POOR RESOURCES, RICH COMMUNICATION: PUBLIC RELATION STRATEGIES BY FOUR REFUGEE ADVOCACY ORGANISATIONS IN AUSTRALIA

Australia and New Zealand Third Sector Research

Eighth Biennial Conference

Navigating New Waters

26-28 November 2006 Adelaide

POOR RESOURCES, RICH COMMUNICATION: PUBLIC RELATION STRATEGIES BY FOUR REFUGEE ADVOCACY ORGANISATIONS IN

AUSTRALIA

Roumen Dimitrov School of Communication Arts University of Western Sydney

Locked Bag 1797 Penrith South DC NSW 1797 Australia

Tel +61 2 9852 5434 Fax +61 2 9852 5424

Email [email protected]

Abstract

This paper examines the public relation strategies of four refugee advocacy

organisations – the Refugee Council of Australia (RCA), Australian Refugee Rights

Alliance (ARRA), A Just Australia (AJA) and Rural Australia for Refugees (RAR) – in

the period 2001-2005, during which an invigorated refugee rights movement managed

to turn the public opinion in Australia in favour to detained refugees and facilitate the

government’s decision to release children and their families from the detention centres.

Identified and discussed are the distinctive strategies of each organisation. RCA was

mostly influential through internal consultancy and advice to the government. ARRA

exercised public diplomacy by direct lobbying to UN based on academic research. AJA

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worked efficiently with political and lawyer elites, making use both of parliamentary

procedures and electronic campaigning. RAR established local networks and facilitated

relationships between MPs and refugees.

The conclusion is that even resource-poor advocacy groups could be effective in

changing the context of political decisions, if they act strategically. The unique asset

they have are their highly skilled volunteers – often with professional communication

and academic research affiliations. Besides volunteering, two further factors reduce the

costs of mobilisation for such resource-poor groups and increase the leverage of their

impact: the new organisational form of virtual, online networks and the community

engagement of university research.

Strategic Communication

This paper discusses the cases of four refugee advocacy groups in Australia in respect of

their lobbing and campaigning strategies. Strategic communication is the essence of

public relations. It is the art and science of getting your message across. It implies the

ability to turn situational “complications” to your advantage, especially if your

organisation is under-resourced. Such complications may be internal conflict in the

power structures, unsteady and fluctuating coalitions of interest, shifting social-issue

priorities and news-value driven media coverage (Davis, 2003).

Strategic communication is a chace for resource-poor organisation to gain influence on

media reporting, public opinion and political decisions. Yet strategic thinking is not a

natural attribute to moral or right intentions. Organisations often fail. As Kate Gauthier,

National Director of A Just Australia (AJA) puts it, “If you cannot communicate with

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somebody, if you cannot change their mind, then there are two possibilities: Either you

are wrong, or your message is wrong” (Interview, 21 November 2005).

Communication as resource

Communicating strategically is professional faculty and valuable resource. It could help

exert maximum influence at minimal costs. Activists give plenty of grounds to discard

public relation as spin doctoring – as communicating the wrong cause by the right

means. Many scholars are aware of the openly positivist, pro-corporate, practitioner-

centred and, historically, anti-activist pathos of the mainstream public relations theory

and practice (D. Deacon & Golding, 1994; Dozier & Lauzen, 2000; Dutta-Bergman,

2005; Karlberg, 1996). But what about the opposite scenario: communicating the right

cause by the wrong means? How many good intentions have failed due to the lack of

strategy?

There are compelling reasons for resource-poor organisations – and most refugee

advocacy organisations are such – to re-evaluate and appreciate public relations as the

theory and practice of effective strategic communication. First, society has become

more complex. Political mediators have spread from the state (the initial location of

public relations) across all sectors of the society. Businesses and nonprofits employ an

increasing number of professional communicators. Every relationship with publics

becomes political. Aaron Davis calls that unprecedented escalation of political

mediation everywhere in the society “public relations democracy” (Davis, 2002).

Advocacy organisations have to adapt to a changed environment, characterised by

decentralisation, privatisation and professionalisation of the communications (Craig,

2004; David Deacon, 1996; Demetrious, 2000).

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There is, second, a widening gap between resource-rich and resource-poor advocacy

organisations 1. Only few of them, the biggest ones, hire or contract communication

experts. In most of the rest, the CEO still does all important communication, including

writing press releases, setting up websites and email lists, and organising media events.

Research from the UK, US and Canada indicates that the media tend to favour a handful

of big, established and influential advocacy organisations. The bulk remains virtually

invisible (David Deacon, 1999; Greenberg & Walters, 2004; Jacobs & Glass, 2002).

What can resource-poor advocacy organisations do in this increasingly difficult and

competitive environment? They usually lack economic, institutional and legal resources,

but still have a particular kind of human resources – their highly skilled volunteers.

There are also other, intangible and yet critical types of resources – the “media

authority” of the organisation, for example – its reputation as a reliable news source for

the media. The way to generate and maintain such resource is to tap into the

communication skills of activists and volunteers (Davis, 2003, p. 34).

