Yeah, nah: Scott Morrison’s PR tries but fails to hide climate denial and inaction
Our climate-denying PM, politicians and journalists have learnt the wrong lessons from PR during this bushfire crisis. Belinda Noble and Annabelle Lukin explain why following a tried and tested PR plan instead of resorting to spin would have been a far better approach for Scott Morrison.
There are three, accepted golden rules when it comes to dealing with a reputational crisis: apologise a lot, make your statements about the victims, and outline your steps to ensure the mistake never happens again.
Being in an unknown overseas country while people were dying in the flames and then failing to acknowledge the extent of the bushfire crisis seriously damaged Prime Minister Scott Morrison’s standing. Since that initial outrage, he’s ‘pivoted’, acknowledging climate change exists, recognising the plight of victims and announcing measures to deal with the immediate emergency.
Unfortunately, every word, gesture, and intonation in his press conferences and interviews is still refracted through his climate denialism. No admission, therefore no apology. No reflection on past mistakes. No future plans. No way to make things right. From this position, there is no PR or spin that can get him to where the public needs him to be.
Scott Marsh’s mural ‘Merry Crisis’ in response to the PM’s Hawaiian holiday
Disaster? What Disaster?
The most obvious sign of Morrison’s communications failure was his inability to acknowledge the scale and significance of Australia’s bushfires. It’s hard to reduce an issue the size of a European country, but that hasn’t stopped him from trying.
‘Unprecedented’ is the word Australians wanted to hear – these fires and this catastrophe are unprecedented.
Morrison was neither willing nor able to use this word in relation to the fires. Instead he has applied it to himself and to his processes: “unprecedented deployment of the ADF”, “unprecedented funding”, “unprecedented role for the PM and the Government”.
In his denial of the extent of this crisis, Morrison has made his communications about himself. To the public, he still sounds like he did at the start. ‘What? It wasn’t me. I am not to blame. I wasn’t there. We were already doing everything we should have been doing.’
He has yet to move beyond this defensive position. The public don’t buy his spin, and consequently he is still fighting to convince the public that he is with them in this crisis.
Admission reduction not emission reduction
The Prime Minister has failed to contain the reputational damage so far, and he is now desperately trying to change tack, all while staying away from the key issue of a proper policy on climate change.
Australia needs to, kind of, do something, Morrison says, like “continue to begin to start to roll out initiatives” and “to continue to evolve our policy”.
But when repeatedly asked by David Speers on ABC’s Insiders whether he would actually reduce emissions, the Prime Minister answered with a misleading slogan that we would “meet and beat” our Paris targets in a “balanced” way.
Social Services Minister, Anne Rushton, side-stepped emissions reduction altogether. “I think we need to be addressing the real issues about how we mitigate against climate change and how we build resilience into our community,” she told the ABC.
The PR strategy is now to call for balance and to be measured.
As Australians face unprecedented – yes unprecedented – damage to our economy and ecology, and we witness the full force of the reality of climate change, words like “balance” are manifestly inadequate.
The strategy is admission reduction, while avoiding discussion of emissions reduction.
Complaining is unAustralian
Calling for people to shoosh up in the name of national unity has the added benefit of closing down any pesky questions such as, “What warnings did you receive before the bushfires?” and “Why didn’t you take the threats of climate change seriously?”
Energy Minister Angus Taylor patronises us and rewrites history in his letter to The Australian claiming our climate change efforts have been dinky-di: “Most Australians are proud of their country, and rightly so. Shrill cries that we should be ‘ashamed to be Australian’ do not ring true with the quiet Australians.”
The Australian also attempts to shut down outraged “elites” with: “We should not allow noise to deafen us to this opportunity for a serious conversation.”
The big lie
The big lie, perpetuated since the campaign against Kevin Rudd’s mining tax, is that transitioning to clean power and away from coal will cost the economy and our hip pockets. Most experts in the area, including Professor Ross Garnaut who predicted the bushfire crisis, argue the opposite. Failing to transition out of fossil fuels will cost us much more.
