Yes, that's going, I'll just give you a wave every five can

just go, just go for it and see how we go. Yeah, okay.

Shambles beyond shambles. We're blaming you,

dear idea.

Okay,

Hi, and welcome to up the creek, where we look at how institutions and individuals found themselves up the proverbial and dissect their efforts to reach karma waters. I'm Ben Haslam and I'm Mark Forbes as Genos. We prompted resignations and royal commissions as China crisis consultants. We protect reputations when issues arise, and today we dissect the federal election result a series of corporate and media scandals where our former colleagues are out doing their bit, either good or bad, in the shocking IVs, IVF mix up, but, but, but first to that historic defeat for for Peter, Peter deduction that caught most by surprise in terms of scale. Yeah, I think so. I don't like to try and pick reduction results, but I did not see that coming. And I think a lot of soul searching now, particularly for the Liberal Party, the NATs didn't do that badly, but the Liberal Party, they've lost a swag of seats in right across metropolitan Australia,

and

there's going to be, obviously, a huge post mortem examination for them, yeah. Well, the lips have basically been wiped out in Melbourne. I think, I think at this stage, there's still some counting going on, but we're probably hearing this a few days after the recording. But, but, you know, they got they're going to be lucky to hold more than one seat in metropolitan Melbourne proper. It's the shocker. I think the other thing too is, I know the pollsters had had a shocker. The that they were, they were indicating that things might go Labor's way, but no one, with the notable exception, I think, of Redbridge, who say that Redbridge weren't too far off the money, yeah, yeah. And he was an old pro, a former a former RP secretary. They got it. They got it pretty close. But otherwise you have to ask some questions again about the accuracy, accuracy of polls. And I mean, the other thing, I think that it's we're seeing, is a dramatic change in the in the in the political landscape, that whole sense of being a two party system is, is is long gone. I mean, the greens house reps didn't do well. I've done okay in the Senate. But frankly, that independent Bush and the teal Bush is is growing. And what's interesting is it looks like once they get in, they're not shifting. I mean, in terms of reputation and brand, despite the mud that's been thrown at them. I mean, I think the only real winners, Well, aside from the big one, which is elbow, but the only the other real winners out of his campaign are the teals and the independents. Yeah. I mean, basically, now we've got a three way split. We've got roughly the two major parties are getting sort of between 30 and 35% of the primary vote, and then it's, sort of, it's split up between TEALS or community independence, whatever you want to call them. Obviously, you've also got one nation there. You've got the greens. You've got the what do they call the trumpet of parrots, I think is what Clive Palmer called his own party, who do actually very, very badly. Which probably suggests that sending out a text message at least once a day to every person in Australia may not have been quite the right approach. I'm sure that was heavy on people's minds as I went to the went to, went to the polling booths. It was like 24 million he spent. And he's got, he's got zip zilch back to show for a bit. I mean, maybe, I mean, maybe he sees some broader things in play for him here, and maybe thinks it's good for his rep. Maybe thinks history will turn around their way up. I still can't work out why he's pumping all that money into into into into farm election campaign. Yeah. So I think the challenge now for the Liberal Party is to try and find that, I suppose middle way

in the center there a lot of the I've got a theory that I have, other than just my own observations, I think there's one group of people in Australia which I belong to mark will make you an honor member. I think you're out by a year that no one seems to have really spoken about, and that's Gen X. And I think Gen X did actually have quite a big say in this election. Everyone talks about, obviously, you've got the Gen Zs, or Gen Zs with the youngies, and then you've got the boomers at the top, but Gen X in the middle. I've always said, I'm very lucky. I'm Gen X. It's the lucky generation. We were able to buy a house. The housing prices are going up. We're going to be the first generation that will have superannuation for all or most of our working lives. Home ownership. Some people will inherit a fair bit of money from their Boomer.

Parents, not everyone. Obviously, this is a massive generalization. They're 20% of the populations. They're roughly the same proportion as those other two generations I talked about, I think, and previously, those people, as they got into their 50s and 60s, they probably became a little bit more conservative. Some people say about Gen X is that the generation that doesn't want to grow up, and I think you see that with the TEALS. I think a lot of the Gen I'd like to know how many of the people who who would have normally voted liberal and have gone to the TEALS are actually Gen X. I don't know. I'd be interesting bit of research for someone to do, but I hasn't been mentioned. And I think that's an interesting yeah, I think it's a bit overshadowed by, overshadowed by the fact that that they clearly didn't, uh, alienated young people, the opposition, they women, fairly large group. Well, telling majority of the work from the home was, was a mistake, I think. I mean, the Liberal Party would have acknowledged it during the campaign. It was, it was a really big misstep, even the gas lobby. I mean, you'd think, given that they were going in there as a champions, what did Peter Dutton say? He was going to be the best friend the mining industry had ever had. They were championing fossil fuels, which is part of the reason for their for their nuclear power

