Apart from Adelaide roots, Julia Gillard and Rupert Murdoch share something else in common; they are living examples of crisis management - with one doing it well, and the other not.
Apart from Adelaide roots, Julia Gillard and Rupert Murdoch share something else in common; they are living examples of crisis management - with one doing it well, and the other not.
Murdoch has recognised the depth of the problems caused by a company "losing its moral compass". He has apologised for hurt caused by phone and email hacking, closed a profitable business, and been embarrassed in front of a worldwide audience watching a British Parliamentary inquiry.
Gillard probably recognises the depth of her problems with the economy-changing carbon tax, but is yet to figure a way out which will not end in total disaster for her political career, or Australia.
Anyone in business should be watching both people, and learning the key lesson of problem solving - when you're in a hole, stop digging.
Measuring the depth of the holes dug so far by Murdoch and Gillard is surprisingly easy. There's the share price of News Corporation for Adelaide's favourite media-son, and public opinion polls for its favourite political-daughter.
On the Australian stock market the price of News Corporation shares have lost close to $4 since the phone hacking crisis started. Translated into lost market value, that equates to around $3 billion dollars - with somewhere around $1 billion worn by the extended Murdoch family.
In the latest public opinion polls Gillard has slumped from being preferred Prime Minister to somewhat unloved, while her political party has crashed to its lowest-ever in popularity, potentially losing every seat in WA, and being able to hold future caucus meetings in a telephone booth (if they still exist).
An election is not being held tomorrow so Gillard can cling to the window sill in hope that someone will pull her in, or that her rival, Tony Abbott does something silly between now and late 2013 - which is not a bad plan.
A much better plan would be to acknowledge the fundamental mistakes made over the past few years, and change accordingly, or risk destroying the political party which has given her the chance to lead the country.
Murdoch, cunning old fox that he is, knows when he has been cornered. Despite being 80 years old, or perhaps because of so much accumulated knowledge, he has recognised the extreme danger to the company his father founded.
It might be too late to save all of News Corporation but a public airing of contrition and promises to do better in the future is about all that his critics can ask today, while also maintaining a threat to cancel his right to run media assets in Britain, a move which could flow across into the heart of his business, the U.S.
Over the next few weeks Murdoch will continue to pay the price for a business which lost its moral right to exist.
The next steps will take the form of cash settlements paid to wronged people, with News Corporation coughing up millions of dollars in the world's biggest payouts, just to make the problem go away.
It is entirely possible that Murdoch will survive to see out the crisis, before using it to his advantage by selling, or floating off, his offending newspaper interests to focus on other, more profitable, media assets.
Gillard, though her party hates the Murdoch press, should be taking notes as she watches the old man of Adelaide eat humble pie in order to fight another day.
What she needs to do, and quickly, is recognised that extreme Green policies are toxic to most working Australians. They do not what to turn Australia into a giant Tasmania, an island with a falling population, falling economic growth, reliant on financial hand-outs from others, and with no job or career future for their children.
Talk of switching Australia to a green energy future is courageous, but it is talk. Spending billions of dollars on alternative energy systems is equally courageous, if only someone could promise that they will work, and promise that they will not blow-up the family budget.
Most Australians, as the polls show, recognise that Australia has a unique competitive advantage in a very unstable world, and that is our abundant supplies of energy.
What Gillard and friends are doing is tossing that away in the hope of a clean energy nirvana that might work, but not for decades, if ever - and at a time the Global Financial Crisis Mark 2 (the scary version) is breaking over the western world.
Gillard, like Murdoch, should recognise that the game is up and the sooner she acknowledges it the sooner she can step back from the abyss of total failure.