Four advocacy organisations

I would like to outline, compare and evaluate the major communication strategies of

four refugee rights groups in Australia: the Refugee Council of Australia (RCA), the

Australian Refugee Rights Alliance (ARRA), the coalition A Just Australia (AJA), and

Rural Australians for Refugees (RAR). For this purpose, I will resort to interviews2 from

1 For the concept of “advocacy” see Dalton and Lyons (2005). 2 For the refugee sector I have interviewed Margaret Piper [12 September 2005], executive director of the Refugee Council of Australia (RCA); Dr Eileen Pittaway [10 November 2005], head of the Australian Refugee Rights Alliance (ARRA) and director of the UNSW Centre for Refugee Research; Kate Gauthier [10 November 2005], national director of A Just Australia (AJA); Anne Coombs and Susan Varga [25 November 2005] as well as Dr Helen McCue [21 November 2005], founders and first coordinators of

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the first phase of the University of Western Sydney research project Advocacy and

Public Relations in Australia, which principle investigator I am.

Timeframe is central. All strategies here are picked from the first five years of this

century. Three groups out of four were established during that time. In relation to

refugee advocacy, 2001–2005 stands out as a separate and, in a sense, accomplished

period. A remarkable cycle closed in five years. Triggered in 2001 by a complex of

factors such as the Tampa crisis, Children-over-board affair and federal elections fought

and won on an anti-refugees basis, a reinvigorated asylum seeker rights movement

surged (Coombs, 2004; Gosden, 2002; Mares, 2002; Marr & Wilkinson, 2003). Within

a few years, an intensive nation-wide campaign led to two major outcomes. First, the

public opinion changed dramatically from three quarters in 2001–2002, supporting the

mandatory detention of boat people (Goot, 2002, p. 72) to the same proportion in 2004-

2005, rejecting the detention at least of kids and families (Dodson & Metherell, 2004).

And, second, there was the significant shift in the policy of the government, which led

in 2005 to the release of most of the detained asylum seekers, including all children and

families.

Mapping the organisations, I will use two continuums: “local – national – international”

and “lobbying” (politicians and government agencies oriented communication) –

“campaigning” (media and publics oriented communication). As far as the second

continuum is concerned, a mix of lobbing and campaigning – “multi-pressure” – is put

in the middle of the ordinate. In the past, pressure groups were merely limited to

Rural Australians for Refugees (RAR); and Junie Ong [22 February 2006] fonder and first coordinator, Alanna Sherry (Hector) [19 December 2005], coordinator, and Fiona Walkerden [6 March 2006], web designer of Children Out of Detention (ChilOut), and Ngareta Russell, women advocate and writer [3 March 2006].

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exclusive formal and informal contacts with legislators and officials (Nimmo, 1989).

Today, lobbying has significantly opened up, adopting key elements of pubic relations

such as media strategies, social research, stakeholder management and permanent

campaigns (Blumler, 1989; Grant, 2000; Kingsley, Harmon, Pomeranz, & Guinane,

2005). There is no pure lobbying in refugee advocacy anymore.

RCA: Consultancy for the government

The first organisation is the Refugee Council of Australia (ACR). It has been the

national peak body of over 60 group members for more than twenty years3. With core

staff of five people and budget of a couple of hundred dollars, RCA is perhaps the most

resourced of all five organisations discussed in this paper.

3 It comprises organisations working with refugees overseas such as Save the Children Fund, Austcare, Caritas and Oxfam; supporting refugees in the Australian communities, including St Vincent de Paul, Anglicare and the Salvation Army; groups tackling legal and protection issues, for example the International Commission of Jurists and various Community Legal Centres; and, finally, existing Australian refugee committees themselves.

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Figure 1 Five advocacy organisations and their main communication strategies on two continuums: international – national – local and lobbying – pressure – campaigning

International

Lobbying National

Multi-pressure Campaigning

ARRA: Research-based direct lobbying

Local

RCA: Research-based Consultancy for Government AJA: Advocacy on Behalf

of Service Organisations

RAR: Local Networking and Contact Between MPs and Refugees

RCA is a classic “insider group” according to the classification of Wyn Grant (2000;

2005). The organisation is recognised by Commonwealth and States as legitimate

spokesperson in refugee matters. Being at the top of the “credibility hierarchy” here, it

also enjoys the source-affinity of the big media bureaucracies. RCA does not, however,

see itself as a campaigning body. Its preferences are rather research, policy analysis,

advocacy and capacity building within the sector. Says Margaret Piper, executive

director of RCA (Interview, 12 September 2006):

We do not get core funding from the government. We do consultancies for the government or for government agencies and what that means is that we can choose what we want to do and also when it suits us. [The media] know they will not get sensation from us, but they do get some facts and also a reasoned opinion on things. We also maintain a pretty good relationship with the senior policy makers. If your objective is to make policy better for refugees, you need to have that contact. It has to be a respectful

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contact. We respect their role and what they do and they respect our role and that we do in representing our constituency.

RCA is not a quango (quasi non government organisation), for the government has not

delegated any power to it (Wettenhall, 1981). It is involved, however, in the formal

consultation process on all levels. It does understand and speak the language of the

ministerial advisers and public servants. RCAs main strategies – competent consultancy

for the government, “reasoned opinion” for the media and political education for the

community – have been determined by this insider status and ethos of the organisation.

