Crisis Communications Consultant Australia: Senior Advice When It Matters Most

A crisis doesn’t wait for your retainer to renew. It arrives in the first call from a journalist, and the next sixty minutes decide the next six months.

I’ve spent 24 years advising boards and CEOs through crisis communications, after three decades as an investigative journalist. You get me directly. No account team, no handovers.

Wilkinson Group delivers crisis communications Australia-wide through one senior adviser, not an account team. It is the crisis communications consultant Sydney turns to when a story moves fast. The same senior standard makes it the crisis communications consultant Australia relies on nationwide, including Melbourne and Brisbane.

“It was an unimaginably stressful time for our family and Peter’s counsel was a huge help to us and to our parents.”

Andrew and Mike Greste, brothers of journalist Peter Greste

In a crisis right now? Skip the reading. Contact Peter directly.

Wilkinson Group provides crisis communications services to CEOs, boards, general counsel and internal PR teams across Australia.

• Peter Wilkinson leads every engagement personally and is available 24/7. Engagements typically start within hours of the first call.
• Many crisis communications consultants work inside an agency account structure. Wilkinson Group has no account managers and no juniors: one senior adviser carries the file from the first call to the last.
• For crisis management, Sydney is home base. Wilkinson Group works from Level 26/1 Bligh St and advises clients nationally under the same senior model.
• Communications and legal strategy run on one timeline, coordinated with your counsel from the first hour.

In a crisis, the first hour decides the outcome. Every outlet, regulator and stakeholder forms a view from what happens in that window, and speed and judgement matter more than anything that follows.

Media calls come in waves, employees want answers, and the board wants a plan.

That window is the golden hour of crisis response: the period immediately after an organisation learns of a serious problem. Three things need to happen at once:

• Verify the facts before anything is said publicly.
• Brief the people who will speak for the organisation.
• Inform those who need to know before they read it elsewhere.

It’s not the moment to build your response from scratch.

Search for crisis communication services or a crisis communications firm and most results lead to the same model: a crisis communications agency where a senior name wins the work and an account team delivers it. Wilkinson Group works the other way. Peter Wilkinson takes the first call and stays on the file until the last.

Facing your first hour now? Call Peter directly on +61 414 383 433. He’s available 24/7.

Still comparing options? See our guide to choosing a crisis PR agency. If you need ongoing crisis management support rather than communications, a crisis management agency and a crisis management consultant cover related but distinct work. That page explains the difference.

Either way, the model doesn’t change: one senior adviser, not a rostered team. No account managers, no juniors, no rotating desk.

Wilkinson Group is regularly called for breaches, high-stakes regulatory inquiries, product recalls and media pile-ons, the crises that get worse the longer they’re left unmanaged. Over 24 years, Peter has advised individuals, corporations and boards through a full range of crisis incident types:

• Data breaches and cyber incidents: cyber crisis communications spanning media, regulatory, communications and litigation risk, responding simultaneously. In 2025, Australia recorded 1,205 notifiable data breaches, the highest annual total since the scheme began, according to the OAIC [1].
• Media pile-ons and investigative journalism: when a story turns hostile, crisis communications that work alongside your legal counsel and media obligations.
• Regulatory inquiries and royal commissions: protecting company trust while meeting disclosure obligations, an issues management discipline as much as a crisis one.
• Sexual abuse and harassment matters: navigating sensitive disclosures with care for victims and integrity of process.
• Industrial accidents, fires, explosions, fatalities: crisis communications in the immediate aftermath and the long recovery.
• Activist pressure and campaigns: understanding what’s driving the campaign and what might defuse it.
• Executive misconduct: advising boards on disclosure, separation, and CEO reputation management when a leader’s personal conduct becomes the story.
• Social media crisis and viral backlash: managing social media crisis before a single post becomes the defining story.

Outcome: Peter Greste was freed and deported from Egypt on 1 February 2015 [1], after a campaign run on a plan the Greste family designed with Peter Wilkinson.

Australian journalist Peter Greste was arrested in Egypt in December 2013, charged with terrorism-related offences and sentenced to seven years in prison.

His brothers, Andrew and Mike Greste, engaged Peter Wilkinson in late July 2014. He designed a plan with the family covering the media, the government (both political and the Department of Foreign Affairs) and the complex legal situation, and introduced two lawyers who joined the team.

“Peter was instrumental in helping us assemble a team and work with us to achieve success and get our brother released,” said Andrew and Mike Greste.

Outcome: community engagement and public relations campaigns delivered, with a timely response to issues raised.

Unity Mining was seeking to amend planning approvals at the Dargues Gold Mine in NSW. Its CEO described the project as emotionally and politically charged.

Peter Wilkinson and his team provided key advice, public relations input and support throughout.

“Their excellent guidance and execution enabled community engagement and public relations campaigns to be undertaken and a timely response to issues raised, particularly through the use of a variety of social media forums,” said Andrew McIlwain, former CEO, Unity Mining.

A crisis communications consultant advises an organisation on what to say, to whom and when. The operational and legal response runs alongside that advice, and the two have to move together.

The advice matters. So does the model behind it.

A PR crisis management retainer is only as good as that model. As the crisis communications consultant Sydney boards and CEOs call directly, Wilkinson Group guarantees four things:

• Out-of-hours access. You reach Peter Wilkinson directly, not a switchboard, and work starts within hours of the first call.
• A journalist’s read on the story. Peter’s 30 years as a journalist mean he sees where a story is heading before the media cycle does.
• Legal alignment. Messaging and legal strategy run on one timeline, so the two teams never undermine each other.
• Honest advice. Recovery takes disciplined change, not fewer difficult questions.

A traditional agency spreads your brief across account managers and juniors. Every handover costs time you don’t have. Wilkinson Group doesn’t hand over: Peter carries your file from the first call to the last.

For a crisis PR consultant Australia clients can call directly, the test is simple: who answers at 11pm on a weekend?

For crisis communications, Sydney is where a national story usually breaks first. Every hour spent deciding who to call is an hour the story is written without you. The cover-up, the inconsistent statement, the slow acknowledgement: second stories start in that gap.

Peter holds every statement to two standards:

• Trust = Truth + Transparency + Traceability.
• The 3Cs: Clear, Concise, Consistent.

Most spokespeople fail that test under pressure.

If you’re asking whether this is serious enough for senior advice, you already have your answer.