Every morning during the campaign, Paul Erickson rose about 4am. By 6.15am, he was on the phone with the prime minister. By 8am, every major campaign message for the day was locked down.

Last Saturday, Anthony Albanese led the Australian Labor Party to a second-term victory so commanding it stunned political commentators, shattered his opponents, and left even many Labor hardheads speechless. While Labor insiders will tell you what a triumph it was for Albanese, they will also tell you – with a mixture of reverence, awe and fascination – that without Erickson at the helm as national secretary, such a victory was likely out of reach.

“The campaign, at every level in its execution, was simply the best I have ever seen. Top to bottom,” Labor’s national president, Wayne Swan, tells The Saturday Paper.

A former secretary of Labor’s Queensland branch who helped end 32 years of conservative rule in that state in 1989, Swan is not one for easy praise, but he’s unequivocal: “Paul kept a degree of calm, purpose, direction and authority through the whole thing that was absolutely extraordinary,” he says. “This was a campaign where everyone knew what was at stake and that we needed an extraordinary degree of discipline, cooperation and purpose. And that’s what Paul brought.”

Swan, who as federal treasurer helped steer Australia through the 2008 global financial crisis, likens Erickson’s campaign leadership to an intense kind of crisis management.

“People knew we were in the fight of our lives, that there was no margin for error, given the challenges and the circumstances we were in. Everybody knew that. But Paul didn’t get pushed or pulled by the daily madness. When you’re running a campaign, you’re being hit from all directions – the press gallery, ministers, the factions, the leadership, the unions. But Paul just kept going. With absolute focus.”

The party veteran is emphatic about the future, too. “Paul’s an enormous asset to the Labor Party,” says Swan. “If he wanted to go into parliament, we’d welcome him. But whatever he chooses – third campaign, politics, government – we’re very lucky to have him.”

Erickson, 41, is not a politician. He rarely gives interviews. You cannot find him on social media. But inside the party, his judgement carries enormous weight. “He thinks 10 steps ahead of everyone else,” says one Labor strategist. “When Paul took control of the campaign, everything turned,” says another. “You could see that reflected in the published opinion polls.”

The Albanese government, which had been faltering through the second half of 2024, snapped into shape from the beginning of February. Its message firmed. Dutton’s nuclear policy was seized on, pulled apart and weaponised. Medicare – ever Labor’s lodestar – was elevated to the defining issue of the contest.

“ Paul’s the architect. The builder. The planner. The stabiliser. And the one person everyone – absolutely everyone – trusted.”

“He’s absolutely brilliant,” says a senior government adviser from the party’s Right faction. “We’re not from the same tribe, internally, but that doesn’t matter. Everyone respects Paul.”

Described by those who know him as quiet, intense and fanatically disciplined, Erickson drew special praise in Albanese’s victory speech, in which the prime minister congratulated his campaign director on becoming “a dad”. Erickson’s partner, Dimity Paul, who is chief of staff to Minister for Aged Care Anika Wells, had their first child during the election campaign.

Erickson’s style – deliberate, precise and patient – is as much part of his story as the results he has delivered. “He’s got this capacity,” says one Labor insider, “to manage chaos without ever showing strain. He controls the tempo. When things are on fire, he gets quieter. Calmer. Slower. And people listen.”

“You don’t see him lose his shit,” says Felicity Wade, national co-convenor of the Labor Environment Action Network, Labor’s biggest internal movement. “Even when he’s pissed off, he just slows down. That’s how you know he’s pissed off.”

Erickson grew up in Melbourne in a staunch Labor household. His father, Tim, a champion race walker, was selected for the 1980 Moscow Olympics but was unable to attend as then prime minister Malcolm Fraser’s support for the United States-led boycott drastically reduced the size of the Australian team. Erickson’s older brother, Chris, represented Australia at three Olympic Games.

Erickson studied arts and economics at the University of Melbourne and, by 2003, was president of the ALP Club, the on-campus stronghold of Labor’s Left faction.

“He struck me from the very start as someone with a huge capacity to contribute,” says Andrew Giles, now the federal minister for skills and training. Giles, a close friend and former Canberra flatmate of Erickson’s, says he “had this combination of high IQ and high EQ. He was good with people, a great listener. Very good at absorbing information.”

Giles says Erickson is not distracted by the need to puff himself up. “He chooses his words very carefully and, whenever he addresses a group of MPs, what you notice is an unusual silence and attention, which is not always how people in these organisational roles find themselves,” says Giles. “Paul is his own person and brings his own style and approach to his role. He isn’t flashy, he isn’t demonstrative, he’s very considered, but when he’s direct, he’s very direct.”

After university, Erickson began a long, formative apprenticeship under Richard Wynne, working on and off for the Victorian Labor MP from 2004 to 2014 as an electorate officer, ministerial adviser and campaign strategist. “He kind of cut his teeth with me,” Wynne recalls. “And that meant fighting the Greens in the inner city – real hand-to-hand combat. We learned a lot.”

Wynne and Erickson fought and won six campaigns together. In the course of those contests, Wynne says, Erickson honed his message discipline and his ability to interpret data and developed a deep understanding of voter psychology. Recalling a presentation he had to make to an independent panel on Melbourne’s proposed East West Link, Wynne says he delegated the task to Erickson.

“He prepared complex material … that convinced me early on that this was a serious intellect,” Wynne says.

