of the past five elections. Based on the calls and the feedback from voters, volunteers know exactly which homes to doorknock in 32 marginal seats during the final weeks of the election. They will ask voters to spread the word to vote Labor.

It is the same tactic the Victorian Trades Hall used to deliver Daniel Andrews to office in the 2014 state election, inspired by the Obama presidential campaign.

Ms McManus ran and won a campaign for equal pay for non-government community workers in her previous role as secretary of the Australian Services Union.

She was recently in Lindsay, where unemployed young people are playing an important role in the campaign. For them, the grassroots approach resonates because it’s seen as “cool” to interact in person in an increasingly online world. Labor’s “ground war” will compliment “micro-targeted” online ads and TV commercials.