In 2003, a young student named Paul Erickson was gasping for air on the floor of the University of Melbourne’s Union House. “They fucking flattened me,” he said, cradling his shoulder. He told friends that members of the campus Liberal party had allegedly chased and assaulted him during a student election campaign.
Two decades later, as the national secretary of the Australian Labor party, a “fucking ruthless” Erickson has flattened the Liberal party.
A campaign designed and delivered by Erickson has wiped the Liberals off the map in Tasmania and Adelaide, decimated its numbers in Brisbane and Melbourne and left it rudderless without a leader. Outer-suburban seats targeted by the Liberals have recorded huge swings to Labor. Blue-ribbon seats such as Petrie have now turned red.
Almost no one within Labor saw this coming. In fact, many feared the opposite. Multiple senior Labor sources – past and present – say Erickson should be credited for delivering the party’s best election result in generations.
“Last year, the party and the government were in the shit,” says one senior source who declined to be named so they could speak freely. “We were looking down the barrel of being the first government to lose after one term since 1931. That’s not an exaggeration.
“Paul, at that point, commissioned a series of research and built a strategy that, at the heart of it, was about taking Dutton’s nuclear plan, attaching a price to it, and then creating question marks about what he would cut to achieve it. That was a message that he was briefing party leadership on from as early as October last year. The message he crafted was clinically effective.”
In the final weeks of the campaign, Albanese repeated this message ad nauseam.
On 26 March, 38 days before polling day, the prime minister appeared on the ABC current affairs radio program AM. He told listeners that the Coalition’s “policy of $600bn for nuclear energy” means “they’ll need to cut everything and they will cut everything except for your taxes”.
While Labor’s campaign benefited from things beyond its control – the chaos of the Trump administration and unpopular Coalition policies that were ultimately dumped – insiders credit Erickson for quickly capitalising on these and driving home advantage.
When Labor sensed voters felt Trump-related anxieties – especially after a White House showdown with Volodymyr Zelenskyy and the global tariffs announcement – Labor MPs went out of their way to link Dutton to the Make America Great Again movement. Plans to remove 41,000 public servants were described as “Doge-style cuts”.
This messaging wasn’t coincidental, it was a directive from the top that featured in briefings and written materials shared by Labor’s campaign headquarters, run by Erickson.
Erickson’s rapid rise to national secretary began in Melbourne, where he “cut his teeth in campaigns against the Greens”. He worked for Victorian Labor when Labor lost the seat of Melbourne to the now Greens leader, Adam Bandt, following Lindsay Tanner’s retirement. The experience was formative, according to senior sources, who say it made him the campaigner he is today.
“When you are fighting against the Greens in the inner city, it’s a brutal experience,” one source says. “Unlike campaigning against the Libs, all the things you believe about progressive politics get thrown back at you. You are forced to navigate a really difficult line of trying to win a seat without going further than where the party is and hurting it nationally.
“Your natural inclination when up against the Greens is to pivot left. But you can’t do that. When I look at people like Paul, who’ve had that experience with the Greens, it’s clear there is a real discipline that has been bred into them. A real tactical nimbleness that you don’t get when you just run cookie-cutter campaigns against the Liberals in outer-suburban marginals.”
Super Saturday legacy
Sources say it was Erickson’s experience fighting the Greens that drew Albanese’s attention.
In 2011, Erickson was moved from Victorian Labor to work on the campaign of the former New South Wales Labor MP Carmel Tebbutt, who was “under real threat from the Greens” in Marrickville. Polls said the Greens would easily win the seat. Tebbutt, who was married to Albanese at the time, proved them wrong. Albanese and Tebbutt split in 2019.
In 2018, Erickson was put in charge of a series of federal byelection campaigns triggered by the dual citizenship crisis, known as Super Saturday. Labor held the marginal seats of Longman, Batman and Braddon, against expectations, placing pressure on Malcolm Turnbull’s prime ministership.
“We were nowhere in Batman, which was widely expected to go Green,” says Ryan Liddell, a former chief of staff to the then Labor leader, Bill Shorten, who is from the party’s right faction. “Paul and Ged Kearney pulled it back.
“Every test that’s been set for him he’s smashed. He’s a generational talent and one of the best campaigners this country has seen. His contributions carry weight and he’s never afraid to have a barney or talk truth to power.”
During the 2019 election campaign, Erickson ran a unit that focused on Liberal-held marginal seats. After the party’s shock loss, he was promoted from assistant national secretary to national secretary. Since then, he’s worked closely with the prime minister, a factional ally, and his senior team. He sits in on strategy meetings.
Winning over sceptics on the right
Now 41, Erickson’s rapid rise through the ranks hasn’t come without criticism. Labor sources acknowledge some rightwing members were initially sceptical about his promotion, viewing it as a factionally motivated appointment.
“He’s a creature of the left,” one source says. “When Anthony became leader, Paul was his pick for the national secretary. I think there was probably a fair few rightwingers who were annoyed about that. They saw it as an Anthony-inspired left faction selection.
“But now Paul just has the absolute begrudging respect of the right. The vast majority of them have been won around and realise this bloke isn’t just there because he’s a factional appointment – he is the best person to do the job.”
Multiple Labor sources described Erickson as “fucking ruthless”, “cunning” and someone who does not suffer fools. But he has also been described as someone “great to have a beer with”. When presented with complex issues, they say he has a special ability to ask questions to get to the heart of the matter and provide clarity.
‘Street fighter’ and true Labor believer
Erickson has also inspired loyalty, according to one Labor MP who has interacted with him.
“He is a political animal,” they say. “He is a street fighter who understands the shop floor. He is not a fucking carpetbagger who is here for a few years then off to PwC. He’s a true believer who wants to beat Tories and get Labor governments elected to do good things.”
In his victory speech on Saturday night, Albanese praised Erickson as a “magnificent campaign director”, who in the depths of the campaign became a first-time father.
“Anyone who can become a father 10 days before delivering one of the biggest Labor majorities in history has my total respect,” says one Labor insider.
Erickson was contacted for this story. He declined to comment, but confirmed he would address the National Press Club to outline Labor’s strategy and respond to questions from journalists, as he did after the 2022 election victory.
• This article was amended on 7 March. Lindsay Tanner retired before the seat of Melbourne was lost by Labor to the Greens.