One plays by the rules, not against them. One makes no mistake here, because failure

could amount to exclusion. And exclusion would render such type of body useless.

In 2001 – 2005 RCA maintained its “conservative” stance, distancing itself from the

“noisy” emergence of more radical refugee groups. Not that it did not support the

mounting campaign against mandatory detention of asylum seekers4, nor that anyone

else from the refugee “insurgence” (Gosden, 2002) was seriously questioning the

integrity of RCA. Tensions mainly revolved around the choice of strategies. In he words

of Piper, “to change things by having bigger, louder and more confrontational

demonstrations” or “by trying to understand the government’s perspective on these

issues and then to come up with alternatives that will be acceptable to them and engage

in discussion and dialogue about that”.

Following the presumption that there were no big and small steps, but only realistic and

unrealistic ones, RCA kept pushing hard for a multiplicity of changes, which deemed to

the radical part of the movement rather technical, secondary, even distracting from the

4 The executive director of RCA has also been an individual member of RCAs campaigning proxy, A Just Australia (AJA).

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chief goal. In a rather unspectacular fashion, RCA managed at this time to entail changes

such as a larger size of the humanitarian program, pre-embarkation cultural orientation

training for all refugees before they come to Australia, and government support in travel

loans.

ARRA: Research-based direct lobbying at UN

For the last five years, the Australian Refugee Rights Alliance (ARRA) has developed a

unique strategy to lobby internationally on behalf of the refugee rights in Australia. The

alliance does academic research, works on legal and policy solutions and takes the

results direct to the United Nations in Geneva. This form of advocacy has proven highly

efficient. Among certain UN bodies such as The Commission on the Status of Women

(CSW) and the Human Rights Commission (HRC) this non-governmental coalition is

perhaps more popular and influential than the Australian officials.

The person who made that possible is Eileen Pittaway, director of the UNSW Centre for

Refugee Research. The university does not fund the centre. Eileen is the financial asset

to the university, not the other way around. CRR attracts external research grants in

amount of a quarter million dollar per anum. CRR and ARRA build an entity – the centre

is the research body, the alliance is the advocacy arm.

Pittaway has been an accredited lobbyist to the UN for a considerable time. For example

she is the facilitator of the twelve-member Asian Women's Human Rights Council

(AWHRC), based in Bangalore, India. As senior in the council, she has the power to

accredit other lobbyists to the UN. This little known fact that not only governments, but

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also senior accredited persons can accredit other persons proved crucial for the

formation of the new alliance.

The alliance is a loose network. It is a small one, too; each member, though, brings with

them their huge network of other people5. The major areas of ARRAs advocacy have

been women refugees, refuges with disabilities or HIV, and the detention issue in

Australia.

The work of the alliance has an established format. In February every year members get

together. They discuss what the key issues are and decide if they need to update their

papers or write completely new ones. A division of labour follows the decisions. Law

interns, Masters students and academic supervisors do research and writing. The venue

to go is in September, when the Executive Committee Meeting of the High

Commissioner for Refugees takes place in Geneva. Eileen Pittaway explains (Interview,

10 November 2005):

We go there every year and now we are known as “the Australians”. They say, “Are the Australians here?” About fifteen of us, with interns, are every year there [...] And in five years we have come to be known. We are given moderating spots, we are given speaking spots. We can go into the Palais and have a room or give a workshop any time we want during those two weeks, because we have built up a reputation for being academically sound in what we do. And because we have been going to Geneva and advocating so often, we have got to the point now where they have actually appointed us as technical consultants and providing funding for us to train their own staff. So that is a measure of success if you like.

ARRA is a lobbying, rather than a campaigning organisation. Like RCA, it is lobbying

by means of research-based consultancy. What RCA does nationally, ARRA carries out

internationally. Both speak the “insider” language of scientific argument, legal

codification and expertise in governance. This sets both apart from “outsider groups”, 5 The World Council of Churches has got almost all church groups. From the Christian churches, the Australian Catholic Social Justice Council (ACSJC) and UnitingJustice Australia are among the founders. Amnesty International, individual lawyers, the Australian Human Rights Centre (AHRC), Australian National Committee on Refugee Women (ANCRW) and Community Legal Centres (CLC) join the coalition.

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which communicate and mobilise their supporters beyond the “expert discourse”

through more “amateurish”, morally and emotionally loaded messages. Groups like

RCA and ARRA find themselves dealing with “unqualified” opponents on two fronts:

with an ideologically “entrenched” government externally and “dilettante” lobbying

groups internally. Eileen Pittaway resents the help of the latter when they are:

[…] going around and saying things like “detention is illegal in international law”. Its not; I wish it was, but its not. They say temporary protection visas are against international law. They are not. We have had audience of the High Commissioner who said it is against the spirit of the law but not against the letter […] Dismissing you on one little thing, [one would] dismiss your whole case. It is about doing the research and making sure that when you are lobbying, you are lobbying absolutely correct.

