Looking back, it would not have been a journey if we didn’t learn a few lessons on the way.  Going into small business is probably one of the most optimistic things an individual can do. Especially if that business is based on consulting – the art of selling yourself. The belief in your own abilities mixed with the excitement of being your own boss, is a mix that can sometimes leads to downfall.

One of the key learnings I take out of the last seven years is that it is easier to commit to an expense than to secure revenue. Over the last year, talking to other owners of small businesses, a theme has emerged whereby the owners admit that during the good times there was a buzz in hiring people, based on the expectation that revenues would keep rising, and the costs would soon be offset.

The downturn has abruptly brought home the reality that additional costs should only be borne when they are directly linked to revenue. This is not to say that investment should not be made for the future, but that investments need to be justified in relation to a direct revenue return. The only way for a business to survive a downturn is if it was profitable during the good times.

The key to remaining profitable besides a focus on costs is business relationships – both internal and external. Markstone has only been able to get to the point we are today through our relationships with our clients, business advisors and importantly our past and present staff. We would like to thank all of you who have assisted over the years.

The future is looking good for Markstone and associated companies. Early next year we will be revamping the website and taking a slightly different direction, which will carry us forward into a very bright future.

This variety of choice creates the opportunity to keep up to date and in touch far more easily than in the past. In business, the growth in SMS, email and social network creates further ways to communicate with employees, suppliers and customers.

This can create good avenues for flows of information, but if the right approach is not taken, can also lead to misinformation, disputes and breakdown of relationships.

A letter, as the only form of written communication, was seen as a formal document so great care was taken in the construction to ensure that the right message was delivered. Emailing and texting is now often seen as the first and quickest way of delivering short bursts of information.

People write with no thought of where and how their message will be delivered. This can turn a joking email or text into an aggressive piece of communication. Without the visual or verbal clues it is hard for the recipient to interpret irony or sarcasm as being friendly or aggressive.

The greatest danger is when the sender relies on existing relationships and assumes that their email will be taken in good spirit. I’m sure most of us have received emails when we are not in a good mood, and sent a scathing reply back to the sender, only to find out later that we had misinterpreted the intent of the original.

Given that emails are admissible to court and the potential of misinterpretation is high, I am trying to move my communications back into letter form.

While attaching a Word doc to an email may seem redundant, I find that the psychology of constructing correspondence on a company letterhead makes me consider carefully what it is I am saying, and the audience I am writing to.

At the start of our establishment as a unique consultancy offering government relations and other services, we had a client desperate to see a Minister. Our client’s view was that he held a proposal of State significance, which the Government really had no choice but to support.

The meeting was duly arranged and our client put forward their case. At the end of the meeting the Minister asked our company’s Government Relations Director Terry Cuddy to stay behind. Once the client left, Terry was told the Government had done its research and that for the financial year they already had 1,560 proposals in front of them. If the State was to proceed with all of them it would cost a whopping $38 billion. The entire State Government revenue for that year was $34 billion.

There was no chance of the Government doubling taxes, just to get the projects going. Those proposals that got support were the ones that closely aligned with the objectives of the Government.

Most companies/organisations understand that they have to align their proposals with these objectives, and pitch their projects in a way that meets these objectives. Some are often puzzled when they do not succeed, even though they believe they tick all the boxes. It is at this point they come to Government relations/lobbying firms seeking the silver bullet solution.

The days of just having a discrete word into the appropriate person’s ear are gone. The public rightly expects Government to act fairly and transparently.  Governments these days actually do take these responsibilities seriously. However, as stated above, given the high number of worthy proposals and limited resources Government does prioritise according to its agenda. The goal of a good Government relations firm is to understand the agenda, and work to get their client’s issue/proposal onto the priority list.

Getting an issue/proposal on the priority list involves utilising the understanding of government agendas and seeking champions within any level of government.

Ensuring this, along with assisting out clients by getting their communications pitch right, and articulating a clear desired outcome, is a tough job – but someone has to do it – and luckily we love it.

The Rudd government ultimately was seen as a one man band, with a tendency to take a crash through approach. This was fine until he failed to crash through on the ETS. While responsibility to bring the Greens along should have been with Penny Wong as Minister for Climate Change, the public identified Rudd as being culpable for the failure.

Similarly, the Mining Tax debate was mishandled and rightly Wayne Swan should have worn some of the blame for that. However, Rudd was seen by the public as being incapable of concluding it.

With both of these policies, the Rudd government had a good message to sell to its heartland, but failed miserably.

