One Nation just won a by-election in what had been Labor heartland since 1989.
The Prime Minister’s response was to criticise the people who voted for it.
On 29 August, gym owner Luke Herdegen won the Secret Harbour by-election in Perth’s outer south with 39 per cent of the primary vote (at the time of writing). Labor’s candidate, Georgia Tree, managed 24 per cent. The two-party preferred swing against Labor was about 18 per cent. It’s seen as a protest vote against Labor’s performance.
Secret Harbour sits between Rockingham and Mandurah. Young families, tradies, miners, defence workers, mortgage holders. These are people Labor was built to represent. They left anyway.
Photo: Crikey
The response was the second failure
Less than 24 hours after the result, Anthony Albanese addressed the Queensland Labor conference. He did not use the moment to ask why voters had walked away. He described the party they chose as dangerous, divisive, and dishonest, and told the room Australia owed it to history to defeat One Nation.
That’s a verdict on the jury – the voters. Is that a wise communications strategy?
WA Premier Roger Cook was only marginally better. He acknowledged that Western Australians are doing it tough, then pivoted to praising Labor’s record on delivery, calling One Nation a party that deals in grievances. He urged the faithful to seize their emotions and fight harder.
Neither response addressed the deeper question: why do voters no longer trust us?
In crisis communications, the first rule is to listen before you speak. Both men spoke first.
The numbers don’t appear to be a by-election quirk
The Newspoll published today puts One Nation on 30 per cent nationally, ahead of Labor on 29 per cent and the Coalition on 19 per cent. That poll was conducted before the Secret Harbour result. The ballot box and the national survey point the same way.
Nearly 70 per cent of respondents, in an earlier poll, agreed that Australian politics is overdue for a big shake-up, and that the people who built the mess are not going to fix it.
Voters know what they are doing
The Author – Peter Wilkinson
The convenient explanation is that voters are being conned by One Nation. Albanese used that framing at the conference, accusing One Nation of bending facts and turning Australian against Australian. The alternative explanation, which no one on stage appeared to entertain, is that voters in Secret Harbour looked at their mortgage, their power bill, their grocery receipt, and the housing market their children may never enter, and made a rational decision.
The Edelman Trust Barometer tells the same story from a different angle. Sixty-two per cent of Australians, in an earlier poll, hold a moderate or high sense of grievance against government and business.
That is not a communications problem One Nation created. It is a trust deficit the major parties built, and One Nation filled the gap.
Two communication principles both leaders broke
Stephen Covey’s1989 bestseller The Seven Habits of Highly Effective People included two that apply here directly. ‘Seek First to Understand, Then be Understood’, and ‘Think Win-Win’.
Albanese and Cook failed with both. They are communication basics.
Understanding first means hearing a young couple in Secret Harbour explain that they have saved for six years and still cannot buy a house. The problem is not One Nation’s misinformation. The problem is Labor’s credibility.
In reputation management, win-lose never works against your own stakeholders. A CEO who treats a customer revolt as a battle to be won has already lost. The only viable response is to find the outcome where both sides gain something, which means understanding what the other side actually wants before you start talking.
Albanese told the conference that Australia was in good shape and on the right track. A family refinancing its mortgage would use different words.
My take? Trust = Truth + Transparency + Traceability. The truth is that a generation feels abandoned. The transparency is naming what went wrong. The traceability is commitments voters can measure, not spin they have heard before.
What would your board do if 18 per cent of your customers walked out, and the CEO’s first instinct was to call the competitor dangerous?
#crisiscommunication #reputationmanagement #constantlearning
Footnote:
Stephen Covey wrote one of the most widely read business books in 1989, The Seven Habits of Highly Effective People.
The first three address personal discipline:
1.
Be proactive – take responsibility for your response to events rather than blaming circumstances.
2.
Begin with the end in mind – define the outcome before you start the work.
3.
Put first things first – spend your time on what matters, not on what shouts loudest.
The next three address how you work with others:
4.
Think win-win – find the outcome where both sides gain something, or don’t do the deal.
5.
Seek first to understand, then to be understood – listen before you speak, especially under pressure.
6.
Synergise – combine different strengths to produce something neither party could alone.
The seventh stands alone as renewal:
7.
Sharpen the saw – invest continuously in your own capacity, or everything else degrades.