debacle. But the gas lobby, you thought would have been amongst their biggest fans, until they came out with this surprise thing about you're going to have to, I think, reserve 20% of your guests, not send it overseas, but sell a check to Australians. And they just, they just hit the roof. It's hard to pick out who Dutton actually was trying to talk to. You've got that sense that,

that feeling that he was inside that own bubble, and it does come from very much from the conservative side of politics. The liberal party have really weeded out over over a series of years and elections, many of the leading we're more more socially progressive, and I think they were emboldened by the Trump victory, and saw that as a sign of a global shift to the right, when, in fact, what's happened, I think, once Trump's got in and he's letting sort of Elon Musk run rampant through through the through the halls of halls of power, and he's immediately turned on countries like Australia, hitting us with tariffs. People have gone, What? What? Yeah, I think. And I think, I mean, generally, there was a lot of instability there. I'll say one thing though, for labor, I think they've got to be careful about hubris here. I mean, the one of the reasons they've done well is because people, a lot of people who have been, you know, Vox popped about, why did you not vote Liberal? They've said, Well, I didn't really understand what they were offering me. I didn't understand what their policies were. I didn't really know what they stood for. I mean, we look at the experience, say, of Campbell Newman, we've seen parties win big landslides and be kicked out very quickly straight afterwards. I think labor has to remember that people have been struggling with cost of living. If, you know, if the other side gets there together,

you know that I think things could turn back the other way very, very quickly. I think, although gets that, I think that's the question, so does Jim Charles, I get that feeling it was a campaign disaster of biblical proportions, and they didn't quite have that signature moment of, you know, of John Hewson not being able to say how much the GST would be on the, on the, on the on the birthday cake.

But, but, but really? What did they do to cut through what in their one policy that gave them point of difference was was nuclear, and they ran away from talking about it the entire campaign, and they didn't go anywhere near any of the electrics where they told them they're going to dump a nuclear, a nuclear reactor as well. So they just looked disingenuous. They looked they looked risky, they looked out of touch. And I think, and the other thing I mean, this comes back to to our job as communicators, is if you want to be successful in communications, you got to have a really good strategy, and you've got to, you got to stick to it. And I if the coalition had a strategy, it wasn't very well refined or framed. And I think they didn't. They kept moving around and flip flopping and changing positions. And said to me, that was the voters. You know,

it spooked them, yeah, but we both still know a fair few people in Canberra, Ben and generally, what we what we've been hearing, or what I've been hearing, I think what you've been hearing is that they were taking things for granted. They thought at the start of a year with the polls in their favor, they got a coaster victory. So Dutton decided on this small target strategy. No sense of what you know to kick a government out after one term, unless they're in total shambles, you need to really great depressions, and that's how long you're going to go back. But look talking about Gen X again. 111,

person that US Gen X's do remember, of course, is ostentatious and Australia standing in it, which takes us to our next highlight for up the creek. And this is, this is Kim Williams, who's the government appointed, recently appointed new chair of the ABC

got.

Us off in a bit of trouble on on Media Watch, I think for those who aren't the Gen X's in our audience mate, you also need to probably give a little bit of an explanation of who ostentatious is, and maybe a bit of a rendition of part of his most famous, famous year. No, I'm not going to get a rendition, but I'll put a little bit, a little bit at the end of this particular series, ostentatious, a stand up comedian and and he had this sort of was another one was number one for a number of weeks in Australia, spoken word piece in which he sort of took Australian words and, like, you know, like, how much can a koala bear, for example? And he had all he had names of towns and so on and so forth. It was actually as a 12 year old, I think I was when it came out. Actually, quite funny. His real name is actually Sandy Goodman. And the story here and I got us firstly, I got to say kudos to Media Watch and Linton besser, who recently took over as the new host of Media Watch, to go after his own chairman. I thought was showed a lot of courage. I'd love to be a fly on the wall in Kim Williams office to see what he thinks about it, but it'll basically work yet. But for some context, I mean, basically Mr. Tatius

has been out there. He's been doing a big, you know, everyone's doing their old sort of nostalgia tours, the old rock and roll bands he's been doing on that old comedian circuit,

doing a big tour of all the the, you know, the regional towns in Australia. And has been, well, it's interviewed, I think, at least 11

on local radio stations, you know, to basically, you know, push ticket sales for his shows. Yeah. So the story is that he, he knows Kim Williams. Kim says that they were, he's a one time acquaintance, and he was having trouble getting a little bit of coverage on some of the regional ABC radio stations. And so a coin and Media Watch Kim Williams lent on the head of the audio division, Ben Latimer. And basically said, Can you, you know, can you try and get this guy a few radio, you know, interviews, which, which he happened to do. And I think this went backwards and forwards a few times, like he successfully bullied them into, into giving, giving Mr. Tatius