Scott Morrison declared, “I’m not going to put someone’s job at risk, a region’s, town’s future at risk, I’m not going to put up electricity prices to do it [reduce emissions], I’m not going to put a tax on them to do it.”
The Australian, apparently now the mouthpiece of the common man, said “The mainstream are worried about warming but they expect a prudent response alert to an inequitable burden of costs”.
Face facts
The unpopular truth about PR is that you’re only going to have a good reputation if your actions are truthful and ethical. You can’t spin your way out of trouble. And when you make mistakes that cost lives or livelihoods, you need to come clean.
Having been dragged back from Hawaii, Morrison had the perfect opportunity to use this tried and tested PR plan to re-position and lead from the front.
It is astonishing that instead of using this moment to show public humility, every PR trick he has tried has made his situation worse, and further removed him from the Australian public.
Quiet Australians are still waiting for their apology.
Belinda Noble (top) is the founder of BeNoble, a strategic communications agency, and founder of Comms4Climate. Annabelle Lukin (bottom) is an associate professor at Macquarie University’s department of linguistics
topics
Annabelle Lukin
Belinda Noble
bushfires
News Corp
opinion
PR
public relations
Scott Morrison
Spin
The Australian
Nailed it.
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Spot on.
This para:
“The unpopular truth about PR is that you’re only going to have a good reputation if your actions are truthful and ethical. You can’t spin your way out of trouble. And when you make mistakes that cost lives or livelihoods, you need to come clean.”
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Scomo –
A person in charge who leaves things to others when a difficult or emergency situation arises.
Shit was going really tits up at work this week so I Scomo’d off to a tropical island for some R&R and let someone else sort it out.
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When are the media going to stop going on about what a horrible prime minister we have – this is getting more and more like Trump every day. If you don’t like him don’t vote for him next time. He made a mistake going on holiday – he doesn’t believe in climate change, that’s his belief. Nothing to see here folks, time to move on.
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Dan,
The PM didn’t cause deaths, the fires did, he didn’t light the fires did he? Clearly he didn’t.
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He didn’t use the word unprecedented because unlike you he knows that on every single metric they weren’t unprecedented. The only unprecedented part of the fires was the hysteria of people like you.
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I’ve bled every word you wrote.
Thank you.
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Interesting topic.
And “spin” is the operative word because you get the feeling Shonky and Co. are revving really, really hard with all their sadly obvious PR tricks, but the wheel just keep spinning in the muck.
Exhibit K : It didn’t take long for his continued use of the moniker “Quiet Australians” to on the tired air of a man scrambling for ideas, if not an almost disturbing sinister pejorative bent.
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PS : If you want to see a spooky reflection of the Shonky mentality writ in black and white, watch (or rewatch) the movie PLEASANTVILLE. Although it could be argued that Australia is more like UNPLEASANTVILLE right now.
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Oh Kevin – sorry to interrupt your dialogue, but some of us did not vote for ScoMo in the first place.
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He ignored warnings and delayed action. His decisions cost lives, animals, environment and property. You don’t have to light the match to have responsibility.
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@Sarah Is that you, Rupert?
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No one cares who you voted for, the end result is the result.
If everyone that marched against ScoMo voted for the Greens/Labor the result would be very different, except that is not the case.
What we need to stop doing is ousting every prime minister early in their term and let the voting do the talking. We oust ScoMo and who do we have Dutton? Or we oust a PM every time we disagree with their actions? The revolving door will never stop and nothing will get done because no PM will serve long-enough of a term to enact any change they were voted in for.
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Sarah,
You’re wrong.
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Good one Duncan – I see you’re one of those people that’s on the wrong side of history. Enjoy that.
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I don’t think the billions of animals killed would agree with you on that!
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Matt, specifically what were the warnings and actions that he delayed that cost lives?
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Wow! So witty! You should put this on a sign at the next protest so you can really zing him! 😀
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