Advocacy as public diplomacy

ARRAs likeness to RCA ends where one considers its relations with the Australian

government comes. The “insider – outsider” opposition seems not to help further in the

case of ARRA – and in many other instances, by the way (Casey, 2004; Grant, 2004).

ARRA is both an “insider” for the UN and “outsider” for the Commonwealth.

Initially, the government was openly hostile and tried to block the whole group going to

the UN. After this attempt failed, Canberra’s position altered gradually, shifting from

loud resentment to muffled snub. In 2004, the then Minister for Immigration Philip

Ruddock, who was in Geneva for the same committee meeting, even invited the

delegation to an audience. In an early morning, researchers and students were walked

into a formal room. Ruddock entered from a side door and said, “Well Eileen, what did

you want to see me about?’ And she said, ‘Minister, you asked to see us.”

One cannot overestimate the exceptionality of such direct lobbying at UN and its

significance for the third sector in Australia. It is a rare example of effective public

diplomacy on behalf of the civil society. Nowadays, the concept of public diplomacy as

international public relations is put in the context of the “war on terror” (Hersh, 2005;

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Wolf & Rosen, 2004). Mainly in the US, there is a debate about how to improve the

international image of America, especially in the Middle East (Ross, 2002). A jumble of

approaches have been floated, including the corporate one of marketing America as a

“brand in trouble” (Maidment, 2005). The role of independent media, multinational

companies and NGOs in promoting this image remains a contentious issue. Should they

only add on the efforts of the government abroad? Or, perhaps, they should take a more

independent position, and, through their own authentic voice, become credible “third

party endorsers” of the national image (Snow, 2006)?

ARRA is such new public diplomacy in action. It suggests a model that goes far beyond

the paternalist vision of patriotic NGOs spinning internationally on behalf of their

troubled fatherland. In critical dialog with the government – there are also points of

agreement where the alliance lines up with the Commonwealth – ARRA is one of the

rare cases of real public diplomacy – an international, global channel of direct

democracy, braking the monopoly of the government in public – including foreign –

affairs.

This is still an exception, for sure. In other diplomacy areas the Australian government

has been instrumental in sidelining, silencing and uprooting international advocacy

groups. Since 1970 indigenous lobbing to the UN has had a permanent office in

Geneva; it closed in 2003 as money drayed up. In 2005 the Human Rights and Equal

Opportunities Commission (HREOC) was for the first time absent from the hearings at

Palais des Nations, because the government had slashed its funding (Marr, 2005).

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ARRA is an example for efficient public advocacy, where a group has no other but two

special resources: academic expertise and UN accreditation. Fused strategically in one,

they could produce a formidable force.

AJA: Lobbying and campaigning on behalf of welfare agencies

A Just Australia (AJA) is the name of a campaign, not organisation. The campaign is

coordinated by a national umbrella group, Australians for Just Refugee Programs Inc.,

launched in July 2002. People, though, usually refer to the group with its brand, A Just

Australia. According to its website, AJA brings together over 11,500 individual

supporters, 120 non-governmental organisations and over 70 prominent Australian

patrons (A Just Australia, 2006). This new coalition is perhaps the most ambitious

attempt to unify and coordinate the post-Tampa refugee movement on national level.

The parallels to RCA are inevitable, because both bodies operate on the same level and

represent, to a degree, the same organisations. The impressive list of Australian opinion

leaders and celebrities6 reflects the core mission of ARA – to be a public campaign

body, which RCA is not. The organisational basis of ARA is larger, but its focus is

narrower. Its aim is to size the historical moment and pressure the government on the

most urgent issue – a more humane treatment of asylum seekers.

6 Notably, there are perhaps more liberal than Labor ex and current politicians among the patrons – Malcolm Fraser, former Prime Minister of Australia; John Hewson, former leader of the Federal Liberal Party of Australia; Nick Greiner, former Premier of NSW; John Menadue, former public servant in Departments of Immigration and Prime Minister and Cabinet; and John Dowd, former NSW Attorney-General and State Opposition leader. Three reasons for this imbalance come first to mind. First, an underlying strategy of AJA – as well as RAR and ChilOut – is to position itself as a non-political and rather conservative advocacy group that taps into core Liberal and National constituencies. Second, there is still a belief among certain Labor politicians that they should rather support their own Labor refugee rights movement. The thing is that such movement does not exist. And, third, the former Labor Shadow Immigration Minister, Laurie Ferguson, was broadly seen by the activists as incompetent and reactionary – the completely wrong person for this post. His recent replacement with Tony Burke is greeted in all corners of the third sector; AJA is collaborating with Burke on an everyday basis.

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The strategic difference between ARA and RCA, however, is in relation to the welfare

organisations, which comprise the bulk in both bodies. Representing the welfare

agencies, RCA is rather emanating, reproducing their relationship with the government –

an apolitical partnership for professional services. In contrast, ARA is the public

advocacy voice; it says openly that the more conservative welfare organisations cannot

say due to their contracts with the government and ever tightening financial restrictions

on their political lobbing (see for many Casey & Dalton, 2006; Melville & Perkins,

2003; Sawer, 2002).

