Sentence:  ""What we are seeing is an orchestrated campaign from the Labor Party to try to <WSD>play the man and not the ball</WSD>," he said... "[And] this is the kind of personal attack that we are going to see from the Labor Party right up until polling day."" 
Meaning of the word marked with <WSD> tags:  To object to someone's argument by attacking them or a facet of their personality instead of the argument itself; to make an ad hominem attack.