By Alexander Corne
Accountability almost appears to have become a dirty word in both government and within the ballooning public servant ranks.
Witness that in Victoria, triggering a death toll three times that of the road toll doesn’t stimulate real apology, or even an acceptance of responsibility, by anyone.
Yet, we, the citizens, are constantly bombarded by ‘public safety’ messages from government, reminding us of our ‘responsibilities and the fact that we need to be constantly monitored to ensure compliance with many and various rules. Funnily enough, no such campaigns trumpet the need for political accountability.
“Catching you before someone gets hurt,” the TAC billboard sternly threatens.
Seriously, how mind-bogglingly arrogant are these desk-driving wonks?
And why is the focus solely on road-related deaths?
Are the police and heroic emergency services personnel not also sick of scraping suicide victims off the roadway, or attending yet another distressing domestic violence scene.
Funny how you never see billboards accusing the populace in general of being inherently suicidal or intrinsically natured to beat the living daylights out of their family members. Although, in the latter case, some of the ‘public awareness’ campaigns have got perilously close to demonising all members of one gender.
Of course, it may have something to do with the measurability and predictability of vehicle-related offending.
Some bright spark created a notional maximum speed for each stretch of road and another sparkie ordered a speed measuring device, and, given that you need a driving license and are allowed a randomly determined 12 points leeway before being drummed off the road, it’s quite simple and profitable to allocate points and issue fines to those breaking the road rules.
It’s not so simple with more complex areas of personal and public behaviour.
For example, thus far, the protectors of the public haven’t tumbled to the concept of modifying the marriage license for regular Joes and Jolenes so that it comes with a built-in demerit system. But just imagine if they did …
Say you get another 12 points system. A few bitchy words in the morning would be worth a single demerit point and $50 fine. A slap is three points and $150, and so forth, right up to injury occasioning death being 12 points with an immediate loss of license and, deservedly, an extremely lengthy term of imprisonment.
This is not meant in any way to trivialise the scourge of domestic violence, which is abhorrent in all its forms, but to illustrate how problematic it is to apply broad brush, penalty driven ‘solutions’ to serious community issues. The frightening bit is that in 2021, with the increase of data gathering and routine surveillance, it would not require too much of an extension of government intrusion into daily life to make such a ludicrous proposition a reality.
Remember the CovidSafe App? No. Me neither, but there’s already a SmartSafe+ app that helps victims of domestic violence, so with a bit of tweaking and integration with a smart watch…
Such punitive approaches are far easier to sell to the masses than the much more difficult and longer-term educational, and structural issues that need to be dealt with. After all, if you’re not doing anything wrong, you have nothing to fear. Right?
So, we citizens are expected to be responsible and held to account, even continually monitored, for fear we let our base nature loose.
Imagine if the populace were to hold politicians to a similar level of account?
When you arise to the lofty levels of government, perhaps you deserve a license along with a 12-point demerit system? Inappropriate contact with interns is worth a single demerit point and a reduction in your re-election budget, an on-going office affair earns three points, while actual sexual assault gets you six to 12 demerit points.
Naturally, being merely accused of some heinous sexual activity, many decades before, while a teenage pratt and under the influence of alcohol, is a 12-point hanging offence, leading immediately to a lifetime ban from civil society.
And if so, what of ‘forgetting’ or being ‘not aware’ of vital information that leads to catastrophic outcomes. What punishment awaits those who can’t recall who instituted policies that lead to the death of 800 innocents?
Oh yeah, that’s pointless.
Because the deaths of 800 persons, in one state, in the course of one year, three to four times the State’s road toll, is not worthy of any state government action. No TV campaigns. No billboards. No demerit points. No accountability required at all.
Funny that. Not.
Business does not enjoy such immunity. Have a quick look at Victoria’s new Industrial Manslaughter laws, which, as it happens, came into force on 1 July 2020 (timing is everything).
Perhaps if politicians applied the same standard they expect of businesses to themselves we might see a return to a greater sense of accountability of our ruling classes and, dare I say, see them leading by example. Maybe that could reduce the need for the constant behavioural lecturing of the populace? One should not hold one’s breath.
From a business standpoint the responsibility is all yours. What’s more, given the level of formal and informal monitoring of everything your business says and does, you had better believe you will be held accountable. Being seen to be responsible and accountable is now an essential part of sustaining any business of even moderate size. Our political masters may shirk that responsibility, for now, but business can ill afford to.