The Gillard government should be seeking to raise the profiles of its cabinet members and ensuring that its policy objectives are properly explained to the public.

A new inclusive approach around a carbon tax/emission trading scheme is vital. This debate needs to be run over a minimum of six months. The climate sceptics can be safely ignored in this debate, as the community has decided that as a country we need to take action.

Instead of a Cabinet full of Fine China, this cabinet should be new robust earthenware crockery, designed to meet the needs of the people, and capable of a bit of battering without going to pieces.

His announcement, supporting Julia to form government (note, there was not mention of support for the Labor Party), took on all the airs of a defiant speech from the gallows.

In his Sydney Carton moment, Rob could have declared ‘It is a far, far better thing that I do, than I have ever done; it is a far, far better rest that I go to, than I have ever known’.

Instead, he declared ‘in the interest of stability I will support Julia’. In that moment he lost at least 10 percent of his support and hung his political career.

His only hope is that the Gillard Government does last the full three years, and in doing so delivers in spades to his electorate.

Similarly Tony Windsor should be sidling up to the CEO of National Broadband Network Co. to ensure that the broadband network is rolled out across his electorate before the next vote since he has staked his political future on the success of the NBN program’s success. At this stage he certainly needs the NBN program to be up and functioning as soon as possible, at a realistic price, if he is going to survive the next poll.

In my view, the big winner of the 2010 Federal election, and champion survivor, is Bob Katter.  He managed to have a bet each way. By declaring his undying affection for Kevin Rudd – a union that would spark a dinner conversation with Rudd talking Bureaucratese and Katter babbling in folksy wisdom – but then supporting the coalition, Bob keeps the home fires happy and is still at the table to make deals for his electorate.  It just goes to show you don’t need to be the smartest guy in the room; you just need to know how to manipulate the smartest guy in the room.

The electorate’s willingness to vote for smaller parties and independents to office has been a growing trend in recent times. The elevation of the Greens from a party holding the balance of power in the Senate, to one that has a formal role in Government under Labor is a significant shift.

What we are seeing, in both left and right politics, is greater organisation on the further ends of the political spectrum. The far right is dominated by independents who feel that the Coalition is too left wing on social issues. The far left is dominated by the Greens who feel the Labor party is too right wing on social and environmental issues. Rationally, this was the price both major parties were going to pay when they moved towards the centre.

What does this mean? Simply, politics and lobbying is set to take new a new direction. Besides the effective public relations drives, run by the major mining companies, the first real hint of this is the campaign run by the Australian Retailers Association against blank cigarette packages. 

This is an issues-based campaign that did not directly target either party, but did have a negative impact on the Government. In Victoria, we are seeing the Master Builders Association start a public relations campaign to put pressure on both sides of politics, to place the Greens last on the preferences.

More organisations will go down this track, as it will be increasingly difficult to get outcomes by just dealing with the major parties. The need to argue your case publically, and to counter the ideological arguments of the minors and independents, will become greater.  Organisations will also need to expend more effort understanding the policies and drivers of the minors and independents, to help shape their argument.

As the current political paradigm breaks down and new ones emerge, for those reliant on government, there will be winners and losers.

The rejected 1999 referendum on John Howard’s version of a Republic – which had the Parliament select a President rather than the people – managed to survive in a tacit form over the past decade. That all changed however on election night when the idea finally crashed like a lead balloon.

Over the past decade, Federal politics has edged incrementally down the path of the Howard model of a President selected by Parliament by creating a ‘convention’ of the Prime Minister exercising greater personal power than had been possible in the past. 

John Howard himself opened the innings in the post September 11 era by establishing the Office of the Australian Prime Minister as an international statesman who bestrode the world like a colossus. He popped up at times of great stress in world affairs to offer sage advice and make statements to the world while standing beside the President of the United States and the Prime Minister of Britain.This development was followed by the rise of Hollow Men and the 24 hour news cycle that ensured Government was ever ready to respond to issues arising in the media. The purpose of the Hollow Men was to put out counter stories and a plethora of small positive announcements to keep on top of the issues, deflect the negative and stay ahead of the game. This development was driven by rapacious media and its requirement to maintain the 24 news cycles – demanding instant responses from Government on any issue no matter how trivial. This turning point saw Government perceive that it needed to respond to daily media to prove to voters it was in touch with contemporary issues.

And so we saw the creation of centralised media units. They monitored the news as it came in with the objective of hosing down the negative, deflecting and pumping out two or three positive announcements to counterbalance any negative media. The effectiveness of this approach required near instant decision making and resulted in power to make decisions being centralised to the Prime Minister or Premier.

