“Given the political dynamics, and they have 11 seats [buffer] – They will end up doing mostly a defensive campaign”, said Samaras.
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“But it will be a very difficult campaign for the Labor and Liberal parties. The traditional political landscape where most of the contest is in the sand belt [such as Carrum, Frankston, Bentleigh and Mordialloc] has changed.”
He said while Bentleigh, which has changed hands at every election since 2002, had become a safer seat for Labour, the newly created south-east electorate of Pakenham, which the party could had expected to win comfortably, it could now fall to the Liberals or independents.
Labour’s “target seat strategy” is likely to anger some MPs and candidates who may not receive as much financial support from party headquarters.
But the ALP learned a hard lesson in 2010, when it made the mistake of spreading its resources too far and failing to identify target seats to direct its campaign efforts towards.
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The Labor government ended up losing what many saw as an irreversible election because, among a number of factors, the leadership team was trying to protect the 55 MPs.
Former federal MP Alan Griffin’s post-mortem on the 2010 election result found Labor was so confident he did not set a “Brisbane line” – a reference to rumors the Menzies government was willing to to leave northern Australia if Japan invaded in World War II. . In political terms, it refers to identifying the seats from which one party will draw resources to save the others.
“Labour went into the state election believing they would win… as a result, Labor ran a very conservative campaign,” notes Griffin’s review.
“He kept all the marginal seats in the frame. No Brisbane line was established. Several tough calls were not made. Resources were not properly focused on the key battleground seats where the election would be won or lost . Labor took very few risks. It had a tight budget.”
A Labor figure familiar with the 2010 election strategy said the party could not afford to make the same mistake it made more than a decade ago, and that head office had to make difficult but necessary decisions.
“Try to be nice to everyone [all sitting MPs]but people can raise their own money for their own campaigns,” said the Labor source, speaking on condition of anonymity to freely discuss internal matters.
“At the end of the day, the bottom line is you have to win government and not stand up for things you can’t stand up for.”
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The party is concerned about the upcoming poll’s parallels with the 2010 election: the two long-term governments contested state elections shortly after a federal poll, and both governments had recently dealt with a crisis: the Black Saturday fires in 2009 and COVID-19. pandemic respectively.
And while the Brumby and Andrews governments were ahead in opinion polls released 12 months out from polling day, the race tightened as the election approached.
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