https://amp.couriermail.com.au/busin...8f97682d854d78
WE hear the recent troubling events at Nauru Airlines has hit one of Brisbane’s more high profile public relations outfits.
Mercer
PR, run by Lyall Mercer, had until recently been doing public relations work for the carrier but that now appears in doubt after a three-man group appointed by Nauru’s new government last month fired the airline’s entire board. Following the defeat of Nauru President Baron Waqa in elections in August, Mercer’s work with the Nauru government also appears to be over.
City Beat spies tell us that the new government appears to be washing its hands of anything to do with the previous administration.
The international spotlight has been on the tiny republic thanks to it hosting a controversial detention center housing asylum seekers on behalf of Australia, its biggest foreign aid donor.
Lyall Mercer told City Beat yesterday that he could not discuss individual clients for confidentiality reasons. However, he confirmed the firm had assisted Nauru Airlines for a short time recently as requested by the previous board. “There is now a new board post-election and what they do in terms of communication is up to them,” he says. In terms of the Nauru government, he says the firm has not handled media relations for it for a number of years but had assisted them in other areas.“While there has been an election, we enjoy a good relationship with the current government and the new president. Nauru is a beautiful country with wonderful people that has sadly been misrepresented in a lot of media reporting,” he concluded.
https://www.afr.com/rear-window/fede...0190710-p525vl
Lyall Mercer's Mercer
PR is a smallish Brisbane
PR firm whose clients include various evangelical faith groups and Queensland industry bodies. A former star client is the government of Nauru, not exactly a favourite of human rights groups. In fact Mercer's handling of the account has now been investigated by the Commonwealth Treasury, who advised it to implement human rights training.A highly unusual three-year probe by Treasury — under its auspices as administrator of the OECD guidelines for multinational enterprises — found Mercer
PR's actions on behalf of the Nauru government "inconsistent with the human rights chapter". Specifically the parts relating to privacy.
Back in 2015, human rights groups were outraged after reporters were sent, through Mercer, a copy of an unredacted police report (including the results of a medical examination) about an asylum seeker who'd filed a rape complaint on Nauru. This was as part of efforts to discredit the woman's claims.
The Public Relations Institute of Australia in 2015 condemned Mercer's conduct in a statement, before saying its statement was "general in nature" a few months later, after Mercer
PR threatened legal action "in regard to the defamatory statement".
But back to the present. Tuesday's
Treasury report states that though Mercer declined to participate in some meetings about the complaint, the firm "appears to understand the importance of ensuring that its actions avoid potential adverse human rights impacts".Wishful thinking. The response by the firm on Wednesday afternoon said while its thoughts are "with the woman referred to", "this matter is about one press release sent almost four years ago". Not to mention the formal findings coming from "an obscure government organisation with no authority, about OECD guidelines no one has heard of except activist lawyers".
The government report, Mercer continued, "is extremely misleading and omits many facts that were relevant in the highly charged political atmosphere of the time. Surely this report is completely out of proportion and a gross waste of taxpayer money!"Given the reaction, and the fact Treasury has no punitive or coercive powers in the matter (it promises to follow up in six months), that last point rings true.One fact, at least, is undisputed: Mercer
PR doesn't do contrition.
https://www.couriermail.com.au/news/...3b36086fa2861b
Interesting articles ................. offered without comment, suggestion or inference of any sort. Just found them very interesting and easily found on the 'net.
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