The ALP has disproved the notion that oppositions don’t win elections, governments lose them, according to Tim Gartrell, National Secretary of the ALP.

Addressing the National Press Club in Canberra, Gartrell argued that Labor won the election campaign outright and that the election of Kevin Rudd as leader of the ALP exactly one year ago was when the momentum began.

Gartrell argued that “the momentum Labor built through 2007 was not confined to the return of one single group. It goes comprehensively deeper and wider than that. It was a wave that swept up Australians in almost every demographic – at either end of the spectrum and in the middle. The under 30s and the over 60s. Manual trades workers and the university educated. Mums at home and families with both parents working.”

Gartrell claimed a wide-ranging swing for the ALP: “This was self-evidently not a swing confined to narrow, sectional groups. This was a swing that on election day would deliver seats to Labor in Far North Queensland, on the Central Coast of New South Wales, in western Sydney and the suburbs of Brisbane and in John Howard’s own backyard – Bennelong.” [Read more…]