Bluegrass Consulting: Blueblog

Tuesday: 08 February

So it took a little while to sort out, but we now know, Labor lost the 2010 election (72 seats to 73) but pulled off a win in the post election negotiations. Despite the ‘win’, 5 months later, Labor still look like losers. And the now infamous ‘Real Julia’ moment, Gillard’s apparent rejection of spin and a risk adverse campaign model, is to blame.

It was a catastrophic and painfully uncomfortable election campaign for Labor, ‘worst in history’ according to prominent Labor identity Graham ‘Richo’ Richardson, with both he and National Secretary Karl Bitar agreeing ‘Real Julia’ was a grave strategic error, in the top three mistakes of the election.

“Labor ran the worst campaign in history. No doubt about that. When Julia Gillard said this was the real Julia, no, this wasn’t a slip of the tongue. It was planned; it was thought to be clever. It wasn’t. It was just plain dumb.” (Graham Richardson)

A founding rule of spin is don’t declare what you are not. Such as Nixon’s famous I’m not a crook. As everyone then thinks, that’s exactly what you are.  In the same way, saying I am the ‘real Julia’, leads everyone to believe you ‘aren’t', or if you are now, you weren’t then. As Bitar said, “(it) was not really about a real Julia and a fake Julia. Unfortunately, that’s the way it came across”.

Statements of this nature, also feed the media beast, providing great material for headlines and analysis.  Mostly sceptical and unfavourable - to be expected.  You don’t have to look further than Four Corners’ first program for 2011, “The Real Julia?”, and this introductory statement “…one of the most remarkable moments was watching Julia Gillard as Prime Minister in an election campaign struggling to explain who she was, having to reassure us she was real, not manufactured”; to see this political hangover continues to hurt.

As this blog goes on to describe, the explanation for why ‘Real Julia’ failed and the consequent lesson for political communicators, is: be careful of saying what you are and aren’t. If you do, make sure you have an agenda, ‘the filling’, action and conviction, not just an empty statement.

Words just words

The strategic error was when Julia stood up and said I am real, but then failed to explain who that was, and what she stood for. “When a leader stands up and says this is who I am, this is about my leadership, they need to follow it up with action,” says online political blog, Pollytics.

Pollytics research shows how former PM, Kevin Rudd’s leadership went up with the Grech affair, because Rudd stood and said, ‘this is about my leadership - this is bullshit’ and went for the jugular. The result, he “destroyed Malcolm Turnbull and was unassailable until he couldn’t get his governance together.”

In comparison, Gillard stood and said ‘this is about my leadership, and I have nothing really to say about it’, the result, an election which delivered a weak government and a hung parliament.

The conviction politician

Till this day we are still asking who is Julia? We know she’s a former lawyer, considered one of ‘Australia’s foremost Parliamentary debaters’, she cares about education and “came into politics predominantly to make a difference to opportunity questions“.

One ‘opportunity question’ is industrial relations, and her work in rolling back Work Choices was well executed; but she remains opposed to other ‘opportunity issues’ i.e. same sex marriage, preferring to sit on the fence, proving more ‘consummate politician’ then thinking, feeling, real. She believes in climate change, but established a “Citizen’s Assembly” to consider it, and she’s a republican but won’t lead on the issue.

In the end, much of this debate comes back to an already familiar political notion, that of the ‘conviction politician‘. John Howard is most famous for embodying this. How often did we hear everyday voters say, ‘even if you hated him, at least you knew what he stood for’.

Policy by polling

As outlined in post 1 of this series, the reliance and often incorrect reading of polling, is causing all sorts of problems for politicians, and has seen the apparent end of the conviction politican. As the article ‘Who are you Julia‘ says: “It’s hard to escape the conclusion that if Julia Gillard has an ideology, it comes from the Labor party’s market research company. The ambivalent feelings she publically presents….reflect the mixed feelings through the community”.

Surely, being the country’s ‘leader’ can’t simply mean ‘following’ the people. Conviction, real or fake, is essential for a politician.  As illustrated by an adviser’s comment to the former leader of the National Party New Zealand; “the secret to success is sincerity and conviction. Once you can fake that, you’ve got it made”.