ARA lobbies in Canberra both to the Minister of the Department of Immigration and

Multicultural and Indigenous Affairs (DIMIA) and individual politicians, particularly

the parliamentarians. This manifests another difference in the advocacy strategies of

RCA and AJA. While RCA endeavours to influence the government’s policy largely on

departmental level, maintaining working relations with ministers, advisers and public

servants, AJA targets mainly Members of Parliament and Senators who are usually

independent, backbenchers or from smaller parties and more likely to step in tactical

coalitions7.

Subsidising parliament enquiries and legal procedures

Subsidising news is a core principle of public relations. A good news release provides to

the media facts and news value cheaper than the information journalists – increasingly

overworked, badly payed and laid off – could produce themselves. Today this leads to

increasing interdependency between news sources – “subsidiaries” (Gandy, 1982) – an

7 Needless to say that the opportunities for such strategic advocacy have gradually deteriorated over the last election turns. The current composition of the seats in both Houses is such that there is little space left for tactical and issue coalitions, which would provide the political opportunity structure for advocacy on behalf of diverse groups, interests and problems different from the agenda of the formal majority.

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the media (Davis, 2003; Gans, 1979; Turow, 1989). Same applies to lobbying. Research

is a resource that a lobbyist could offer to a politician, acting as information source or

subsidiary. Big corporations invest money to hire professionals; advocacy groups invest

the time of their skilled volunteers.

AJA has established relationships with key politicians by direct visits and blitzes in

Canberra. Lobbying took mainly the form of subsidising sympathising politicians with

specific information and research that would both improve their personal image and

strengthen the refugees’ cause8. Kate Gauthier, the national director of AJA, gives a

succinct outline of the nature of this process (Interview, 10 November 2005):

It is important not to give too much of your own opinion. What you do is find out what their opinion is, because that is the information that they need. You get to know what makes them tick. What does this person care about? What is the issue within refugee policy that they agree with us on, and that tweaks their interest? A politician wants to look good. How do they look good? By asking questions in Parliament that grab the media attention – that get air time. What do they want? Give them something – present it to them in such a way that, by doing what you want, they are going to get something out of it. There is probably no politician, who is completely altruistic in everything that they do.

Solid research is the currency for reciprocal relationships in lobbying. AJA has initiated

and, basically, subsidised many appearances in Parliament, particularly during time for

questions “on” and “without notice”9. Especially “questions on notice” and estimates

are popular with the lobbyists. If they need government information that they cannot get

anywhere else, they research for one of their friendly politicians to ask a question on

8 Closeness to political and journalist elites facilitated the access. Howard Glen, former national director of AJA, was very instrumental in personal lobbying to the politicians. At the same time, this emphasis on political lobbing rather than public campaigning in 2002–2004, cut AJA partly from its grass roots. Many organisations felt not comfortable with the umbrella taking nationally the glory for their mundane local work. In 2005, changes in the board, including the appointment of Kate Gauthier as a new national director, and significant drop in the funding prodded AJA to reclaim the grass roots and coordinate the campaign on the same level – not “bossing around” and from above. 9 Among the politicians supportive for one or another aspect of AJA suggestions have been Senator Andrew Bartlett from the Democrats, the perhaps most competent person of refugees’ issues; Senators Bob Brown and Kerry Nettle from the Greens, Tony Burke and Tanya Plibersek, Labor MPs; Russell Broadbent, Judi Moylan, Bruce Baird and Petro Georgiou, Liberal MPs; and John Forrest, the Nationals MP – one of the most passionate protagonist of refugees rights.

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notice. The protocol is that a politician is not allowed to directly question a public

servant. Questions should be directed to the minister. The minister has forty five days to

respond. It is a very good research tool, for it is often the only way to make the

government disclose information, which it would under other circumstances pass over

in silence10.

Subsidising publicity works with politicians and journalists; it also works with legal

representatives. More often than not, barristers, QCs, high-profile layers reject to help

detained asylum seekers with their appeal. They usually have few minutes, if at all, to

look at the papers, and could not see anything there. A thorough reading would require

not five minutes but fifty hours. For this reason, AJA set up a project training law

students in refugee solicitor’s work. Learning by doing, the students took up real cases.

Working from 50 to 100 hours on a personal file, they went through each case with a

fine-toothed comb, found errors that can be appealed, and wrote them up. With such

documentations almost complete, AJA called prominent lawyers. “Look at this, all you

have to do is turn up in court and look like a hero“. And this time lawyers could not

resist this lucrative offer – “lucrative” in the sense of subsidised time and expertise plus

the reputation of working pro bono for the community.

Public relations is about the right mix of raising high profile and keeping low profile.

Frequently, advocacy is better served, when the name of the source remains unknown

and a third, more authoritative and legitimate party acts as a proxy. The results of AJAs

subsidising strategy speak for themselves. Staying invisible behind “representatives”,

10 The Senate estimate time and enquiries are another avenue to draw the public attention to refugee issues. The estimate is the place the politicians can call up the department heads and interview them over policies and issues. For example, Senator Kerry Nettle from the Greens has done most of the work on refugees, using the estimates.

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“attorneys”, “experts”, “science” and “public opinion” is often the shortcut to success

(Davis, 2002; Wilson, 1984).

