The sudden closure of Font PR marks a tectonic shift in the Tasmanian political and media landscape. For years, the firm operated as a “one-stop shop” for influence, blending the lines between government lobbying, independent journalism and public opinion polling. While the lobbying arm has folded following intense scrutiny, its publishing empire remains—leaving significant questions about media concentration and transparency.
Contributing to this scrutiny is Christine Bayley, a regular Tasmanian Times contributor and administrator of the influential Facebook group People Before Major Parties – Tasmania, who has long highlighted the impact of such power structures on local communities.
By Christine Bayley
After years of cowering under the Wicked Witch, Tasmanians are released after a decade of lobbying, journalism and political campaigning under one roof.
If you’ve never heard of Font PR, you’re not alone—most Tasmanians haven’t. Nevertheless, this firm wielded extraordinary influence over politics, media and business for over a decade. Here is what you need to know and what we should continue to be concerned about.
Font PR was a Hobart-based public relations, lobbying and communications firm founded in 1989 (renamed Font PR in 2009) that grew into one of Tasmania’s most influential political operators. For most of its history, it was a conventional PR agency—representing businesses, managing communications crises and advising organisations. But after 2018, it became something far more powerful and controversial: a vertically integrated operation combining lobbying, journalism, political polling and campaign management under one roof.
The Turning Point
The turning point came in September 2018, when Font PR recruited Brad Stansfield and Brad Nowland—two of Tasmania’s most senior political operatives—as partners.
Stansfield was the most significant hire. He had served as Chief of Staff to Liberal Premier Will Hodgman for eight years (2011–2018) and was widely credited as the architect of the Liberals’ landslide victories in 2014 and 2018. In politics, a Chief of Staff controls the Premier’s calendar, drafts policy, manages the public service and shapes every major government decision. Stansfield didn’t just advise on campaigns—he ran them, and he won decisively.
Nowland was the Liberals’ Press Secretary for a decade, controlling message discipline and media strategy for the government.
When these two insider operatives moved to Font PR, they brought with them a rolodex of government contacts, deep knowledge of how Tasmanian politics worked and immediate credibility with both the Liberal government and the business community. Font PR overnight became the firm that actually understood Tasmania’s government and had the political inside track.
Who used the services of Font PR? Well, if you were a business or organisation that needed to influence Tasmanian government policy, you hired Font. And from 2014–2020 (and beyond under Jeremy Rockliff), that meant the firm had direct access to Liberal ministers and decision-makers.
Then Came the Newspapers
In 2019, Font PR made a controversial move: it began acquiring struggling regional newspapers. By 2025, it owned eight community newspapers across Tasmania, including:
- Tasmanian Country (the state’s agricultural newspaper)
- Sorell Times
- Derwent Valley Gazette
- Northern Midlands Courier
- King Island Courier
- Tasman Gazette
- East Coast View
These papers reach over 100,000 Tasmanians—making Font Publishing, according to its claims, “Tasmania’s largest independent locally-owned publisher.” But here is the conflict: the same company that lobbied politicians also owned the newspapers that reported on them.
The Polling Company
In 2024, Font PR’s power expanded even further. Stansfield and Becher Townshend (Font’s Managing Director) acquired EMRS, Tasmania’s leading political polling firm, from the national lobbying agency Crosby Textor. EMRS had conducted polling for major parties and government agencies for years.
They appointed Mary Massina—Townshend’s spouse and former CEO of the Macquarie Point Development Corporation (MPDC)—as EMRS Managing Director/CEO. Massina had overseen the controversial Hobart stadium project as MPDC head from 2017–2023. Her appointment deepened Font’s stadium-polling-media nexus – EMRS under Massina polled public support for the Liberal-backed project, while Font newspapers covered it and Font PR lobbied related stakeholders—all within a tight personal and professional network.
Now Font controlled three things simultaneously:
- Lobbying access – advising businesses on how to influence government.
- Newspapers – controlling what news rural Tasmanians read about politics and policy.
- Polling – measuring public opinion and advising politicians on strategy.
“Imagine owning a PR firm that advises the government, newspapers that report on the government, and a polling company that measures what voters think about government.”
You suddenly have the ability to shape the narrative, influence policy, control campaigns and create conflicts. A 2025 Guardian investigation found multiple examples of these:
- Font papers published stories about Font PR clients (like the agricultural company TQM) without disclosing that Font PR represented those clients.
- Before the 2025 election, Font papers published exclusive Liberal policy announcements without disclosing that Stansfield was advising the Rockliff Liberal campaign.
- Font Publishing received over $8,000 in advertising payments from Clare Chandler (a Federal Liberal politician) since January 2024—money flowing from the same government that Font PR was lobbying for business interests.
Concentration of Power
Font PR’s influence was amplified by its deep ties to Tasmania’s dominant political force: the Liberal Party. The firm’s key partners were Liberal government insiders. They managed Liberal election campaigns in 2021 and 2024. Many of their lobbying clients were businesses favoured by Liberal policy (agriculture, tourism and property development).
When Jeremy Rockliff became Premier in 2020, Font’s influence if anything increased. The firm was trusted by Rockliff’s government in ways that competitors (like other PR agencies) were not. This raised obvious questions: if the government trusts Font, and Font owns newspapers, and those newspapers report on government policy, who is actually holding the government accountable?
In a state as small as Tasmania (population ~530,000), media concentration is a serious problem. Most Tasmanians read one of three newspaper groups: The Mercury, The Examiner and The Advocate, or Font Publishing’s eight community free papers.
If Font PR was advising government, lobbying on behalf of business and operating newspapers, the same firm had influence over what information rural Tasmanians received about political decisions affecting their communities. Some journalists and media scholars (like Professor Libby Lester, quoted in the Guardian) called this “vertical integration” a threat to transparency. Greens Senator Nick McKim explicitly warned that Font’s “growth, completely unchecked,” sent a warning to other jurisdictions about “the perils of media concentration.”
The End of an Era?
On 23 December 2025, Font PR announced its closure. Townshend stepped down, partly citing his new role as chair of the Tasmanian Chamber of Commerce (a potential conflict). Stansfield remains involved, moving his EMRS polling company into Font’s former office, but Font PR itself is gone.
It is not surprising. There has been considerable public scrutiny, with the Guardian’s February 2025 investigation exposing conflicts of interest and media scholars and politicians questioning the firm’s ethics. The 2025 election delivered a hung parliament and what would have been another conflict of interest with Townshend chairing the Chamber of Commerce while running a lobbying firm.
But critically, Font Publishing (the newspaper division) remains in operation. The newspapers continue to operate under Stansfield’s ownership, still reaching 100,000+ Tasmanians and perpetuating media concentration concerns in Tasmania.
Font PR demonstrates what happens when a PR firm, lobbying operation, newspaper publisher and political polling company become one entity. It is not necessarily that Font broke laws or did anything overtly corrupt—but the conflicts of interest are so severe that transparency becomes impossible. Tasmanians reading Font’s newspapers don’t know that the same company owns their news source and lobbies the government they are reading about.
That is why Font PR’s closure is welcomed, but why Font Publishing’s continued existence remains controversial. The problem was never just the lobbying firm—it was the concentration of power over political information in a firm with undisclosed conflicts of interest.
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