Summary - the future is Bligh

The first blog on this topic, written prior to the election, focussed on the need to evolve the art of spinning, believing it increasingly out of date, so much so it could lose Labor the election.  It looked at Gillard’s public rejection of this ‘traditional campaign model’ including ‘real Julia’, and posed whether this would work.

In finalising this series, we recognise attempts being made to evolve spinning techniques, to strive for honest communication, i.e. ‘Real Julia’. But when only half thoughts, lacking action and content (essential to effective political communication) they fail. Proving in the end, to still be spin. And worst still, ineffective spin which backfires.  Gillard need heed the advice of this cricket fan, “bowl straight at the wicket. Don’t try any fancy tricks.”

However, not all is lost! In recent weeks, we have witnessed political communication at its best. Some even call it a new template. It is indeed the evolution this blogger believes not only more integrious, and for those at-any-cost, hard head spinners, more effective.

According to David Penberthy, this new template is: “Based around honesty, decisiveness and plain speech. It’s been based around saying what government can do, and what it cannot do.” We speak of none other than Premier Anna Bligh, and her handling of the devastating floods in Queensland.

Social media was quickly followed by the mainstream in reporting the contrast between the two leaders in their ability to communicate appropriately throughout the disaster, boosting one’s leadership, and hurting another’s.

No prizes for picking the winner. Gillard, watch and learn. For ‘real’!

Thursday: 14 October

Part 3 of a 4 part series which uses Julia Gillard and the recent Federal Election to examine whether spin techniques developed for the 20^th century media model are now outdated and ineffective in the 21^st century.

This post picks up from previous discussions on how a lack of trust virtually makes political communication ineffective. It examines how ‘controlling the message’ is the essence of 20th century spin and the big mistake being made by communicators is thinking this remains the core of 21st century spinning.

Could social media help build trust?

Old spin controlled the government-citizen relationship by managing what went into the media, thus shaping the environment in which people made political choices.

The new media landscape, however, provides government the opportunity to cut out the media and talk to the citizen directly. This ‘voter-centred social networking’ was fundamental to Obama’s ability to win office.

The ‘corruption of communication’ encouraged these new forms of communication. Social media is defined as ‘media for social interaction’ and sees the creation and exchange of user-generated content, allowing citizen voices to be heard. By its very nature, it represents a greater equality in communication mediums, as opposed to mainstream media.

By choosing to engage in this space, government can be seen to be respecting the nature of the space, that every voice can be heard, and most definitively, that you don’t control it.  This inspires an authenticity that can also inspire trust.

From a purely strategic perspective, spinners should at least understand that social media offers a very effective way of more directly connecting with and influencing the constituency as well as building consensus through government-to-people, people-to-government and even people-to-people communication.

It may just be that a side effect to this 21^st century campaigning is that it also provides an opportunity for politicians to gain back the most valuable of political capital, trust. And, perhaps success in the new media space, may encourage new success as well as rejuvenated techniques in the traditional media space.

Social media in the 21^st century - what spin was for the 20^th century

Using social media in political campaigning is the most obvious sign spin is evolving to fit the media market of the 21^st century. Obama used these tools to help him win office, Clinton didn’t and lost.

Having taken that on board the Secretary of State is now such an advocate she is referred to as the “godmother of 21^st century statecraft”, the program at the forefront of the Administration’s moves to experiment with and adopt new ways to interact with the public including YouTube and text messaging.

See the U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton speaking about 21st century statecraft on YouTube here.

Gaining control means losing control

Maybe the ‘real Julia’ gets it, through her apparent rejection of the “very risk averse standard campaign model” in the midst of the recent election and her acknowledgment then, that “…people are right to worry that modern campaigning is too managed and too tightly scripted”.

Perhaps she also understands “the 21^st century is a really terrible time to be a control freak”, wise words spoken by Jared Cohen in the NY Times article Digital Diplomacy. Cohen along with Alec Ross heads up 21^st century statecraft.

Finally, I’ll finish with these wise words in the same NY Times article, where Clay Shirky, a New York University professor says on the issue of whether or not politicians should engage in social media: “the loss of control you fear is already in the past. You do not actually control the message, and if you believe you control the message, it merely means you no longer understand what is going on.”