Electronic campaigning

As with the next group to discuss – Rural Australians for Refugees (RAR) – ARA has the

key elements of a virtual, internet group (Kingsley et al., 2005). Email lists have

replaced membership. A newsletter on the web page informs and mobilises the

supporters. AJA’s web site has an online program helping the reader to compose and

send easily letters to MPs and sign petitions to the Parliament. It is also linked to the

GetUp campaigning site.

Electronic campaigning has facilitated a drastic increase of the participation in the

political process (Taylor & Burt, 2005). Members of Parliament for example, receive

many times more letters – emails – from their constituency than in the pre-internet era.

Few politicians seem bothered about that. On the contrary, many recognise in the

electronic inundation a win-win situation. The inbox sample looks increasingly like an

online survey. MPs, for example, have learned to handle and appreciate the raising

electronic flow. They dispose of human and technical resources that help them to

transform the bloating “activist spam” into valuable “voters’ feedback” that eventually

boils down to a handful of simple political points.

Electronic campaigning also revolutionised the way of putting submissions11. How does

it work? With the Senate enquiry to the operation of the Migration Act, AJA sent

11 AJA did a submission to the Senate Enquiry into the operation of the Migration Act and a submission to the People’s Enquiry. And the organisation invited to give evidence at the Senate hearing for the Senate enquiry. It also provided submissions for the changes to the Migration Act.

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information to all members, encouraging them to write short letters. A ready text body

was also available online. “You do not have to write some lengthy legalistic

submission; you can rely on the experts to do that. This is your government, your

opportunity to give them your opinion. Just write them a letter! Everyone just send in

your stories.” Each letter is a submission. Even if politicians cannot count contents, they

do count numbers. And electronic campaigning has multiplied the numbers.

An example of how forceful the electronic pressure could be was the case of Virginia

Leong, the mother of the two-year-old daughter Naomi. Locked in Villawood detention

centre since her birth in April 2002, Naomi exhibited some very disturbing behaviours,

including banging her head against the wall. One day in 2005, Virginia was put “for bad

behaviour” in the isolation unit away from her child (Sutherland, 2005). AJA sent an

email around to all “subscribers” with the phone number of the Canberra manager for

detention. “Call this person.” Hundreds – may be thousands -- kept calling. And the

phone just rung off the hook until GSL (Global Solutions Ltd, which runs the detention

centre) let the mother out in 12 hours.

RAR: Relationships building

Rural Australians for Refugees (RAR) is another post-Tampa baby. It came to life in

early October 2001 in Bowral, NSW (Coombs, 2004). “Cells” quickly spread

throughout the nation. Its coordination has moved geographically along the line of “hot”

detention centres and refugees settlements: From NSW it transferred to Victoria. Today,

it is coordinated from Port Pirie, South Australia.

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Three women started the venture and all of them had been experienced communicators:

Anne Coombs was a journalist and writer; Susan Varga was not only an established

writer but also a specialist in online communication, and Helen McCue had been in

community management for a while. From day one they have produced an array of high

quality press releases, fact sheets and newsletters that drove the message home; they

contacts with the media, especially local newspapers and the ABC Bush Telegraph,

proved critical for the rapid take-off of the movement.

The idea was to establish a common space for people from rural areas who were not

happy with the refugee policy of the government:

I think it was the right idea at the right time […] In October 2001, before the federal elections, there was this feeling that virtually everyone supported the government […] Initially a lot of people who came on board with RAR were nervous about speaking up in their small country town. One of our main roles in those weeks after the first meeting was to encourage people to write a letter to their local paper. Because we found time and again that once someone did that, immediately they were approached by other members of their community, who said, “Yes, I feel the same as you; I thought I was the only one who felt this way, but now you have said it and I feel the same way”. (Anne Coombs, Interview, 25 November 2005)

The strategy of recruitment was to make visible that there were many more people in

the country thinking differently from “virtually everyone”. In the first weeks of street

work in Bowral, the founders of RAR were often confronted by irate passer-bys, but

rarely really bullied. A feature of the Australian character, perhaps even more distinct in

the country, is that, in the words of Anne Coombs, “Often people would find that, even

though other people did not agree with them, they were respected for standing up for

their views.” The more ordinary people “outed” themselves as “Australians for

refugees” the more it became obvious that they were not an insignificant part if the

community. Helen McCue reflects (Interview, 21 November 2005):

It took off in a way that we were not expecting, I can tell you. Like, we tapped into a sense in the bush – there was a strong sense of social justice in the bush, which arises

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from the agrarian socialism of the Australian bush life and church people and amnesty people.

Another strategy to boost the courage of the local persona was to demonstrate – even

parade – the high status of key supporters and leaders. “The authority is with us” is an

argument that still makes a big deal of difference – I wonder if only in the country. A

retired brigadier was one of the prominent speakers in the first meeting. The local

National MP was among the founders of RAR in Bowral. The mayor of Young, NSW,

where about 80 Afghani worked in the abattoir, was another outspoken advocate of the

refugees’ settlement in the country12.

