THE JACKSON WELLS REPORT

Jackson Wells' Bob Lawrence on Spin Doctors Thursday

Benjamin Haslem

Jackson Wells' Account Director Bob Lawrence (left) is making one of his regular appearances on ABC Radio Sydney's Spin Doctors segment this Thursday at 9.15am (11.15pm Wednesday GMT). If you're in Sydney tune in on 702AM or you can stream it. The Spin Doctors panel analyses the week’s best and worst spin in the media.

RailCorp fails issues management 101

Benjamin Haslem

This from Sydney's Daily Telegraph:

(A) furious chef, who regularly travels on the Blue Mountains line, hijacked a media conference at Central to unleash his wrath on acting chief executive Rob Mason, who was attempting to quell fears RailCorp was putting people's lives at risk through poor services.

RailCorp's media minders failed to follow a golden rule of issues and crisis management.

Where ever it's possible, you should hold a media conference dealing with a crisis as far away from the crisis as possible.

A case in point (other than the Telegraph story above) was the Exxon Valdez oil spill in Alaska in 1989.
Exxon handled its media relations from a site on the coast of Alaska. Here there were any number of angry fisherman, government officials and environmentalists to quote. The site was also incapable of handling the flood of journalists who arrived on the scene.

Anyone who travels on RailCorp's CityRail services in the morning peak knows it's in crisis. So holding a media conference anywhere on its network is fraught with danger.

Hat tip to Trevor Cook for this one.

A meaningless survey on alcohol abuse

BENJAMIN HASLEM

This breathless media release (complete with incorrect date) has been put out by the Alcohol Education & Rehabilitation Foundation:

New national market research reveals over 2.2 million Australians over the age of 14 experienced physical and/or verbal abuse during the recent December – January holiday period from someone under the influence of alcohol.

Really? And how did the AERF reach this startling conclusion?

An on-line survey.

The release doesn't explain where the link to the on-line survey was. However, such surveys are inherently problematic. Primarily because respondents are self selected. Therefore you get a highly skewed sample, with people with a gripe about alcohol and drunks more likely to take the survey.

This can be partly remedied, but still without great reliability, with on-line omnibus surveys covering a range of subjects but including one or two questions about alcohol. Perhaps a survey on spending habits covering mobile phones, clothes, entertainment and alcohol (including questions about abuse and booze).

Unfortunately, the release doesn't give a lot of detail of the on-line survey, other than there were 1,000 respondents. That's an awfully small (and unreliable) sample from which to extrapolate that 2.2 million Australians were subjects of abuse.

Finally, how do the respondents know the abuser was "under the influence of alcohol"? Did they breath-test them? Could they (abusers) have been mentally ill, under the influence of other drugs or just having a bad day?

Alcohol-related violence is a serious issue in Australia. Jackson Wells works with the Australian Hotels Association (NSW), whose members are acutely aware of the public expectation that they serve alcohol responsibly. The AHA (NSW) is a strong supporter of the State's tough Responsible Service of Alcohol laws.

The AHA is also aware of the importance of an evidentiary-based approach to policy making.

The AERF survey does not cut it as evidence. It's pretty poor hearsay. AERF needs quantitative research that will provide statistical validity and therefore reliability and credibility

Short of that, the media release should acknowledge the limitations of the 'research' and be structured to reflect these limitations, such as saying that the survey "suggests" not "reveals" conclusions. Otherwise it's just bad spin.

Not that the media is skeptical. News Limited's news.com.au ran the survey complete with the reporter's own spin: "Research commissioned by the advocacy group Alcohol Education and Rehabilitation (AER) Foundation shows Australia's culture of regular binge drinking is alive and well."

No it doesn't. There is no claim in the 'research' findings that the abusers had been binge drinking.

Unions NSW gets down, dirty & ugly

Keith Jackson

The headline said ‘Unions promise dirty anti-privatisation campaign’. Unions NSW – formerly known as the New South Wales Labour Council - had decided on a no-holds-barred challenge to the State Government’s plan to privatise the State’s electricity sector.

Unions NSW secretary John Robertson expressed confidence his campaign would force the Government to abandon the sell-off. "I think it is going to get quite nasty at some point," he said. "The longer it goes on, without a doubt, people are going to lose skin as part of this campaign."

Robertson also placed an advertisement in yesterday’s Australian Financial Review, warning companies to “tread warily” if they are considering an offer to provide legal and financial advice to the government about electricity privatisation.

And he ended the day with an ‘Asian scare’, puffing some cock and bull story about Chinese investors eyeing of a power station in NSW.

After the elegance of Greg Combet’s Federal asbestos compensation campaign and the clever Federal union pushback against WorkChoices, we get a crude local version: threats to innocent third parties, race-based scares, promises to dish dirt on political opponents. Not Trades Hall but Tammany Hall. Like a desperate PR company currying favour with a troubled client by throwing the ethical code out the window.

NSW Treasurer Michael Costa says the campaign will not change the Government’s mind. "Running One Nation-like campaigns about foreign ownership is extraordinary given [that] unions themselves are investing almost a third of their assets globally," he said. "It is a nonsense campaign and it's one that does a disservice to the people that are running it."

Michael Costa, for once, was being mild.

Extreme powers excessively exercised

Keith Jackson

There’s a disturbing report in today’s Sydney Morning Herald which tells of a bystander who, having observed a minor scuffle at a Melbourne building site, was kept incommunicado and interrogated for several hours by agents of the federal building industry watchdog, the Australian Building and Construction Commission.

The bystander, described by reporter Andrew West as “a mild-mannered academic from the University of Melbourne”, was walking past the site on the Yarra River when he witnessed a scuffle between a union official and a building manager. The two men pushed each other and grabbed at each other's shirts. The witness was tracked down and detained for some hours of secret questioning.

