Hunting in Packs State Election South Sydney Herald 2007

Hunting in Packs

John Stapleton

The Liberal Coalition was out-spent, out-spun and out-maneuvered.

Once again Labor showed just how brilliant they are on the campaign trail.

There have now been 26 state and federal elections since there was a change of government in Australia.

Iemma used incumbency to full effect, spending $100 million of your money on "government" advertising of services to convince the electorate that when it came to basic services the people of NSW weren't doing so badly after all. At the same time he pulled off a magnificent sleight of hand to suggest his government was only 18 months old and that somehow he shared none of the blame for the debacle Bob Carr left behind.

As Alex Mitchell, chief political correspondent for the Sun-Herald and president of the NSW parliament's press gallery, noted: "There has been a very big difference in the editorial writers, who by and large have been critical of the Labor government; and journalists in the field, who are more influenced by spin doctors." One editorial suggested the Carr/Iemma government was the worst in 75 years. But you wouldn't know it from the coverage, and Mitchell is critical of his colleagues for letting Labor get away with it. "Journalists should be less susceptible to spin doctors,"

The Coalition was solidly out-spent. State political correspondent for The Australian Imre Salusinszky  described it as almost a David and Goliath competition. Iemma had at least four highly capable staff members who's sole job was to deal with journalists. Debnam had one young and under-resourced press secretary. While Labor could afford to fly plane loads of journalists around the state, the Liberals often resorted to public transport. "The Labor machine is expert at running campaigns and spin doctoring,"  Salusinszky said. "The media has been harder on the coalition than Labor. There has been a ganging up on Debnam, but they really didn't run a very professional campaign."

Much of it boiled down to a an over-simplified battle between Iemma and Debnam.

As Anne Davies at the Sydney Morning Herald pointed out: "It was a very presidential style campaign. We have focused heavily on personalities rather than issues." This suited the need to simplify everything for TV and ignore boring things like policy.

And in this regard Iemma used his position as Premier to full effect. While Debnam was just another man in the crowd that crossed the Harbor Bridge for its 75th anniversary, Iemma's team had carefully staged managed the event. Iemma walked across the bridge at the head of the crowd with governor of NSW Marie Bashir, holding the hands of his children, pretending to be an ordinary person. It was a gift for Iemma and a gift for TV. It was left to the ineffective detail of print to point out that only two days earlier 4,000 motorists were trapped on the bridge for hours after yet another public transport debacle - a broken down train had again created transport chaos across Sydney.

Despite Labor's many advantages; it took pure genius to turn Iemma into a winner. As Mitchell points out, they couldn't run on their record, which under Carr was abysmal, they couldn't run on Iemma's charisma, he didn't have any.

Instead, far from a minister who had performed unexceptionally in his portfolios and been part of the Carr cabinet, he was transformed into a likeable bloke, a suburban man, in counterpoint to Debnam, the "toff" from Vaucluse.

One day, early in the campaign, Debnam held a water taste test on the Corso at Manly to demonstrate that recycled water tasted just like tap water and the Liberals would save the state billions by not opting for a desalination plant. The event provided television with their shots of Debnam for the day but not much else. Trying to write something about this utterly un-newsworthy event, I asked Debnam whether they were launching anything, doing anything, announcing anything. No no no came the answers, we're just doing a taste test.

Nothing could have shown up the ineptness of the Liberal campaign better. Really, what were the journalists meant to write?

You should learn from Labor and make announcements on just about anything, I said to Debnam's media spokesman. You could have put out a press release announcing that Debnam was launching a series of taste tests across Sydney's suburbs ahead of the announcement of the Liberal's new water policy, vital to avert the looming water crisis and rectify years of Labor inaction and incompetence.

No one falls for that crap, came the reply.

Oh yes they do.