A message that became a RAR’s mantra was that asylum seekers were a valuable asset

for the rural economy. The local networks promoted respected businesspeople and

farmers as speakers whose language cod be well understood by the embattled country

middle class. Who would object to the argument that in the case of Young the total net

income, after tax, received by the Afghans working at the abattoir was about $2.25

million per annum and that probably 60 to 75 percent of that amount was spent locally

(Stilwell & Grealis, 2003)?

The first priority for RAR – like AJA, ChilOut and other new advocacy groups – has

always been to help the asylum seekers in detention centres (visiting programs) and

outside (Welcome in Town campaign). Publicity comes only second. The bearer is first

a carer (Dimitrov, 2006). For this reason the RAR activists – their model is the

ubiquitous married couple Anne and Rob Simpson who operated from Coffs Harbour

12 The residents of Young followed the mayor not without hesitation. The mayor set up a book in the council chambers, where people were free to make any comment that they wanted to for or against the presence of the refugees. In a way, the book diffused the tension. Eventually, the feeling in the town became much better partly because the young men turned out model workers and tenants and nice young fellows. And they generated a lot of income for the town.

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and Ballina – called themselves “frontline workers”. Their communication strategies,

however, were based exactly on this personal care for refugees. To dent the

government’s “ideology of dehumanisation” of asylum seekers, the core public relations

activity was in liaising personal relationships between refugees and politicians,

especially local members of parliament. To cite Helen McCue one more time:

What was probably the most successful thing was really the work of the people in Baxter and Port Augusta and these frontline RAR’s in getting MP’s to go inside. Once you have got people to put themselves inside that situation and talk to people and realise how awful it was, they felt first a degree of shame.

Some backbenchers developed bonds of conviction and friendships with asylum

seekers. In result of such “frontline work” the National representative John Forrest,

Member for Mallee, Victoria, has become one of most ardent advocates of the refugees

in the Australian parliament.

Networking locally

New advocacy groups like AJA and RAR are not classic organisations, but rather lose

networks. For example, it was up to any local “knot” of RAR to decide whether to

incorporate or not. RAR as a whole has never done that – neither has the first group in

Bowral. Networking in rural Australia changed not only the attitude of local leaders and

politicians, but contributed to a certain change in the overall strategy of the refugee

movement. As Susan Varga states (Interview, 25 November 2005), “The mere fact that

there was a rural component was a big surprise to people and I think that was our big

weapon actually.”

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It was the idea of working locally that opened new perspectives. RAR even brought this

idea back to the city. Activists re-discovered suburbs as localities. Anne Coombs

remember:

This idea that you could actually just do something in your local suburb started to take off [in cities like Sydney]. And I do think that the example of RAR was one of the reasons for that. That people realised that, “Well, heavens, if they can have a meeting in West Wyalong, or wherever, why cannot we have one in Balmain?” And so you have got “Balmain for Refugees” and then “Northern Beacher for Refugees” – so these things started to happen.

Online advocacy had a sudden and powerful impact on the relations in the

neighbourhoods. Habermas hopes that “emancipatory movements” could contribute to

the “decolonisation of the lifeworld” (1981; 1987). Such liberation of the lifeworld has

“system” been linked to factors such as “the withdrawal of system-integration

mechanisms from some aspects of symbolic reproduction” and “the replacement of

(some) normatively secured contexts by communicatively achieved ones” (Ray, 1993,

p. 62). Exactly these processes have happened in many places. A woman said to Anne

Coombs, “You know, I have lived in this town for 25 years, and I never knew these

people”. Coombs explains:

Often you suddenly cross classes; in a lot of small country towns you would cross classes. You would have wealthy landowners became involved; and so did your unemployed person who had only been in town for five years. So you have got people from a very wide range of backgrounds coming together and so within the country town new networks formed. By that time we had t-shirts with RAR on; so [we had] all these old ladies in their t-shirts, you know, waving their placards, very excited about being demonstrating for the first time at age of 75 or something.

Electronic networking crossed class boundaries, because it overcame the special barriers

of traditional “symbolic reproduction” in the country. Issue-oriented communication

shattered “normatively secured contexts” by both depersonalising political relations

(anti-paternalist effect of the communication discourse) and personalising institutionally

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and ideologically alien connections (de-dehumanisation of the refugees). Freeing

refugees helped people free themselves.

Poor resources, rich communication

All four organisations were key players in the refugee advocacy movement in 2001–

2005. All, except RCA, are new campaign organisations. Campaigning profile does not

necessarily mean more radical ideology. The difference is chiefly in the application of

modern public relations, facilitated by a new internet environment. Inclusive electronic

campaigning just reinforces exclusive lobbying – it does not supplant it. The internet

advocacy coordinators belong to a new group of mostly female professionals –

diplomats, marketeers, journalists, managers – who bring in communication skills fully

match or even overthrow – if take into consideration the elements of volunteering and

compassion – those of the government communication officers and corporate public

relations practitioners.

Campaigning may be radical as communication form, but not necessarily as political

content. All four groups represent networks of middle-class professionals, who, in the

paradigm of the New Social Movements, consider themselves not left and not right, but

rather bipartisan or outside the traditional political spectrum. All groups demonstrated

ability to speak the language of conservative voters, build relationships with Liberal and

National backbenchers, and even to shut up for a while if it has to be – as in the

dramatic weeks of negotiations between John Howard and the group of Petro Georgiou.