A commission spokeswoman said it was the first time a person not connected with a building company or a union had been subjected to these extraordinary powers. The law gives the commission the authority to question people - with or without a lawyer present - overriding the right to silence. Witnesses cannot reveal the contents of the interview, even to their spouses, and risk up to six months in jail if they breach the law.

These are disturbing powers in a democracy and it is even more disturbing that they were exercised in such a hostile and dictatorial way.

Earlier this year Jackson Wells was commissioned by the Australian Constructors Association to prepare a report on the impacts of recent changes in legislation affecting the building and construction industry. The report was released publicly in August. Among many other issues, it looked at how the industry regards the commission, which employs the agents who rode roughshod over the civil liberties of an innocent man strolling along the Yarra bank.

Overwhelmingly (35 to one), irrespective of the experiences they had, the people we talked with believed the establishment of the commission was an excellent initiative. A number had negative experiences but said these were outweighed by the benefits flowing from the Commission’s work. “They are needed,” said one respondent. “They are dealing with people who are prepared to use violence. It’s a bit like bringing the posse into town.”

But there was also a view that, worthwhile as it is, the commission can be overzealous. One person commented: “Hearings are secret. Some people are more frightened of the commission then they are of the union. Some commission staff are pretty scary.” Another said: “The commission is becoming aggressive like the unions used to be”.

In our report, based on the interviews we did, we offered a plan for improving the commission’s operations, which included these points:

▪   Improve the industry understanding of its agents. “They need employees who have a better understanding of the industry and of industrial matters”.

▪   Adopt a less aggressive approach. “They should be more conciliatory and less threatening”.

▪   Agents should be more visible. “They ought to be out and about on building sites more and be a more visible presence”.

▪          The commission needs to make an effort to communicate better. “They need some good PR. They are seen as heavies and the meetings are held in-camera. There’s some denial of some of the normal legal processes”.

Some good advice there – to which could be added the design of a training course in ‘Discretion, Moderation and Appropriate Behaviour’.

Sources:

‘Even bystanders feel building watchdog's bite’ by Andrew West, Sydney Morning Herald, 15 December 2007

‘Four Years On: A report on changes following reforms flowing from the Building & Construction Industry Royal Commission as observed by managers, superintendents and sub-contractors’ prepared by Jackson Wells Morris for the Australian Constructors Association, August 2007

Bali delegates make fools of themselves

Keith Jackson

The big guns – the people who make the decisions -  have now arrived in Bali for the United Nations climate summit. And, according to the ABC, the United Nations “agreed to hand the decision to the ministerial group when it meets later today”. Well, I beg your pardon, UN, but these are the people we elect to make these decisions for us. No one hands them that power except us. Certainly the UN doesn’t.

All this week the world has been subjected to a cacophony of near-hysterical ranting and denunciation, especially from the NGO delegates at Nusa Dua. At times the conference has looked more like a rock concert than a critical international dialogue. And it comes as no surprise that these people, as the ABC states, “have been unable to resolve a dispute over a UN proposal for developed countries to commit to short term emissions targets”. Quite simply, it’s not their job.

As of this moment, a number of Kyoto Protocol signatories - including Australia, Canada and Japan - will not commit to global cuts of emissions of up to 40 per cent by 2020. They confront a complex balance sheet: on one side, climate; on the other, economics. Both require calm consideration not precipitate action. Australia’s Rudd government is carefully studying the balance sheet. This is not diluting action on climate change. This is making sure that the action, when it happens, and it will happen soon, will be in the best interest of the globe in all its dimensions.

Will Rudd govt scrutinise Iraq spin?

Keith Jackson

In the current issue of New Statesman the UK government is challenged to come clean about the role spin doctors played in sexing-up the case for war in Iraq. Journalist Chris Ames reveals the government of Gordon Brown is suppressing many more crucial documents that were not disclosed to the Hutton Inquiry. “The possibility that the government may hold a further raft of undisclosed papers suggests that the dossier cover-up was even greater than previously realised,” writes Ames.

There is a strong connection here to the rather obscure reasoning – and the dubious spin - that took Australia into the war in Iraq, although the Howard government has since blamed its flawed intelligence on external providers, presumably in the US and UK. It might be conjectured that the new Rudd government could see fit at some point to more closely examine the rationale behind Australia’s involvement in the whole tawdry mess.

Source: New Statesman, ‘Spin doctors and the Iraq war’, Chris Ames, 3 December 2007

New liquor laws may cause hangover

Keith Jackson

I don’t want to use this column as a regular means of fighting our clients’ causes, but the Australian Hotels Association (NSW) is telling the truth when it says liquor law reform in NSW is being rushed through State Parliament with unseemly haste and is not getting the public scrutiny it deserves. Scrutiny that might ensure there isn’t an unnecessary social hangover.

The AHA supports a review of the Liquor Act but argues that the Bill, now before Parliament, needs proper consideration. “The news laws threaten an explosion of 4,000 new drinking venues for NSW. This is no longer a ‘small bars’ issue, it’s a ‘more bars’ issue,” says AHA President John Thorpe. “The new legislation is vague and unspecific. It’s full of holes. The bars are not the small bars the community was promised; they can be any size.

“This is not evolution of drinking in NSW, it’s a revolution and we don’t know where it will lead. These new laws need proper consideration by Parliament and community. They must not be rushed through Parliament.”

Mr Thorpe also says the new Liquor Act must be delivered equitably to ensure all operators face the same compliance regime covering opening hours, security, restrooms and amenities, and Responsible Service of Alcohol obligations.