Monthly Archives: April 2010

Originally published as an editorial under a joint by-line with Tim Westcott and Gilda Di Vincenzo in Planning News 36, no. 3 (April 2010): 4.

“I am a bit tired,” was the Planning Minister’s explanation in the midst of his cringe-inducing interview with Neil Mitchell after the release of the now-infamous Windsor Hotel media plan; the same protest slipped out during the Minister’s subsequent press conference announcing that the hotel redevelopment would go ahead. On both occasions it was an unusually direct and human admission, all the more notable for the contrast with the attempts at tightly controlled media messaging that had created the problem in the first place.

There seems little doubt that regardless of what happens in this election year, the Windsor Hotel will be remembered as a low point in Justin Madden’s career. Yet what are the actual lessons to be learnt here?

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