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’!

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: 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

Monday: 01 February

The opposition has made it clear - “NO ETS”.

So, in another classic example of political acrobatics, it would appear that Penny Wong has done a 180 on her choice of negotiating partners.

On the 22^nd of December last year… some 40 days ago, the Climate Change Minister ruled out negotiating with the Greens to get the ETS through.

And now it would appear those comments aren’t so fixed in stone after all…

Today, Penny Wong will meet with the Greens Deputy Leader to try and nut out a solution for the ETS.

I wonder what will come of it… - Will we see the Government committing to a 40% reduction by 2020 that the greens were touting last year?

Unlikely… but surely there will have to be a compromise… the question however is… What will it be….??

Friday: 08 January

16,500 delegates from 192 countries, 5,000 journos and 40,000 eco-campaigners amounting to over 40,500 tonnes of carbon dioxide, (roughly the same as the carbon emissions of Morocco in 2006). The organisers laid 900 kilometers of computer cable and 50,000 square miles of carpet. More than 200,000 meals were served and visitors busily sipped over 200,000 cups of coffee.

Australia sent 114 delegates to the conference (a few more than Britain’s 71 delegates).

114 people traveling to Copenhagen amounts to around 1817 tonnes of carbon emissions (or 2500 peoples annual emissions in Malawi… ouch!).

Thoughts? Comments?

Monday: 14 September

When we think social media for advocacy - we usually think Facebook, Myspace, Twitter… sometimes YouTube… but how often do we think of Flickr?

A picture can tell a thousand words - so why don’t we use them when we’ve got something to say that we want other people to listen to?

With mobile phones these days - we all have a camera handy, so it’s a perfect tool to capture the moments that help make our point.

Not to pass up on the behind the scenes stuff as well. People love seeing what goes on backstage (I guess its that big brother, voyeurism in all of us). Barrack Obama has been doing it since before he was elected. He now allows everyone to come inside the White House and travel on the road with him.

It gives people that insight to the person (or indeed to a cause) that they wouldn’t under normal circumstances get the opportunity to see. The setting up of an interview, a work in progress… it could really be anything. It allows people to connect on a different level than they would if they were simply being spoken to.

It really opens up a new avenue into online advocacy.

You can also ask people to upload photos that relate to the issue you are campaigning on. You can set up a Flickr group, adjust the privacy settings to whatever you are comfortable with and allow people to become part of the campaign by contributing.

The more people that contribute - the more it will naturally spread.

It’s a great tool that I’m sure will be tapped more and more. The possibilities, especially for politicians and specific advocacy groups is enormous and I’m sure we will see it being used more and more into the future.

What do you think? - Also - Check out the Bluegrass Flickr page!