a plug. But then, having had success, he went back to the world, and next time he was knocked back by some poor country ABC jock and complained again. Yeah, yeah. So and of course,

look just again for context, if people don't realize this, that there is meant to be a very strong demarcation between the chairman and the board of the ABC and the journalists. In other words, they're not meant to interfere. There's meant to be editorial independence at the ABC. So of course, well, hell hath no fury like an ABC House committee that feels that the government appointed chair is interfering in editorial independence. And they wrote, they put out a statement saying journalists at the ABC are beyond disappointed by revelations on Media Watch, etc, etc. I love this beyond disappointed line, which is just to add a little bit of emphasis and look to in he was, I mean, in media, watch did get hold on a day to look like I said the ABC, but Kim, Kim Williams, I did get hold of some of those emails. And what was his line that he was dismissive of the talent? No, this is because he says, Here I am, of course, essentially on his side. This is, this is Williams talking about Goodman or centacious I am, of course, essentially on his side. Our people are often arrogant with talent, which I take is to be what's maybe sky the dark would call elitist. And they obviously thought that ostentatious wasn't quite something that should be on the ABC and so yeah, that didn't reflect very well on on Kim either. The interesting thing that in on media both both to the staff and and on

to media, watch the new incoming CEO comes from my old album, nine,

quite strongly back Media Watch and disti in disti's own chair. I think you might have seen this as a useful opportunity as a new leader, one to to to get the staff on side, because they are a boss, but also to actually remind Kim Williams, you should know better. I mean, he was, he was, he was basically running News Corp for a while of the delineation between the book and the chair, yeah, and in the in the man who's, who's the CEO that he should be staying out of, he drew a lot in the sand. But I do wonder, though I don't know, Mark, do you reckon maybe that marks and Williams discussed it and said, Look, how are we going to fix this? And maybe, maybe marks, and I don't know. I'm just guessing. Mark said, Look, how about I go and go into bed for the for the journos, and we'll try and smooth water. I think at the at the least, he would have given Kim the heads up. This is what this this.

What I'm going to say. And I think, listen, Kim, Kim is a fundamentally decent bloke, and I think he he might have agreed to cop the well, he only got behind him. He owned it on Media Watch. He apologized. He said I got it wrong. Which was, which I think was, you know, I mean, obviously had to do that, but it was the right thing to do. And of course, this comes hot on the heels of Kim Williams and media predecessor Ida buttress and her role in the the sacking of Philly ABC radio presenter Antoinette Latif, which is still before the courts for over an unfair dismissal. But how much can a koala bear? That's exactly right. Yes, I think Kim found that he was standing in

it that particular juncture, but talking about owning it, I mean,

there's been a couple of quite high profile and ongoing corporate scandals that are continuing to

put people like you and me and gainful in gainful employment, and the bloke who isn't owning it, I think, is, is, is Richard White, who's the the founder and head of wise tech, that a software company of which I don't fully understand. I think it's quite important in the logistics industry. But they, they've taken that from the matters that we know what they did, but taken from a start up to it to a 30, $30 billion company until, until they've managed to jump the chair the share price. But

we had just at the at the very end of last month, news of a third multi million dollar player to a female staff member or contractor who

had basically been suggesting that they were sex was demanded in return for their their continued employment and mentoring, I think, was mentoring and supporting the ongoing visa status of one of them, one that was for an investment in her business. I think was also, well, actually, yeah, quite, quite a well known, I think, a Sydney wellness entrepreneur, Linda, Linda Rogan and, and, yes, he did invest in a business. And they've settled, though, I should say yes, they have, they have, they have, they have, they have, have settled. And I'm sure she might have contributed to Richard's wellness. He certainly contributed to her, to her to her wealth. I mean,

it's quite interesting though, these days, because they're a big company, they're a listed company,

and the way this is being handled speaks to decades past, really,

we'll do, we'll just brazen it out.

Although he has been forced to step down as CEO,

I don't think he's formally stepped down yet, because they're still waiting for for a new replacement. But then he's, I mean, he does own a third of the company. He's got new gigas. Yeah, they give him a new well, no, the guy he's going to be, he's going to be when the new CEO starts something about the chief

innovation officer, or something like that, and he's effort for the princely sum of a million bucks.

But the companies, the companies launched an internal investigation inquiry into into these matters. Well, there's actually several. There's the alleged sexual improprieties these, but there's also a series of question marks about share trading, including share trading made by by by Mr. White at advantageous times and whether that breached

the stock exchange and corporate corporate rules.

They've done the investigation. They've done the investigation. They've refused to release it.

And in after, I think there were three or four independent directors who

for independent directors who express some some concerns and which threaten them with defamation action.