RMK+A is experienced in developing and implementing actions that assist businesses in communicating their responsibility and accountability processes to key stakeholders and in managing issues emerging from events for which businesses may be held accountable.
Our – And Why Is That? – podcast hears from two former ambassadors on where we are with both Russia and ChinaSeptember 21, 2025 - 6:12 pm
You will be accountable, but we won’t.
By Alexander Corne
Accountability almost appears to have become a dirty word in both government and within the ballooning public servant ranks.
Witness that in Victoria, triggering a death toll three times that of the road toll doesn’t stimulate real apology, or even an acceptance of responsibility, by anyone.
Yet, we, the citizens, are constantly bombarded by ‘public safety’ messages from government, reminding us of our ‘responsibilities and the fact that we need to be constantly monitored to ensure compliance with many and various rules. Funnily enough, no such campaigns trumpet the need for political accountability.
“Catching you before someone gets hurt,” the TAC billboard sternly threatens.
Seriously, how mind-bogglingly arrogant are these desk-driving wonks?
And why is the focus solely on road-related deaths?
Are the police and heroic emergency services personnel not also sick of scraping suicide victims off the roadway, or attending yet another distressing domestic violence scene.
Funny how you never see billboards accusing the populace in general of being inherently suicidal or intrinsically natured to beat the living daylights out of their family members. Although, in the latter case, some of the ‘public awareness’ campaigns have got perilously close to demonising all members of one gender.
Of course, it may have something to do with the measurability and predictability of vehicle-related offending.
Some bright spark created a notional maximum speed for each stretch of road and another sparkie ordered a speed measuring device, and, given that you need a driving license and are allowed a randomly determined 12 points leeway before being drummed off the road, it’s quite simple and profitable to allocate points and issue fines to those breaking the road rules.
It’s not so simple with more complex areas of personal and public behaviour.
For example, thus far, the protectors of the public haven’t tumbled to the concept of modifying the marriage license for regular Joes and Jolenes so that it comes with a built-in demerit system. But just imagine if they did …
Say you get another 12 points system. A few bitchy words in the morning would be worth a single demerit point and $50 fine. A slap is three points and $150, and so forth, right up to injury occasioning death being 12 points with an immediate loss of license and, deservedly, an extremely lengthy term of imprisonment.
This is not meant in any way to trivialise the scourge of domestic violence, which is abhorrent in all its forms, but to illustrate how problematic it is to apply broad brush, penalty driven ‘solutions’ to serious community issues. The frightening bit is that in 2021, with the increase of data gathering and routine surveillance, it would not require too much of an extension of government intrusion into daily life to make such a ludicrous proposition a reality.
Remember the CovidSafe App? No. Me neither, but there’s already a SmartSafe+ app that helps victims of domestic violence, so with a bit of tweaking and integration with a smart watch…
Such punitive approaches are far easier to sell to the masses than the much more difficult and longer-term educational, and structural issues that need to be dealt with. After all, if you’re not doing anything wrong, you have nothing to fear. Right?
So, we citizens are expected to be responsible and held to account, even continually monitored, for fear we let our base nature loose.
Imagine if the populace were to hold politicians to a similar level of account?
When you arise to the lofty levels of government, perhaps you deserve a license along with a 12-point demerit system? Inappropriate contact with interns is worth a single demerit point and a reduction in your re-election budget, an on-going office affair earns three points, while actual sexual assault gets you six to 12 demerit points.
Naturally, being merely accused of some heinous sexual activity, many decades before, while a teenage pratt and under the influence of alcohol, is a 12-point hanging offence, leading immediately to a lifetime ban from civil society.
And if so, what of ‘forgetting’ or being ‘not aware’ of vital information that leads to catastrophic outcomes. What punishment awaits those who can’t recall who instituted policies that lead to the death of 800 innocents?
Oh yeah, that’s pointless.
Because the deaths of 800 persons, in one state, in the course of one year, three to four times the State’s road toll, is not worthy of any state government action. No TV campaigns. No billboards. No demerit points. No accountability required at all.
Funny that. Not.
Business does not enjoy such immunity. Have a quick look at Victoria’s new Industrial Manslaughter laws, which, as it happens, came into force on 1 July 2020 (timing is everything).
