Balmain is an inner-Sydney state constituency with 50,000 voters. Traditionally Labor heartland, it has changed under gentrification and its vote is now unusual in that it falls almost exactly into thirds – split between the Liberals, Labor and the Greens. It was one of the seats that fell at the 2011 New South Wales election, in the worst state-wide defeat that Labor has ever suffered. We lost Balmain to the Greens by just over 200 votes. I was the campaign director for the seat’s popular local member, Verity Firth.
Since this defeat, and others around the country, Labor has been debating and discussing internal party reform. Mostly led by the party’s left, there have been strong advocates in the dominant right faction as well, particularly from New South Wales.
Labor has been seen for some years as out of touch, riddled with infighting and not connected to local communities. It is in this climate that community preselections, a form of primary, have been trialled by New South Wales Labor. So far, New South Wales is the only state to have conducted such elections.
Like most party reform ideas, community preselections are not universally supported in the Australian Labor party, either in our party’s left or the right factions. A moderately successful trial was held for the city of Sydney mayoralty – but it was clear that Labor would never win the mayoralty from a popular leftist independent. In 2014 all the seats trying out community preselections are held by our opponents but winnable at the next election. This changes the state of play significantly and makes the outcomes of these trials more important.
In Balmain the preselection was run between two well-known candidates – Firth, the former member of parliament, and the local mayor, Darcy Byrne. Both were strong contenders and either could have won. I ran the strategy for Firth’s campaign, working closely with a team of around six campaigners and many volunteers. Our key challenge was turnout, as Australians are used to a compulsory voting environment.
The model was a 50-50 college system: 50 per cent of the vote from local ALP members and 50 per cent from community members who chose to cast a vote and who were not members of another political party. Every household was sent a package of neutral information about the process and the candidates from the ALP, including a ballot paper that they could send back with their vote. Community members could also vote online or locally. It was up to the candidates to frame the contest and turn out the voters.
And turn out they did – 5,600 people voted in Balmain, one in 10 local residents. By any standards, this is a phenomenal result. Overall, Firth won 58 per cent of the vote, including 65 per cent in the community college.
But it should not be assumed that such a result was delivered with ease. The toll on campaigners and candidates was heavy, and ongoing.
Both Balmain candidates started campaigning in February – well before the ballot timeline was announced. But this early work was crucial as it educated the local population, promoted the candidates and gathered voter data. Email was particularly important as we knew online voting would be an option.
For our campaign, there were two key challenges. First was candidate message. This was crucial and both candidates did this very differently. I found this much more difficult than at a general election as we were speaking to two very different audiences – the local members and the wider community. A path to success had to have a message that appealed strongly to both.
But members and the community often want different things in a candidate. In the ALP at the moment party rules reform is a crucial debate with members. However, this was not something that greatly interested the general public. Appealing to these two separate blocks and finding one message was a challenge.
The second key challenge was getting campaign tactics right. Our overall strategy was to turn out as many community voters as possible. It sounds simple, but we knew our candidate was popular, well known and had a strong community message so she was likely to grab any undecided and lesser-motivated participants.
We focused on three key segments: geographical turnout – areas we knew were strong Labor or had high civic engagement; demographic turnout – Firth had particularly strong resonance with women and young families; and network turnout – motivating supporters to turn out their own personal networks to vote.
We made large use of email. Running a huge array of community stalls, our main purpose was to gather email addresses to which we then sent the voting link, tracking open rates and following up with phonecalls. This proved highly successful.
Heading into the process I was not sold on the idea of community preselections. My opinion has now totally changed. Not only does the turnout speak for itself, it was the conversations I had with residents that changed my mind. People were genuinely excited to get a say on who the candidate would be, and felt amazed that any political party was asking them to get so involved. Feelings towards Labor as a party turned in one conversation from ambivalence to positive. In addition, a significant number of people spontaneously asked if they could join the party.
There are two key lessons that come out of this. First, the contest must be genuine. The public saw the contest for what it was: a genuine run-off between two candidates who both had a good shot of winning. A false or contrived contest would not have worked.
Second, the party itself must provide support. Mailing neutral information to every household was crucial in educating the public. New South Wales Labor also provided its organising centre (with its phone bank) for campaigns.
I would encourage parties thinking of trialling community preselections not to underestimate the impact on campaign teams – the toll on them was at least as great as in running a real election. Ensuring this process happens a good way out from the election is thus crucial.
But the wins are already obvious – a hugely engaged public, who feel invested in the candidate and the process. Such a process saw the largest engagement in a preselection ever seen in Australia – and in a phenomenally positive way for Labor.
Finally, I would say that a strong strategy is needed for afterwards. What is the plan for transforming voters into volunteers and then into members? In Balmain the team is about to start rolling out an engagement and training strategy, where voters are encouraged to help determine our local election platform and are trained to be campaigners and advocates for Labor. So watch this space.
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Tamsin Lloyd is national director of strategy and communications at the Australian Manufacturing Workers’ Union
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