The

It's remarkable to me that in this day and age, this is still dragging on. I mean, we'll wait and see what, what, what ASIC does with its investigations,

but, but in, I mean, I mean, maybe, maybe, maybe he'll get away with it. But it's hard to believe, but it's, it's interesting, old school, old school way of operating, versus new generation values, big class year. And I think it's partly one of these things with a founder, lead company, somebody who's come up, made it from it, from a very small firm, you can do what you want. You can line your own pockets. You can get away with it.

And then when they become a big, substantial assets company, there's all sorts of rules.

And regulations and but that culture internally hasn't changed, to accept Right, exactly, right, yeah, probably one piece of crisis advice to Richard and

the other is actually step back, accept responsibility, let someone else run the bloody company that's going to be in your interest. Used to own a third of a thing. Just step back and intake responsibility for yourselves. Now let's move on to it. Look. It's a really sad story this next one, but it's an interesting one about balancing, I suppose you know various stakeholder interests, and we're talking here about Monash, IVF clinic,

embryo mix up. So a woman gave birth to Australia. Isn't it awful after, after a mix up by Monash IVF saw her implanted with another couple's embryo to leave the be the first time in Australia that a baby has been born after the wrong embryo was transferred. Now Monash only fessed up. Thought of a better word after the Herald Sun in Melbourne actually contacted them about the story. This story went global. CNN ran it. BBC ran it, amongst others. And also this comes from the heels of Monash IVF last year, agreeing to pay $56 million to 700 patients whose healthy embryos may have been destroyed in a bungle genetic screening test look, from a crisis management perspective, they apologized to everyone involved, quote, unquote, for the embryo mix up after the Herald Sun corps to blaming the incident on human error, said they were devastated and supporting the patients through the difficult time. Now, the question is, should have they got out on the front foot beforehand and actually released this? But what about the parents? What about the patients? I mean, do you really want to put them through even though they're not going to be identified? Do you really want identified. You'd really want them to have to read in the paper about the tragedy, tragedy that has befallen them? Or do you simply try and let it hope no one finds out about

it's a really difficult one, and also, there's privacy concerns as well. I mean, what if

the families involved determined simply to proceed.

They might have been absolutely outraged that this matter was made public exactly. You really need to suss them. I said, Listen, I suspect what has happened here? The mistakes been made. It's been discovered.

There may well have been some attempts to have discussions with the various parties, and at that point, someone's picked up the phone to Herald Sun. I think that their

response, once it was made public, was actually really good. I agree it was, hey, we're really sorry. We crisis. It should never have happened again. We're taking steps to ensure that it won't happen again. You know the 1234, things we tell people every time they get us in the door.

But I, I think it's, it's it's a warning of problems to come. I think there's going to be much more likely tougher regulations around IVF would have been full but my butler flagged that before they actually said, If they win, while they've won that he's going to take a really close look at IVF. The other the other part of this, of course, is not just health regulators who are now asking questions. The AFR, Australian Financial Review asked, you know, why weren't the shareholders told about this when Monash released its mid year financial results on February the 27th apparently, Monash said it became aware of the problem in February, so likely before then, they're an as existed company, they've been forced to respond to the Australian Securities Exchange over why it withheld notice of its shock baby bungle, I Think was how the fin review described it from shareholders for two months. So there's another there's another group. So there's the shareholders, there's the patients, there's your overall reputation. And this is what makes crisis management tricky. Tricky is not more challenging. And how do you balance all those various amateurs in a way that no one gets hurt? Yeah, and there's going to be a baby going up that this is going to have in families that this has a real impact on. And

I think this will be coming back to haunt Monash Ivy for many, many years to come. It's going to be one of those sort of calls,

called calls so sad to so to speak, mate. I mean, it's interesting. We in media training, we talk about what the news interest or what's news of news value to various types of outlets. And of course, obviously, with the Herald Sun, it was very much the human story and the families and so on, whereas the financial review was more about,

you know, corporate governance, shareholders, what it means for the share price. The share price dropped from $1.08 to 69 cents When news of this incident actually broke on the 11th of April. That was eight days after Trump's Liberation Day. So that's one thing you probably can't blame the Donald for, but that's an interesting insight into, yeah, What? What? Different how you've got to frame your messaging depending on.

Who you're talking to in terms of which media rally you're dealing with, yeah, but I think these days it's always well, for most it's the emotion. That's the people angle we've got Trump. So Trump's the stats and the data and the money, and you do actually feel for those people concerned. But Ben, I think that brings us to our end of the journey. This, this, this podcast. So indeed, we'll see you all next time for the critic,

how long 25 minutes I was watching? Where can you see that? On the phone, on my phone? Actually, it's probably less than that, because we would have started, we started recording a minute or two. How was that? Was that alright? It's great. Good. I think I was getting very polished. I didn't smell a type prepping for this market we had mate. The prepping was done on the plane, tree, buffer. What the happened with Richard White? I know I said I yeah, that's that.