The Prime Minister, Malcolm Turnbull, is supposedly a bit of a digital whiz kid au fait with all the wonders of modern technology and its promise to make us more agile.
On his government’s digital track record – the Census disaster, losing the head of his digital transformation unit shortly after he started and now the Centrelink problems – one has to wonder whether the Turnbull expertise is actually as great as promised or whether he simply hasn’t managed to convey the message to his Cabinet.
The blog is sympathetic to anything which aids communication which raises awareness of climate change and combats the work of the climate denialists – particularly given how so many of them will be part of the Trump administration.
But sometimes the blog wonders if some progressives are not their own worst enemies. Earlier this month Alex Evans – a climate activist and former advisor to the UN and the British Government – published a book (The Myth Gap) which seeks to explain why much progressive climate change communication has failed and what can be done about it. The blog became aware of it, fittingly, from the The Economist’s religion blog Erasmus. By the way the historical Erasmus is one of the blog’s great heroes. When everybody else was busy trying to send their opponents to the stake Erasmus was the voice of reason and moderation – indeed so much so that it is a bit surprising he didn’t get sent to the stake himself.
The blog, like most other people, has lots of good intentions which often don’t amount to much. The most persistent is buying books and putting them aside for later. Sometimes it is years before the blog gets around to them and sometimes they are still sitting on shelves.
The Umberto Eco principle is also useful. Eco had a massive library and was always being asked by visitors: “have you read them all?” Well no bibliophile ever has – partly because they will be buying books without making actuarial calculations – and partly, as Eco explained, because the bibliophile has generally looked at the books, knows what’s in them in general terms and sometimes picks them off the shelf to look something up. But the bibliophile also has the pleasure of taking up a work some years after the initial fuss about it has died down.
The former Supreme Court Justice, Frank Vincent QC AO, has achieved much in a distinguished career at the Bar, as a judge, Patron of the excellent Western Chances charity and in the fields of probation and domestic violence and many other fields.
But above all else he is known in Port Melbourne as a son of Port, the son of a family who worked and lived in Port before it became fashionable and very expensive. His father was a waterside worker and he has had a long association with maritime industrial matters.
In all the post-Trump analysis the most consistent feature has been the emphasis on the ‘post-truth’ phenomenon and the decline of the traditional media’s role.
Some interpretations have dated the post truth era from Karl Rove’s comments about how the Bush administration created its own reality and that while the traditional media was interpreting a new version the administration had moved on. Successive Republican apologists and apparatchiks continued to employ the tactic through the Iraqi disaster (it wold have all been okay if Obama hadn’t withdrawn troops) and the GFC (all caused by forcing otherwise responsible banks to lend to poor people for homes). Needless to say these ‘realities’ were echoed by the Republicans’ Australian epigones such as Alexander Downer and others.
The blog is taking a break for a while. Back after some maintenance –for the blog not the site – but in the meantime a few snippets.
Readers should check out the new book by Murdoch University’s Dr Kate Fitch. The book – Professionalizing public relations: History, gender and education – explores “the historical development of public relations in Australia in the second half of the twentieth century. It offers new insights into public relations history with a focus on the changing relationship between women and public relations, the institutionalization of public relations education, and the significance of globalization in Australia in the second half of the twentieth century. Drawing on archival and interview research, it challenges common misconceptions around the origins of Australian public relations and women’s early contributions and careers,” Kate says.
The Australian Bureau of Statistics paid a PR company $395,000, according to Mumbrella, to create and implement a media and PR strategy for the recent Census. They also paid an ad agency $2.8 million to create the advertising campaign. Yet an FOI request revealed the government had no crisis communications plan.
On October 22 2004 Bangerang elder Uncle Wally Cooper provided the catering for an RACV planting day at Lake Mokoan in Victoria – now the Winton Wetlands. The blog knows this because a remarkable man painted the scene and has included it in an illustrated pamphlet, Caring for Country: One person’s thoughts.
The stark contrast between Australian Army PR strategies and those of the Australian Border Control approach has been highlighted in two journal articles – one by a serving Australian Army Military Public Affairs officer, Lieutenant Colonel Jason Logue, and the other by a University of Newcastle academic, Leicha Stewart.
We hear a lot about bubbles, post truth and so on – all important in their way – but obscuring a larger puzzle: are the right wing media leading or following their audiences?
The puzzle was highlighted by a recent New York Times article on what it termed the ‘civil war’ among the right wing commentariat. The article by Robert Draper (September 29) highlighted the problems confronted by a right wing media activist and a key Tea Party player, Erick Erickson, who opposed Trump then lost 30,000 subscribers, was maligned by other conservative commentators and received numerous death threats.