Wilkinson Group is a Sydney-based crisis communications consultancy advising CEOs, boards, and General Counsel across Australia. Led by Peter Wilkinson across 24 years of crisis and reputation management practice, the firm works with listed companies, financial services, professional services, resources, and not-for-profit organisations facing active crises, regulatory scrutiny, or reputational threats. Unlike a large crisis communications agency, clients get direct senior access, no account managers, no juniors.
Media calls are coming in. Employees want answers. The board is asking what happened. Social media is filling the silence. Every decision you make in the next 24 hours will be scrutinised by journalists, regulators, competitors, and the public. That’s the essence of what we call the golden hour of crisis response, the narrow window where the right decisions protect everything that follows.
This is not the moment to be working out your response from scratch.
Senior Crisis Communications Counsel, Australia
Wilkinson Group is one of Australia’s most experienced crisis communications consultancies, providing crisis management advisory alongside crisis PR counsel. We provide crisis PR and crisis communications advice to CEOs, internal PR, boards, and general counsel across Australia. Unlike a typical crisis PR agency in Australia, we don’t put a team between you and the adviser who pitched the work. We’re not a traditional firm: small and senior by design, so when you call, you work directly with experienced practitioners, not account managers or juniors.
Genuine crisis communications experience shows in specifics: a named track record across real incidents, a senior adviser who stays on the file from the first call to the last statement, and a model built for immediate response rather than business-hours support. Peter Wilkinson has practised crisis communications for 24 years, advising CEOs, boards, internal PR, and general counsel across corporate, government, and not-for-profit organisations in Australia. Crisis management is the related discipline covering containment and regulatory response.
We help leaders regain control, get ahead of the narrative, and make decisions that stand up to public, media, and legal scrutiny.
If you are searching for a crisis management firm, advisor, or consultancy, this is the service. For a dedicated crisis management consultant, see Crisis Management Consultant Australia.
The Crises We Handle
Wilkinson Group is typically called in for data breaches, media pile-ons, regulatory inquiries, product recalls, executive misconduct, and other events that threaten an organisation’s public standing. Over 24 years, Peter Wilkinson has advised boards through each of these, and more:
- Data breaches and cyber incidents: managing media, regulatory communications, and public response simultaneously.
- Media pile-ons and investigative journalism: when a story takes hold and coverage escalates.
- Regulatory inquiries and royal commissions: crisis PR counsel that works alongside your legal team.
- Product recalls and safety incidents: protecting consumer trust while meeting compliance obligations.
- Sexual abuse and harassment matters: using best practice, 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 is driving the campaign and what might defuse it.
- Extortion attempts: managing threats that cannot be made public while keeping the organisation safe.
- Executive misconduct: advising boards on disclosure, separation, and CEO reputation management when a leader’s personal conduct becomes the story.
How a Crisis Communications Consultant Works
A crisis communications retainer or program should include four non-negotiables: rapid, out-of-hours availability with a same-day response commitment; a consultant with direct experience in the specific type of crisis at hand; coordinated legal alignment from the outset; and honest counsel on what recovery actually requires, not just messaging. That is what separates a genuine crisis communications consultant from a standing PR team, and it’s how response times and capability compare across Australian PR agencies in practice. Four things define how we operate:
- Moves quickly: Available beyond business hours, crises escalate fast, driven by competitive media deadlines, social media, and reactive politicians. In practice, that means a same-day situation assessment and a holding statement within hours, not days. It’s why organisations look for a crisis communications consultant Australia can call at 11pm, not 9am, and at Wilkinson Group, that consultant is Peter Wilkinson himself, not a rostered on-call junior.
- Thinks clearly under pressure: Peter Wilkinson’s 30 years as a journalist inform how the firm reads media behaviour and anticipates story momentum. This typically means a media and regulator response plan drafted early, before coverage sets the narrative for you. It’s the judgement clients look for in a crisis PR agency Australia trusts to read a story before it breaks.
- Works with your legal team, not around them: Extensive experience aligning crisis communications with legal strategy and external lawyers. The result is coordinated drafting of public and regulatory statements, with legal sign-off built into the timeline, not added afterward. Clients looking for a crisis communications consultant Sydney or elsewhere in Australia get the same approach: Peter Wilkinson coordinating directly with your lawyers, not a junior relaying messages between two rooms.
- Tells you what you need to hear: Recovery often requires confronting, disciplined change, not just communications. This includes spokesperson briefing and Q&A preparation so leadership is ready to face difficult questions directly, not just issue a statement.
We prepare your spokespeople, not just your statements. A strong message means little if the person delivering it is unpractised under hostile questioning, which is why executive media training often runs alongside a live crisis response.
