The Morrison government has accused Anthony Albanese of trying to “dodge scrutiny” in the lead up to the election after it obtained a leaked internal Labor Party memo that shows major limits on how information will be shared.
The memo tells Labor press secretaries, campaigns and candidates that Labor’s headquarters are up and running and the way they do media “will be changing significantly”.
In a controversial change, it said campaign headquarters would not be distributing speeches or transcripts for anyone, except for a “few limited exceptions”.
It also asks for reliance on media releases as a form of communication to be reduced.
“In an election context, they are rarely a good use of your time or central headquarter’s time, as they are unlikely to be read by media unless they are announcing a key policy or concern breaking news,” the memo says.
The memo also says campaign headquarters would not be distributing any opinion pieces for people other than Mr Albanese during the campaign, again “with a few limited exceptions”.
The memo was leaked to the Coalition and provided to NCA NewsWire.
It shows a sharp contrast to the strategy used by Bill Shorten in 2019, when constant media releases and announcements from MPs were sent out.
Finance Minister Simon Birmingham accused Labor of trying to dodge scrutiny by limiting information sent out before the election.
“This is a hypocritical attempt by Labor to dodge scrutiny,” Mr Birmingham said.
“Labor’s small target strategy is already hiding detailed policies or plans from the Australian people and it’s now clear that they want to hide their shadow ministers, too.“It is becoming clearer and clearer that Anthony Albanese wants to cruise through this election campaign without any accountability or transparency.
“This appears to be a sign that Anthony Albanese doesn’t trust his frontbench, who have already called out weaknesses in his aged care promises and exposed the potential for higher taxes under Labor.
“How are Australians expected to decide if Labor’s frontbenchers are up to the job of being Ministers if they are being censored?”
It has been confirmed the Coalition plans to distribute speeches, provide transcripts and continue to send out media releases as they always have during the campaign.
The Labor memo acknowledges “this will be a very different way of operating for you and your teams, so (we) thank you in advance for your co-operation”.
“The new way of working is important to ensure that CHQ comms is able to focus on the most important task – helping win the election – and that we are all focused on that goal”.
It tells people that all interviews and press conferences must be approved first by the campaign headquarters.
The memo says that insteadxjmtzyw of providing transcripts to the press, they could instead clip the best part of their stand up and post it on social media.
After Mr Shorten’s crushing loss to Scott Morrison last election, a post-mortem of the campaign found Labor did not craft a simple narrative that unified its many policies as among the reasons for what went wrong.
Labor has been contacted for comment.