The final and fourth post will examine Ms Gillard’s apparent rejection of the “very risk adverse standard campaign model” in the context of the election result.

Ruci Fixter

Friday: 10 September

After endless negotiations Julia Gillard has finally been elected Australian Prime Minister. The Australian political ocean is apparently calm, but for how long?

The answer to this question may be partially found depending on whether Australian politicians are going to remember two important outcomes of the elections.

The fortunate memory loss illness of politicians

Even if it is common knowledge that politicians do not always keep their promises, they should at least try to keep their most important ones.

For instance, in his 2007 campaign, Kevin Rudd promised that he would lead a strong green policy. However, after his election, the promised policy turned out to be a real failure.

If politicians may suffer from chronic memory loss in post-election periods, voters do not and end up making politicians pay for their fortunate lack of memory.

This is surely what happened during the last election and probably represents one of the main reasons why the Labor lost so many votes. Indeed, a 2.1% national swing occurred during the previous elections. To drive a point home, a poll by the Climate Institute since the August 21 election revealed that nearly 33% of Green voters acknowledged that their vote would have gone to the Labor if it had not postponed its emissions trading scheme.

By not keeping its promise, the Labor clearly shot itself in the foot. Unfortunately, it was not the only time.

Politics’ inherent gangrene: ego and power

Indeed, Julia Gillard’s “coup” in becoming Prime Minister last June was the testimony of major conflicts within the Labor Party. The existence of internal conflicts was confirmed during the negotiations period when a former national president described the atmosphere in the Labor Party as “poisonous”, and calling for the eviction of national secretary Karl Bitar.

If this situation appears to be somewhat pathetic, the Australian Labor Party does not seem to be an exception in the international political landscape. The French Socialist Party also suffered from this inherent gangrene: overblown egos and too big an addiction to power accounted for its defeat at the presidential election in 2007. However, it seems that in anticipation of the next French presidential election leaders of the party have learnt their lesson and appear more united than ever.

Ultimately, these two issues have always existed; Australian elections are just the latest example of an always more bitter reality.

The novelty is that the media - sensational ego-makers, but also breakers - are nowadays a mirror to the dark side of politics and stress how unkept promises and over-inflated egos regularly occur in democracies. This is highly worrying because the more the mirror reflects reality, the more it weakens democracy.

Arnaud Eard

Arnaud comes from Paris and gained a MA in International Political Economy at the University of Sheffield. He has been interning at Bluegrass Consulting since May 2010.

Tuesday: 24 August

In an ideal world, politicians would hold strong and sincere convictions and would debate on concrete issues aiming at improving the life of citizens. In this world, politicians would strive to raise public awareness rather than to sustain ignorance.

Given the way both the Australian Prime Minister Julia Gillard and French President Nicolas Sarkozy have been dealing with the issue of immigration, if this world existed it was a long, long time ago.

In the recent elections, Prime Minister Julia Gillard decided to distinguish herself from her predecessor by shifting from a “big Australia” to a “sustainable Australia”. So far this kind of strategy is understandable: as a newly designated Prime Minister and with little time to convince, it is quite normal that she should try to differentiate her policy from her predecessor’s.

It is however more questionable that she should clearly link immigration policy and population policy, which is a dangerous shortcut that could be harmful to Australia in the long-term.

It does not matter whether it shows opportunism on behalf of the Labor candidate and whether both skilled and unskilled immigration have played their part, in particular in the country’s growth. The shift from a “big Australia” to a “sustainable Australia”, which is backed by almost 75% of Australians, appeared positive to Julia Gillard’s election.

On the other hand, after President Sarkozy’s popularity plumbed the depths in July 2010 (26% of favourable opinion), he gave a very strong speech in Grenoble on 30 July 2010 where he declared nothing less than a “war on crime”, forgetting that the age of prohibition is long gone. In his speech the French President promised legislative reforms to withdraw the French nationality from non-natives criminals.

This unfortunately sounds like Sarkozy’s favourite remedy to unpopular polls; he indeed gave similar speeches on security when he was Interior Minister in order to increase his popularity as a potential candidate for presidency.

Once again, this very negative strategy seems to be working as a poll of 6 August 2010 stresses that 70% of polled agreed with the president in regard to the withdrawal of the French nationality for some non-native criminals when the life of a policeman is threatened.