Perhaps if politicians applied the same standard they expect of businesses to themselves we might see a return to a greater sense of accountability of our ruling classes and, dare I say, see them leading by example. Maybe that could reduce the need for the constant behavioural lecturing of the populace? One should not hold one’s breath.
From a business standpoint the responsibility is all yours. What’s more, given the level of formal and informal monitoring of everything your business says and does, you had better believe you will be held accountable. Being seen to be responsible and accountable is now an essential part of sustaining any business of even moderate size. Our political masters may shirk that responsibility, for now, but business can ill afford to.
RMK+A is experienced in developing and implementing actions that assist businesses in communicating their responsibility and accountability processes to key stakeholders and in managing issues emerging from events for which businesses may be held accountable.
An Impossible Standard to Meet – or – Nobody Expects The Spanish Inquisition
By John Kananghinis
OK, fair cop. I did it.
Forty some years ago I may have broken some road rules and possibly even made an occasional comment that would, today, be considered sexist. I may even have said that something one of my fellow teenagers said, or did, was ‘totally gay, dude’.
Lucky for me there was no Twitter, or Faceplant or whatever the latest online platform for the terminally immature and narcissistic is. No mobile phones, not even faxes. There was Telex (if you remember that, you too are old) but it wasn’t really anything one could consider social media. The only social media we had was the pen and paper, and perhaps the school magazine.
So, I probably did it, but there is no record. Therefore, all good.
Not so fast. Someone else, who never liked me all that much, remembers me doing it (whatever it was) and they even have a journal, purportedly from that far distant time, that, for some unknown reason, they have kept and have conveniently just found. Coincidently, just as I’m about to announce that I would like to be the Victorian Opposition leader – well, someone has to do it.
That’s the end of that, then. No public life for me. Far to compromised and clearly of poor character. Afterall, under 18s should always be held accountable for their actions in later life. They should be perfectly aware that what they do, or say, as adolescents, will determine the course of their lives and their suitability for any position, let alone high political office, forever.
Clearly that is a ridiculous proposition. Or is it?
Forget the ongoing issues in this country, character assassination based on the behaviour of children has surely reached its apogee when the newly appointed editor of Teen Vogue, a 27-year-old black woman, is drummed out of her position on the basis of allegedly homophobic and racist slurs she Tweeted when all of 17. Oh, and also because she turned up to a teen fancy-dress party in a Native American consume.
Despite, 3 years ago, having apologised for the (rather mild) comments, the staff of Teen Vogue and two of its advertisers could not stomach the thought of working with this racist white supremacist, no, wait, she’s black, remember?
Anyway, she’s toast, on the scrap heap, far too much for the snowflakes to bear.
With biblical teaching no longer in vouge (sorry could not help that one) it’s no surprise that certain basic rules conveyed by such writings no longer apply, such as ‘Let anyone among you who is without sin be the first to throw a stone…’
I feel for the youth of today. They have no private space in which to grow up. To make mistakes, learn from them and mature. If current trends continue, they will be paying for their obsession with online existence for the rest of their lives. Can we cut the kids some slack and, for God’s sake, take the damn phones off them, for a while?
As they say in the classics, good luck with that.
RMK+A, sadly, has experience in addressing issues raised by employee’s past and present use of social media and can assist in navigating such perilous waters.
The rise of the echo chamber
By Alexander Corne
Social media and mobile devices provide unfettered access to a previously unfathomable array of views and information. Where our parents’ generation may have listened to one radio station and watched one of three or four TV channels, and typically had one newspaper delivered daily, our generation and that of our children’s is smothered by a proliferation of media choices.
Based in Melbourne I can read almost any newspaper in the free world, many of them for free (many of them translatable from tongues foreign to me at the touch of a button). With the right app on my phone I can listen to radio from across the world either live or as a curated podcast.
But with all this choice comes a headache. Where to look? What to listen to? What to believe?
Logically, media consumers gravitate towards what they believe to be true, what correlates with their political, ethical, moral or religious beliefs or pre-dispositions. Tune out what you don’t want to hear. You have choice, and the power to choose. So paradoxically while there is almost unlimited choice, the selection becomes narrower.
Where the newspaper of yesteryear would present a range of views, now you can select a media source that by-and-large reflects what you hold to be true. And that’s a problem. Because what if it isn’t true? But you just want or believe it to be true.
