Labour betting on positivity
It was all polo shirts, bouncy castles and post-holiday bonhomie at the Labour Party’s annual caucus retreat as it geared up for an election year.
Labour’s optimism mirrors that of its leader. The news was the party would sign up to Facebook’s campaign transparency tool and submit any new election promises to be independently costed.
As part of this, Labour insiders have been putting it about that punters do not like negative campaigning. It is the latest in a long line about negative campaigns yet parties keep doing it. The reason? Change brings unknowns and people tend to be cautious. Negative campaigning can be effective. Also one politician’s negative campaign is another politician’s prudent warning about how the other lot’s policies will stuff society/the economy/ enter-sector-here. After all, that is the heart of politics: disagreements over what to do, how to do it and who will be affected.
But while Jacinda Ardern yesterday refused to name which countries’ election campaigns she thought had fallen prey to fake news, the one that is most commonly cited behind closed doors is Australia.
Labour’s fear seems to be that National will run an election campaign based on – and possibly using some of the same techniques and personnel – that Australian Prime Minister Scott Morrison used last year. So Labour is trying to create a political environment that might constrain the Nats.
Morrison won what was widely considered an unwinnable election by sticking to basics and slamming each Australia Labor Party policy as ‘‘dipping into your pocket’’ – ‘‘the bill you can’t afford’’ was the tagline. Morrison’s campaign was deliberately thin on policy and branded ScoMo as a daggy dad from the suburbs.
National Party leader Simon Bridges has made no secret of his admiration for the way Morrison won, and has taken some lessons. But Morrison was facing something totally different to Bridges. The ALP had outlined plans to massively ramp up government spending; jack up taxes including on rental properties and capital gains; empower unions; and bring in an emissions trading scheme. It also at times adopted a sneering tone towards more traditional conservative Labor voters.
Morrison’s Liberals used social media and were effective. That is what Labour is concerned about when it talks about ‘‘misinformation’’.
But that was not what lost it for Australian Labor. An unpopular leader with a grab bag of policies to fix things many Australians did not know were problems was.
National is already running a somewhat subterranean Facebook ad campaign attacking the Government. Labour’s ads are much tamer at this stage, which makes it easier for them to sign up for the Facebook tool.
It will be interesting to see how long ‘‘relentless positivity’’ holds.