While other groups escalated attacks on razor wire fences, those remained composed

and vigilant, mindful of not getting in the way of the delicate political dynamics,

including letting the Prime Minister, in this instance, to save his face.

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The strategic message

Lobbying is like chess; you can marshal an army of figures and enjoy the intricate

strategies and tactics. Campaigning is much simple – or seems so. The lifespan of

public attention is short; publics are seldom able to concentrate on more than two or

three competing issues. In its core campaigning is about the development of a single

simple message in relation to a complex and complicated issue. The message is

designed to draw the attention of particular publics and make them act – entail or stall

change, chase up or turn down solutions. In 2001–2005 the refugee movement,

including all organisations discussed in this paper, arrived slowly but surely to its one

only strategic message. It was written, white on black, on the famous t-shirts of

ChilOut: “Children don’t belong in detention centres”.

It was a daunting task to unify the whole refugee movement in one national campaign

under the banner of one single message partly because of different, sometimes clashing,

agendas and partly because certain actors lacked the understanding of strategic

communication. Marketing psychologists call it the “halo effect” – good looking people

tend to be perceived more intelligent, more successful and more popular. Unfair?

Strategy is not about fairness. For example, in 2005 Apple Computers put almost all its

advertising money on one single product – the iPod, which accounted only 39 percent of

Apple’s merchandise. In result, the sales of iPod jumped significantly, but so the sales

of all other products, including the Macintosh computers, which were not advertised at

all. This is the halo effect: “The first brand in a new category will imprint itself in

human minds as the original, the authentic, the real thing. Kleenex in tissue. Hertz in

rent-a-cars. Heinz in ketchup. Starbucks in coffee shops” (Ries, 2006).

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The “children out of detention” message, championed by ChilOut, AJA, RAR and some

other groups, imprinted itself in the minds of the Australian public for two major

reasons. First, it chimed better with the values and issue preferences of the public. In

Australia heath, education and family problems have the highest priority; and, at the

other end, least significant are women, immigration, ethnic and human rights issues

(Miskin & Baker, 2003). What the overarching advocacy campaign did was that it re-

framed the refugees issue from a “human rights” issue, unpopular with the public, to the

high-preference issue of “health, family and child protection”. The new message was

that detaining kinds amounted to “statutory child abuse”.

And second, this message de-ideologised the debate, detached it from the government

propaganda on “border protection”, “Australian values” and “war on terror” – and put a

professional spin on it. AJA, RAR and ChilOut often invited leading experts like the

child psychiatrists Dr Louise Newman, director of the New South Wales Institute of

Psychiatry and Dr Michael Dudley at Sydney Children’s Hospital to speak in their

events and present new scientific evidence of the traumatising effects of immigration

detention on children.

This message helped the group around Petro Georgiou to prove to the Prime Minister

that the public was not anymore with him. In fact, the public opinion in Australia is still

divided on the mandatory detention of “unlawful arrivals”; it has become and stayed,

however, strongly opposed to detaining children and families. And indeed, they were

the first group, released in 2005. And once the process started, it became in a way

unstoppable. Soon, almost all other “boat people” were removed on bridging visas to a

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milder form of custody – into community detention. The campaign had focussed

strategically on one single refugee segment, emblematic for the ordeal of all. As the

message drove home and entailed policy change, beneficiaries were all – not only those

put by design in the limelight.

Advocacy and academia: minimising the costs

The resource mobilisation approach (Gamson, 1990; McCarthy & Zald, 1977)

conceptualises social movements as collective action, were groups interact strategically

in attempt to lower the mobilisation costs for each. Costs constantly oscillate upward

(repression) and downward (facilitation). They force resource-sensitive groups to pick

carefully their conflicts (costs up) and coalitions (costs down) to control the balance

(Tilly, 1978, p. 100-1). Therefore, groups form networks, share resources, figure

synergies to lower the costs. For example, RCA, AJA, RAR and ChilOut worked closely

together, taped basically into the same pool of volunteers and shared effectively the

same sources of information. The internet technology and relatively cheap tools of

digital imaging have also radically reduced the costs for mobilisation.

More importantly, the university-educated volunteers brought in the precious resource

of high-quality and free-of-charge expertise in research, web design, video production

and electronic campaigning (Carroll & Hackett, 2006, p. 90). What happened in 2001 –

2005 was that electronic campaigning helped the new refugee movement to achieve

both a significant reduction of the costs of mobilisation and a drastic growth in

individual participation.

Universities proved strategic allies in this new development. University-based research

(ARRA/RRC for the UN) and training grants (AJAs appeal applications project) made

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costly advocacy affordable and effective. Many universities have one or another form of

“community engagement” programs13, which are one of the few avenues for mutual

strengthening of advocacy and academia – both embattled by ten years neo-liberal

policy of upward costs (repression) for community organisations and tertiary

education14.

Third sector research is a form of advocacy. It is research by participation and

participation by research. Research constructs the movement by rationalising it. The

cases explored in this paper hint at the huge and widely untested potential of academic

engagement to lower the costs of advocacy mobilisation.

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