The ALP and me – a slice of personal history

On page two of today’s Australian Financial Review is this statement:

JACKSON WELLS MORRIS

An article on page 17 on August 24, ‘Contractors lobby for regulator’, referred to the PR company Jackson Wells Morris. The AFR accepts that Jackson Wells Morris are not spin doctors for the Liberal party and that it is a long-standing company policy not to work for any political party.

The AFR also accepts that JWM did not write a report that aimed to persuade Labor to keep the building industry regulator. The client’s requirement was for an honest and unbiased view of industry opinion, which was provided.

There’s a back story to the strength of my feelings about my company being falsely characterised, by a piece of lazy journalism, as a Liberal Party puppet and a skewer of research. And here it is.

In 1971 the late Tom Burns, then general secretary of the Labor Party in Queensland, visited Bougainville with a Federal Parliamentary delegation, which included Paul Keating, not long elected to the House of Representatives.

I had wanted to join the ALP for some time, but wasn’t sure how to go about it. There were no party branches in PNG and, indeed, even to inquire amongst my Administration colleagues – many of whom made Genghis Khan look like Milly Molly Mandy - seemed to me a risk not worth taking. As station manager and news editor at Radio Bougainville, however, I was able to be with the delegation during its visit and seized the opportunity to ask Burns how I could join the ALP. He duly enrolled me in the Queensland head office branch.

Thirty-six years later I am still a member. I’ve been a Federal candidate, conference delegate, electorate council president and campaign director. I don’t always agree with the party and was never enticed into joining a faction. But I stick with it because I regard the ALP as the party of real reform and I like its long suite in social concern. I also don’t approve of the decline in public morality in this country since the Howard government took office in 1996. To make that perfectly clear, I don’t like being deceived and lied to.

I’ve been out of the Labor Party a couple of times. In 1977, when I ran 2ARM-FM in Armidale my party membership conflicted with a local current affairs program I hosted and I stood aside. Then, in the eighties, when I represented the ABC in Canberra and spent a fair bit of my life fronting Parliamentary committees, I thought it would be unhelpful to the ABC to remain a party member, and stood aside then as well. But I always came back. I pick and I stick.

So when the Financial Review referred to my company as “Liberal Party spin doctors” and then sought to suggest we’d cooked a survey to bring pressure on the Labor Party, I choked on my muesli. Then I ensured my company applied the greatest pressure on the newspaper to correct the untruths.

The AFR didn’t want to play at first. A lot of people in the media don’t like to admit they get things wrong. They don't seem to understand the paradox that admitting error builds trust. But our complaint to the Press Council got the editor off his backside. And we got our correction. End of story.

Comments

[Keith Jackson]

From Amanda Meade's Media Diary, ‘The Australian’, Thursday 25 October:

Forced Fin apology

THE Australian Financial Review has been forced to apologise two months after an article appeared accusing PR company Jackson Wells Morris of being a spin doctor for the Liberals. The apology said the paper accepted that "it is a long-standing company policy not to work for any political party. The AFR also accepts that JWM did not write a report that aimed to persuade Labor to keep the building industry regulator. The client's requirement was for an honest and unbiased view of industry opinion, which was provided." Company director Keith Jackson said: "I ensured my company applied the greatest pressure on the newspaper to correct the untruths. The AFR didn't want to play at first. A lot of people in the media don't like to admit they get things wrong. They don't seem to understand the paradox that admitting errors builds trust. But our complaint to the Press Council got the editor off his backside. And we got our correction."