NSW election: Unions launch Obama-style campaign to win votes       

Date
    January 12, 2015
    Sydney Morning Herald

NSW unions and the Labor Party are mounting aggressive grassroots campaigns against the Baird government's plans to privatise electricity, education and health services.   

Union leaders say the state election campaign will be their most consolidated in history.

It aims to engage the community directly at train stations and through door knocking, street stalls, letter-box drops and telephone calls. It is modelled on a similar strategy that was successfully used to unseat the government in Victoria last year. It also borrows tactics used in US President Barack Obama's campaigns.   

Unions NSW secretary Mark Lennon said unions would campaign for quality public services, jobs, and against the Baird government's agenda to privatise electricity network "poles and wires" , hospitals and TAFE.


"This will be a watershed election in NSW. It will be about whether we are going to accept as a community that the government's role is simply to allow more and more of the private sector to provide public services, or are we going to make a stand, and say 'no'," he said.   

"We don't have a problem with the private sector, but it's a question of degree. This government is privatising by stealth.

"We are yet to see privatisation of electricity assets that have been to the benefit of the community at large. "   

NSW Teachers Federation president Maurie Mulheron said teachers would campaign against the Baird government's public sector wage freeze that meant teachers were losing money in real terms.   

"We are calling on the state government to lift the 2.5 per cent salary cap and allow teachers and public sector unions access to the industrial relations commission so we can have independent arbitration of salary levels, which we have been denied," he said.

"The privatisation of TAFE is going to be a central campaign.

"We've already seen over a thousand teaching and other positions lost out of the system, and courses rationalised.

"We will support the broader Unions NSW campaign against privatisation in hospitals, electricity and TAFE. "It will be based on what they did in Victoria with a lot of door knocking and taking the issues directly to the people."   

NSW Labor general secretary Jamie Clements said the ALP would build on its successful grassroots campaign before the 2013 federal election.

Labor targeted the ethnic vote and used Obama-style campaign tactics to directly contact undecided voters – using a call centre in Parramatta – to prevent an expected electoral wipeout in western Sydney.

Mr Clements said NSW would import strategies from Victoria, where Labor successfully campaigned over cuts to hospital and education services. 

"We'll be making an unprecedented investment in our field campaign," Mr Clements said.

"We'll be having one-on-one conversations with the voters and driving up volunteer numbers."

In the 2013 federal election, Labor recaptured ethnic community votes lost in 2010.

In the seat of Fowler, where 22 per cent of the community speaks Vietnamese, Labor candidate Chris Hayes achieved a 9.51 per cent swing in his favour.

In Werriwa, which Labor feared it might lose, Laurie Ferguson contacted ethnic communities by direct mail with a personal message in the last days of his campaign. He also spoke on numerous community language radio programs.

While the overall swing against Mr Ferguson was 3.95 per cent, polling booths in areas with a strong Bangladeshi community, such as Minto South, achieved a 2 per cent swing in his favour.

Mr Ferguson said former NSW Liberal Party leader Barry O'Farrell showed a stronger interest in multiculturalism in 2011 than his successor, Premier Mike Baird, has shown.

"O'Farrell was everywhere in ethnic Australia," Mr Ferguson said.

Mr Baird said the Coalition government had created more than 40,000 jobs in western Sydney since it came to office in 2011.

"To support the economy and future growth, we are building the largest infrastructure projects in Australia, many of which will directly benefit western Sydney, including WestConnex and a second Sydney airport at Badgerys Creek," he said.

"We are improving services in western Sydney, including 5600 extra weekly transport services, an additional 775 nurses, 688 new police officers and an additional 456 teachers.

"[T]he funds released through a lease of the poles and wires will deliver Sydney Rapid Transit, all the way from outer north-west Sydney, under the harbour and out to Bankstown.

"NSW Labor took western Sydney for granted for decades."

We will support the broader Unions NSW campaign against privatisation in hospitals, electricity and TAFE. "It will be based on what they did in Victoria with a lot of door knocking and taking the issues directly to the people.      

Well, if they get the linesmen to put posters up near the top of electricity poles again, they should be done for pollution.
That was a disgrace, a visual blot on the landscape, and what's more they didn't take them down after the election.

Still what can you expect from cretins like the union leadership.

Swagman wrote on Jan 12^th, 2015 at 11:16am:


Now that's not on. Everybody knows Mr Abbott is our Roads and Infrastructure Prime Minister. Has the Baird government run this past him?

Please explain.

Wasn't NSW Labor trying to privatise the electricity networks when they were in power???  So the union is campaigning against ALP policy?

Armchair_Politician wrote on Jan 13^th, 2015 at 10:02am:



The ALP and the Unions have always celebrated their affiliation.

It's never been a secret.

The ALP was created by Unions.

It's also no secret that the Union based Labour movement has been hijacked by Yuppie Labor (the Labour you have once they remove U from it)....

This has lead to the Union movement being infected by the same illnesses as Yuppie Labor - affirmative action, 'women's rights' (which are often Men's Wrongs), political correctness, glad-handing dictators and assassins, clutching vipers to their bosom.... only a few with genuine integrity and self-servers on all sides who sell out their worker mates when the price is right in some way (not necessarily cash-wise - tip of the iceberg for corruption)....

You name it.

New Party needed yesterday.... the SLP (Shirtfront Leaners Party)