After joining Labor’s organisational wing as assistant national secretary in 2014 – following stints with federal MP Lindsay Tanner and former New South Wales deputy premier Carmel Tebbutt – Erickson’s breakthrough moment at a national level came in 2018, when he was picked to run Ged Kearney’s campaign in the Batman byelection. The seat, now known as Cooper, was under siege from the Greens. The Victorian branch was rattled and Labor faced the real prospect of losing its inner-city foothold. Erickson was brought in to steady the campaign.

He already knew Kearney well. Years earlier, he had worked as a policy and research officer at the Australian Council of Trade Unions during her tenure as president. The two had developed a close working relationship rooted in shared values and political trust. On the campaign trail, they changed the tone of the contest, emphasising Kearney’s credentials and Labor’s purpose rather than responding to the Greens on their terms. It marked a sharp break from the defensive posture Labor had taken in previous inner-city fights. Labor held the seat.

From there, Erickson was sent to help in the Tasmanian seat of Braddon during the so-called Super Saturday byelections in July 2018, when five federal seats were contested on the same day following a wave of resignations triggered by the dual citizenship crisis. It was a high-stakes test of Labor’s campaign machinery and Bill Shorten’s leadership. Erickson’s performance in the field impressed both Shorten and Anthony Albanese.

After the 2019 federal defeat, Erickson was the consensus choice to succeed the resigning national secretary, Noah Carroll. “He hadn’t been part of the Rudd–Gillard mess,” said one member of Labor’s national executive at the time. “And he was a straight shooter.”

Since 2019, Erickson has also built a global network across the centre-left. He speaks regularly with Labour in the United Kingdom, the United States Democrats, the German SPD, the Canadian Liberals and the New Zealand Labour Party. “He saw how the right were globally organised through the International Democracy Union,” says a former colleague. “And he said, ‘If they’re doing that, why aren’t we?’ ”

Labor’s last two successful campaigns have been defined by discipline. In 2022, under pandemic conditions, Erickson kept the party focused. In 2025, Erickson elevated the operation again. “Paul ran the air war,” says one figure from Labor’s campaign headquarters. “Assistant national secretary Jen Light ran the ground war. That’s why we’re in a second term.”

“He’s the one who made the call to go early on Medicare,” says one Labor staffer. “He saw Dutton leaving a vacuum on health, and he told the prime minister: that’s where we hit.” It worked. The February Medicare announcement, an $8.5 billion plan to make nine out of 10 GP visits free by 2030, helped to frame the contrast between the major parties.

It was part of a philosophy Erickson had developed after 2022, the staffer says, to “elevate a mood for change and give undecided voters a reason to be afraid of the alternative”.

Privately, Erickson has pointed to the importance of Labor’s digital campaign, which received an overhaul following the failure of the 2023 Voice referendum. Social media, influencers, platform targeting, rapid response – all of it was rebuilt.

While Erickson ultimately drove that transformation, campaign insiders say Labor’s digital director, Kate Ryan, gets the credit for executing it. “She made a huge difference,” says one campaign adviser.

Erickson understood before most that the campaign battlefield had shifted. Labor’s internal research, which was informed by three separate firms, revealed early-vote patterns, shifting gender dynamics and a collapse in Coalition credibility among different groups of voters such as Chinese Australians and suburban women.

Another important factor during the campaign, says one Labor insider, was the culture: no ego, no factions, no freelancing. “If you were there to push your own minister’s interest, you were gone,” says the campaign staffer. “Everyone understood. This was Paul’s operation.”

Erickson likes to remind colleagues that “no campaign is mistake-free”. The test, he believes, is whether you keep your focus as the chaos swirls.

Those close to him describe a man driven by values, not ambition. “He gets climate change,” says Felicity Wade. “He’s not starry-eyed about it, but he really cares. He shows up. He listens. He treats activists with respect – because he respects them.”

Another issue that drives him, say people who worked with him closely, is reconciliation with First Nations people, which he views as a moral priority. “That’s part of why he gets up in the morning,” says one colleague. “He’s earnest in the best way.”

Now there is speculation about his future. Some want him in parliament. Others hope he runs a third campaign. “He’d make a brilliant MP,” says a senior government adviser. “But he’s careful about his intentions. And no one knows yet.”

Whatever path Erickson takes, becoming a candidate seems unlikely. In all their years working together, Richard Wynne says he’s never seen or heard a single sign that Erickson harbours any ambition to run for office. “And that’s a bit unusual if you hang around this business long enough,” he says.

What they do know is that Erickson masterminded a generational victory. Labor regained Queensland suburbs and Tasmanian marginals. They gained ground in outer Melbourne and Western Sydney. The Greens lost at least three seats – including leader Adam Bandt’s. Dutton was routed, which is of enormous significance to Erickson personally.

“Paul’s the architect,” says one senior official. “The builder. The planner. The stabiliser. And the one person everyone – absolutely everyone – trusted.”

In his magisterial biography of Lyndon Johnson, Robert Caro writes that if Johnson had a single credo, it was this: “If you do everything, you’ll win.” It is, says Andrew Giles, a phrase that best captures Paul Erickson’s style as a political campaigner.

“It’s such a powerful watchword in politics,” Giles says. “If you do everything – analyse the challenge at hand, the personalities involved, the problem, the angles in, the angles out – and apply real rigour to it, then you give yourself a chance. And that’s what Paul does. He just looks so hard at things.”

Erickson is the 12th full-time national secretary of the Labor Party. He may well be the most effective it has ever had.

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