Apart from being populist and xenophobic, this is just another step in the escalation of a government where the current Interior Minister was condemned after he professed racial insult and where French police imposed brutal treatment of immigrants.

In the end, while Prime Minister Gillard’s communication has not been as ambivalent as Sarkozy’s, the goal remains the same: winning elections. It is a shame that political figures devote more time to discussing sensitive issues in a populist manner rather than engaging in open and constructive debate on what are important issues at many levels. While it is clearly a good means to their end it definitely does not heighten politics.

Arnaud Eard

Arnaud comes from Paris and gained a MA in International Political Economy at the University of Sheffield. He has been interning at Bluegrass Consulting since May 2010.

Tuesday: 17 August

This is part 2 of a 4 part series which uses Julia Gillard and the current Federal Election to examine whether spin techniques effectively developed for the 20^th century media model are now outdated and ineffective in the 21^st century.

Gillard’s declaration she’s “going to discard all of that campaign advice and professional or common wisdom and just go for it” (in regard to “risk averse” election campaign communication) highlights the fact that old spin (controlling information by restricting journalist access, staying ‘on message’, an over-supply of information {e.g. renouncements of announcements} and over emphasising the positive) hasn’t been working.

These spinning techniques, which 10 to 20 years ago were largely a hidden and unknown art, are now a notion so familiar to the public, they no longer work. The extensive criticism and coverage of the much overused ‘moving forward’ slogan is just one example of that.

In addition, Channel 7 reporting political news, with the by-line, ‘cutting through the spin’, is another example of how widely spin it is now ‘accepted’.

You can’t be tricked when you know the tricks.

Nothing new in blaming the media

Much has been written on the role of the media in the challenge for straight forward authentic communication. The 24 hour media cycle, the demand for ‘new’ news, means journalists fail to properly cover policy due to a lack of time, and as Bernard Keane also points out, a lack of specialist skills: “The result is too much cynicism and not enough scepticism.”

Despite politicians and their advisers knowing the media is likely to misrepresent them, “gratifying them” remains the “primary purpose of the professional politician (who acquire) a crippling self-enfeeblement driven by their dependence…”

Keane also explains, and as we all know, it’s in the media’s interest for politics to remain in a “permanent cycle of spin, conflict and commentary, while actual problems are never resolved”. Good news doesn’t sell papers and conflict is essential to a ‘good’ news story.

But this is something spinners have known for a long time! That we haven’t found better ways of dealing with this is positively amateur.

Worse still…we have a major trust deficit

Spin can be defined as a type of propaganda, providing an interpretation of an event or issue to persuade public opinion in favor or against. It is between the two World Wars that spin was really pioneered, with Joseph Goebbels using it to great effect for the Nazis. Post war America refined his approach, with Eisenhower’s Republicans bringing professional propagandists into their inner circle for the first time, ensuring a decisive win.

Later, Bill Clinton and chief spinner James Carvelle mentored Tony Blair and Peter Mandelson/Alastair Campbell as they reinvented the Labour Party. And it is perhaps with Blair that we saw the beginning of the decline of 20^th century spin. Alastair Campbell, Blair’s former Press Secretary, while still in that role, spoke publically of how this new communication had become a hindrance to good government and had cost them dearly in terms of trust.

“We did make a concerted effort to get a better dialogue with some parts of the media…this was of course about reaching their readers. …but therein lay the seeds of spin. The consequences were greater than we anticipated. People stopped trusting what we had to say.”

A lack of trust virtually makes spin ineffective, as can be seen in the 2005 UK general election. The Government thought services were improving in heath and education. Polling showed the public also thought their schools and hospitals were improving. But they also thought they were lucky and that nationally things were getting worse.

They discounted their own personal experience because it was in agreement with the government line, and they were almost programmed to disbelieve anything the government said. (This example was found in Ivor Gaber’s paper Too much of a good thing: the ‘problem ‘of political communications in a mass media democracy)

Post 1 in this series began to examine the PR spin techniques of the NSW ALP Right and their role in the current campaign, as well as whether the declaration of the ‘Real Julia’ was actually just part of the strategy and part of managing perceptions around Australia’s first female leader and the way in which she took power. It concluded by questioning whether publicly rejecting the”very risk averse standard campaign model” was just more spin…

Post 3 will examine whether social media can help build trust and how the future of spinning lies in losing control. The final and fourth post will examine Ms Gillard’s apparent rejection of the “very risk averse standard campaign model” in the context of the election result.

