Klaus Sorensen: What Rudman doesn't say about V8s

COMMENT

Brian Rudman, although understandably impressed with my PR abilities, demonstrates his unbalanced and obsessive opposition to the V8 street race.

He revealed last Monday that he has no better arguments than to dredge up irrelevant information on Timberlands West Coast and conspiracy theories with no more validity than those espoused in the long-forgotten Secrets and Lies by Nicky Hager.

What he sees as a parallel fails because his column contains mostly incorrect facts and assumptions based on them. He omits to mention that our Timberlands campaign in support of sustainable beech forestry was successful.

The sustainable beech forestry scheme was enacted into legislation by the then Government in 1999, only to be overturned by a change of government.

The Public Relations Institute engaged Queen's Counsel Hugh Rennie to investigate Hager's complaints.

Mr Rennie dismissed all but one of the 20 complaints against us and his verdict was essentially an open one on the question of our use of the term extremists (they were) and left it to the institute to decide whether extremists was a bad word (they did).

This despite the institute accepting that certain opponents of Timberlands' activities could fairly be described as extremists.

I make no apology for not counselling my client against expressing its honestly and fairly held opinion about its opponents.

Mr Rennie's conclusion about our work was memorable, although not apparently to Mr Rudman, when he said [PR firm] Shandwick delivered what the client wanted and expected, to high effect.

At times the complaint against them almost seemed to be they shouldn't be allowed to be this good.

It was a tough campaign in a tough environment which tackled problems for a client who was correctly described as besieged.

Mr Rudman's comments about the PR industry having a code of ethics are also puzzling, given that New Zealand journalists don't have a national code of ethics.

Your readers may also benefit from the information that Mr Rudman once, apparently unhappily, worked in PR.

But on to the car race. Mr Rudman says the Supporters Club has persuaded the organisers to give them all sorts of gifts and concessions as reward for their support.

And the evidence?

I had previously pointed out to Mr Rudman that I was acting in an unpaid and private capacity in joining the Supporters Club committee and acting as spokesman from time to time, but he chooses to disbelieve me and, furthermore, question my integrity.

There are only two similarities between Timberlands and the street race which, not surprisingly, Mr Rudman fails to recognise.

First, both offer considerable commercial and economic benefit to many people and are capable of having environmental impacts managed and mitigated.

Second, both seem to involve having to engage ideologues high on conspiracies and low on facts.

Editor's note:

Mr Sorensen claims Rudman's column "contains mostly incorrect facts" but fails to give any examples. As he admits, his Timberlands sustainable forestry campaign ultimately failed to achieve its aims.

He asks for evidence that the Supporters Club has persuaded the organisers to give it all sorts of gifts and concessions. They are listed on the club's website.

Rudman confesses to a brief time on the dark side in public relations where, far from unhappy, he learned to play lunchtime poker and stored away knowledge from the inside of how PR campaigns were organised.