The next generation, deprived of this ability to assimilate a range of views is likely to become more polarised, more vociferously entrenched in their views, which is almost always not a good thing. If unexposed to competing views, how will they learn to distil information and rationalise it, to form an opinion based on facts rather than feelings?
At the granular individual level, millennials already routinely screen their incoming mobile calls. If they don’t recognise the number, they won’t answer. Fear of the unknown? Unable or unwilling to interact outside of their comfort zone or their digital friendship ‘tribe’? Incapable of communicating with a stranger? Ill-equipped to cognitively juggle unexpected ideas?
The incessant bombardment of the 20-minute news cycle is impossible to comprehend, parse or digest, so inevitably, the result is closing of the eyes and ears and pretending that everything that fails to fit a pre-determined tightly-controlled narrative is wrong or a threat.
With streaming services providing ad-free TV shows, uninterrupted by news or current affairs programmes, and what news that is consumed delivered by the now disgraced digital “platforms” – outed during the US elections as far more invasive and controlling of information than they had previously admitted – the route for a mix of balanced news to reach a broad populous is strangled.
The communications expert is charged with negotiating this information maze, cluttered with dead-ends and mis-directions that lead precisely nowhere, in order to deliver business messages that are vital to the ongoing health of the enterprise.
Comprehending the impact of a constantly moving media environment, uncovering the value and limiting the wastage is as much part of the role of today’s professional communicator as crafting the message. The fragmentation of the media has made that task challenging but the opportunity to connect with very specific audiences can offer significant rewards.
RMK+A constantly monitors the media environment and is skilled at connecting with target audiences to deliver business supportive messaging. The consultancy is also highly experienced at identifying and minimising wasted and counter productive communication.
Keeping an eye on fatal ‘optics’
By John Kananghinis
The demise of Christine Holgate at Australia Post should be a salutary lesson to all senior executives about the impact of ‘optics’ and understanding context.
Much has been written by business commentators about how hard done by she was and how the PM should not have hung her out to dry. I’m afraid that just demonstrates that they too don’t get it.
It is true that in the relative scheme of things the cost of the thank you watches was immaterial and it is also true that such rewards are not uncommon in the business world, particularly when a successful major project holds great opportunity for the organisation concerned. However, most businesses are either privately owned or owned by the shareholders. The key differentiator in the Holgate affair was that Aussie Post is a Government owned enterprise.
That is not to say that it is government funded. In fact generally it has earned a return for the government. But it is owned by the people of Australia. Not shareholders, not a foreign corporation not a small group of entrepreneurs, the people; you and I. As such the ‘optics’ of what can be interpreted as corporate largesse are very different. There is an expectation that the organisation should be serving the people, within reasonable commercial parameters, but not with the same freedom of a private/shareholder owned concern.
Ms Holgate’s incredulity at being questioned about the watches and her defence that it was not taxpayers money that was spent, even further cemented the view that she did not understand the public perception and expectation of the organisation she was running.
The public sees executives on near, or over, million dollar salaries, being further rewarded for ‘long hours’ and perceives such luxuries as a waste of their money. Money that would otherwise be available to provide better services or greater returns. They see luxury rewards being handed out for doing a job that the executives are already richly compensed for.
Failing to understand that context, by thinking that she was running a truly commercial organisation, and not getting the ‘optics’ was Ms Holgate’s undoing. The rest of the nonsense that followed, about hotels and limousines, was just the traditional media feeding frenzy once the blood was in the water.
The PM’s intervention, seen as reprehensible by some in the business media, was simply retail politics. He saw something that would not pass the much touted pub test and he used it to connect with the man and woman in the street. He effectively neutralised the opposition, who were attempting to provoke another instance of a perceived class warfare and anticipating, incorrectly, that he would let the matter run its course. Instead his political antenna were alert and he made a call that, politically, killed the matter on the spot. Let’s remember it was not he who orchestrated the gotcha moment in Senate Estimates, it was Labor’s Senator Kimberly Kitching. The take-down of ‘out of touch business elites’ is a non-denominational, gender neutral sport.
Understanding the public, political and media perception of a business and being aware of the ‘optics’, is a vital element of corporate communication and brand management.
RMK+Associates is highly experienced in helping organisations understand the appearance of their actions and words and crafting effective responses to emerging situations of risk.