Ruci Fixter

Thursday: 08 July

If ever a social and political issue was so completely driven by the power of imagery as opposed to fact - it is that of ‘boat people’.  We are manipulated and cajoled by a potent combination of pictures, fear laden political catch phrases and an absence of hard facts.

Most of us have heard it at some point - boat people are only a tiny fraction of the ‘illegal immigrants’ coming to our country. In fact virtually all come by plane. Every day, at least 13 asylum-seekers penetrate our borders through airports, by using traditional visa options, a hefty 30 times those who come by boat, according to this report. Furthermore, Amnesty research shows that 96.6 per cent arrived by airplane whilst only 3.4 per cent by boat.

But still the arrival of a new boat and its passengers, its picture sprayed across the front pages of our newspapers and TVs, spells such panic that it dominates the national agenda, the national conscience and national elections, time and time again.

Perhaps the sophisticated nature of aeronautical transport and an established gateway - compared with leaky boats and unwashed passengers - makes one group look safe and the other not? Or perhaps it’s simply because those using our airports, coming in one by one, elude that potent ‘group photo’ that gets everyone so flustered.

Boat people, according to Tony Abbott, pose a threat to “keeping our borders secure and our country safe” . I wonder, how exactly is our safety being jeopardised by boat people and not plane people? In fact, the research says plane people are much less likely to be genuine refugees, only about 40-60 per cent compared with 85-90 per cent of boat people.

Is Abbott piggy-backing off the fear still simmering from Howard’s political opportunistic legacy of ‘children overboard’, and the oh so loose and intangible connection between terrorism, Muslims and boat people?

And whereas boat people are detained while their claims are processed, plane people live in the community and are allowed to work; a Rudd Government initiative. Where is the fairness there?

The truth is, having boats rock up on our shores is not a ‘good look’ politically. It looks like we have no control, when in truth the evidence shows we have far less ‘border control’ through our airports.

Julia Gillard, whilst also guilty of cleverly ‘handling’ this political hot potato, deserves credit for being the first of recent Prime Ministers to point out the real numbers, saying “…the number of asylum seekers arriving by boat is very, very minor. It is less than 1.5 per cent of permanent migrants each year; and indeed it would take about 20 years to fill the MCG…”

So, despite my initial thoughts, she doesn’t seem to be swinging as hard to the Right as may have first appeared.

This can also be seen through her acceptance of the ‘push’ vs. ‘pull’ factor as to what drives the number of boats. “It has less to do with what we do here and more to do with the conditions people are escaping - like war, genocide, imprisonment without trial, torture…” Read here for some interesting research on push/pull factors.

Finally Gillard’s key policy plank that has media headlines pointing to Howard’s Pacific Solution, although scant on detail, is not really like the previous government’s ’solution’ at all. As explained by credible political blog Pollytics.com:

“The creation of a well resourced, properly administered regional refugee processing centre that has UNHCR participation, regional government cooperation, a fair, efficient and consistent refugee status determination process, clearly defined legal rights for appeal and, most importantly, a well functioning resettlement program…was one of the most important long standing goals of most refugee organisations in Australia.”

The post goes on to explain that the Pacific Solution was canned by refugee organisations - because it was exactly none of these things.” It’s also why comparisons between the Pacific Solution and some possible East Timor solution are pretty superficial and lazy.”

Former Liberal Prime Minister Malcolm Fraser, a vocal, committed and harsh critic of the Pacific Solution and politicisation of refugees, agrees it is different and has given the plan “his provisional approval“.

If you want to see more on how this could actually work, and be a benefit rather than a burden to East Timor, check out some of the comments here.

In the meantime, as we wait to see Gillard flesh out the policy, let’s remember to not let the pictures of another boat make us panic, look at the stats, the facts, and remember last year Australia took only 0.6% of the world’s asylum seekers. We are after all just a little fish…in that big blue sea.  And if you still want to get upset, think of the planes.
Ruci Fixter