Kevin Rudd’s Prime Ministership saw our first major flirtation with a Presidential style of national leadership where the PM’s office sought to operate 24/7 and frequently made decisions on Cabinet’s behalf (mostly to ensure speedy response to media cycles). This development saw the evolution of a small  decision making group (kitchen cabinet) and a way of working that increasingly relegated ministers and cabinet to rubber stamping roles (Did Garrett really have any involvement?) This evolution fundamentally undermined the conventions of the Westminster system and Rudd’s inability to change this methodology, no doubt, played a part in his demise.

A few weeks later we were off to the polls and the issue of the emerging quasi-Presidential role of the Prime Minister’s office came to a head during the election campaign. The electorate was asked to choose between Julia and Tony. The Labor and Liberal parties’ branding disappeared off the face of the earth.

And now, somewhat expectantly, it has ended in tears. The electorate rejected personality politics and negative campaigning. In the process Australian citizens sent the message that whatever the major parties thought they were doing for the nation’s good over the past decade, they don’t want it to continue.

A post mortem of the 2010 election may therefore need to accommodate final exorcism of the Howard ghost of the Prime Minister acting as a quasi President and a return to a more traditional Westminster parliamentary approach.

The huge swing against Labor in Queensland was unexpected.  On this, Senator Stephen Conroy has had the best analysis to date when he said a substantial portion of the blame for Labor’s poor showing in QLD and New South Wales needs to go to the State Government.

This was particularly evident in Queensland, where the Liberal National Party ran a highly successful polling booth campaign, which honed in on the negative performance of State Labor.

The wash up of this election is that we have had large swings against Labor in two out of three of the large population states, mainly based on voter anger with incompetent State Governments. There has been a small swing against Labor in WA (albeit with an already low primary vote) and a swing towards Labor to VIC, TAS, and SA, which also had the highest Green Vote.

Which way will the independents go?  If we factor the Green as a Labor vote, we are essentially talking about the three rural independents – Katter, Oakeshott and Windsor. It would seem on the face of it that they would naturally support a Coalition Government. However, we do know if there is bad blood between any of them and the National party.

It would seem that the Coalition is in the box seat. Its biggest challenge if they form Government will be reconciling the demands of these conservative Independents with the Greens.  They will have until 30 June 2011 to get any legislation they want through under the old Senate. They probably can rely on Senator Fielding’s vote. Nick Xenophon holds the balance of power and looking at his voting record shows that he is closely aligned with the Greens, and has been described as a centre left politician.

Given Labor and the Greens are now more likely to work closer together, this does not bode well for a minority Coalition government. On my reckoning, if they control the lower house (77-73), even with the old senate they will not have control and their legislative program would be stifled.

The issue that could bring down a conservative Government could be an emissions trading scheme (ETS). The ETS has already claimed the scalp of an opposition leader, delivered the first Federal Green MP elected at a General election, and delivered control of the senate to the Greens.

The Coalition has promised to pay farmers to lock up carbon in their soil. The Greens oppose this and want a full blown ETS. Labor has already indicated that it would support carbon capture in soil as being part of an ETS. This places the rural Independents in a difficult position, and the result would depend on what program they saw as being better for their electorate.

If you like your politics hot and spicy the next year could prove to be to your taste and we could be back at the polls by next October.

Over the past six weeks we have watched what looks like two puffer fish fighting over their spot near the pier pylon.

With more carbon emissions created by the leaders of all parties (yes, that includes you Bob Brown) than by a mid size African town, journos have scurried around the country like ants from a disturbed nest all trying to carry home, exclusively of course, their own juicy morsel, only to find it is the same tired piece of pork everybody else is serving up.

What has the Great Australian public made of it all? Well, we can start on the basis that 87 percent of voters will stick with what they know and how they’ve always done it. Another 4 percent will vote informally and 1 percent just won’t bother. Based on that assumption, just 8 percent will swing. 

It is a fair bet that of those swinging voters, a proportion will be disengaged. Some will be mildly interested and the rest will take an active interest. A safe assumption would be that only 30 percent will take an active interest, leaving only 2.4 percent possibly affected by the campaign.

Astute political observer and active participant John Dawkins recently wrote that campaigns do not seem to have much effect on the outcome of the poll. In fact, you only need to look at the polls prior to the campaign.

I opt for the poll six weeks prior to the election as being the best indicator. Check out http://campaignpulse.abc.net.au/ as this shows the poll of polls – Labor 52 percent to Conservatives 48 percent.

This should beam that Labor will be returned with a reduced majority of around eight seats.