Why the First Response Matters Most
The first response matters most because it sets the narrative before anyone else can. Organisations that respond quickly, honestly, and with visible leadership recover faster and more completely than those that go quiet, minimise, or deflect.
A slow or evasive response does not buy time. It creates a second story, the cover-up, that is often more damaging than the original event. We cover this in more detail in The Golden Hour of Crisis Response, which looks specifically at what needs to happen in the first sixty minutes.
If this is happening to you right now, stop reading and contact Peter now
Peter Wilkinson takes the message and call personally, any hour. No account manager, no delay.
Why Choose Wilkinson Group Over a Crisis PR Agency?
Choosing between a specialist crisis PR agency and a full-service firm comes down to one test: who actually does the work when the crisis breaks, not who pitched it. Most crisis PR agencies operate on the same model: a senior partner pitches the business, and a team of account managers and juniors does the work. The senior person you met in the pitch is rarely the person in the room when the crisis breaks. Wilkinson Group is structured differently. Peter Wilkinson is the principal adviser on every engagement. This is not a crisis PR agency in the traditional sense. It is a senior crisis communications consultancy where continuity of advice, not headcount, is the point.
Whether the search is for a crisis management firm, a crisis management company, or a crisis PR agency, the underlying need is the same: senior counsel who moves fast and stays on file from start to finish. Wilkinson Group meets that need through a different model. There is no rotating team, and no account manager standing between the client and the adviser. Peter Wilkinson is that adviser, on every engagement, from the first call to the final statement.
Organisations searching for the right crisis PR consultant Australia can trust come to us because the situation demands experience, not process.
Crisis Communications and Reputation Management
A crisis does not exist in isolation from reputation. How an organisation handles a crisis becomes part of its reputation permanently. Wilkinson Group combines crisis communications expertise with long-term reputation management counsel, so a crisis response and the organisation’s broader reputation strategy always work in the same direction.
Crisis Preparedness
Crisis preparedness means tested protocols, briefed spokespeople, and a monitoring system in place before an issue reaches the media, not once it already has. The best crisis communications work happens before the crisis, which is why we also advise on issues management in Australia: identifying and managing emerging risks while there is still time to shape the outcome.
Trust in Australian business rose five points to 59 in the 2026 Edelman Trust Barometer, placing business alongside NGOs as Australia’s most trusted institution type, AICD [1]. That trust is earned before a crisis hits, not during one, which is why Wilkinson Group’s approach rests on Trust = Truth + Transparency + Traceability: nothing said under pressure holds up if it was not already true, transparent, and traceable to a source.
Wilkinson Group offers crisis preparedness through the Wilkinson Confidante retained advisory service, including crisis simulation, tested response protocols, and ongoing risk intelligence.
About Peter Wilkinson: Crisis Communications Consultant
Peter Wilkinson is one of Australia’s most experienced crisis communications consultants, based in Sydney and advising clients nationally. Read Peter’s full background here.
Frequently Asked Questions
Immediately. Peter Wilkinson is available 24/7. Call +61 414 383 433 directly.
Yes. Level 26/1 Bligh St, Sydney NSW 2000. We advise clients nationally across Australia. For Sydney-specific engagement details, see our Crisis Communications Consultant Sydney page.
Yes. Wilkinson Group has extensive experience working alongside senior counsel and external lawyers. Crisis communications and legal strategy must be aligned. We ensure they are.
We advise CEOs, boards, internal PR, and general counsel across all sectors: corporate, government, and not-for-profit. If the situation involves media, regulators, or reputational risk, we can help.
Crisis management is the operational and legal response to an incident: containment, remediation, and regulatory obligations. Crisis communications is the media, stakeholder, and reputational strategy that runs alongside it, shaping how the response is seen and understood. The two disciplines are related but distinct, and Wilkinson Group draws that line deliberately rather than treating them as interchangeable. For organisations that need dedicated crisis management consulting specifically, see our crisis management consultant page.
A crisis management advisor is the senior counsel a board or CEO turns to before, during, and after a reputational event, managing the communications, stakeholder, and reputational layer of a crisis while working alongside legal counsel and regulators. At Wilkinson Group, that advisor is Peter Wilkinson himself on every engagement, not a rotating account team, drawing on 24 years advising CEOs, boards, and general counsel across Australia. For ongoing, retained advisory support, see Wilkinson Confidante.
Cost depends on scope: a single incident response, a retained advisory arrangement (see Wilkinson Confidante), or ongoing crisis preparedness work. Contact us directly for a scoped quote based on your situation.
Yes. Spokesperson briefing and Q&A preparation are built into our crisis response work, and we also run executive media training and crisis coaching outside of live incidents to build organisational readiness.
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