The Productivity Commission is starting what will be the sixth major inquiry into aged care funding – a policy area which has become a no go area because of poor initial communications.

Probably the hardest job for a PR adviser – whether the client is a politician or a CEO – is to get them to mouth the phrases: ‘I don’t know’, ‘I was wrong’ and ‘I need to think about that’.

From the recent subtle shift in the mining sector’s anti-resource rent tax someone, somewhere deep in the mining lobby, has suddenly remembered the first anti-land rights campaigns.

Throughout Australia – and the world – there are hordes of PR people, think tanks, politicians and others who spend their days and nights thinking about the holy grail of PR: how to frame issues, events, products and ideas in ways which set the agenda for debate and action.

At the annual Victorian Women in PR lunch last week one of the speakers mentioned that Ashton Kutcher was the number one Twitterer in the world.

In Alan Bennett’s play The History Boys one of the characters says: “The best way to forget something is to commemorate it.” Nothing exemplifies that more than the way that Anzac Day commemoration has resulted in Australians either forgetting what they knew about Gallipoli, or never learning the truth.

What do Melbourne’s centre of pub music, The Tote, and Arthur Conan Doyle’s reference to the dog that didn’t bark have in common?

At the recent Adelaide Writers’ Week panel discussion on The Future of Quality Journalism there were two moments when the audience and the panel had remarkable experiences.

The UTS-Crikey analysis of PR influence on the media raises an issue of profound significance – when will journalists realise that PR influence is insignificant compared to other factors impacting on the media?

Back in January an acquaintance of mine got a gong. It was a very good gong and very well-deserved.