Falling for the art of the lie by Gunduz Kalic

Is there an art to breaking election promises and getting away with it?

Prime Minister John Howard and his Coalition colleagues seem to believe that their political skills have enabled them to carefully - and successfully - dump the policy platform they used to win government last March.

However, in the long run, it is much more likely that the conservatives already have started to squander the public’s support.

Lest we forget, the Coalition soothed its way into government.  Don’t risk any votes by rocking any boats was its unspoken campaign motto.

Essentially, Howard and the conservative parties entered into a contract with Australia, undertaking not to do anything radical, nothing very different from Labor - except in one or two areas - and especially, nothing to hurt anyone or any interest group.

Howard even asserted that if it came to a choice between the Budget bottom line and keeping promises, he would keep the promises.

But then came the shocking discovery of the so-called Beazley budgetary black hole - the major post-election politico--theatrical event which seemingly has allowed the Coalition to escape the straitjacket of its own relaxed and comfortable election policies. 

It is, of course, an open secret, and a fact noted by many observers during the campaign, that Howard and his Treasury spokesman Peter Costello knew perfectly well about the shortfall they would face on taking power.

Not long after the election former Liberal MP John Hyde wrote, "Forgive the Howard opposition for patently irresponsible promises on the way to the poll". In other words, the Howard Government should feel duty-bound to get on with what it ought to do, rather than what it promised voters during the campaign it would do.

With a nod and a wink, not only the Coalition leadership, but many in the elite, doubtless find this concept of politics perfectly sensible and natural.

The backroom thinking goes something like this:  For the good of the country - and the Coalition - the important thing was not to be foolishly, suicidally honest with voters, but to put Labor out of office.  Now that we have our hands on the levers of power we can begin, pragmatically, of course, to put Australia on the ‘right’ policy course.

Some would even consider this approach idealistic.  Yet to put such politics into practice requires not only arrogance and contempt for the public, but a dangerously high level of political showmanship.  The contortions and flipflops and commitment - will have to pass relatively unnoticed in the public arena.

Enter political showbusiness.  In the famous and prophetic scene in Bertolt Brecht’s play The Resistible Rise of Arturo Ui, an actor teaches the craft of acting to a politician, the better to beguile and fool the people.

Nowadays, highly paid political consultants and advisers coach the top politicians daily in the newest techniques and nuances of political double-talk - and the latest adaptations of marketing expertise to politics.

These are often imported from overseas.  In the case of the Howard Government, the American core promise technique - a highly sophisticated version of divide and conquer - was used to great effect in designing and selling the recent Budget. 

"Political language ... is designed to make lies sound truthful, and to give an appearance of solidity to pure wind", wrote George Orwell 50 years ago.

Our ability to detect political fiction has not improved. For most Australians, politics is merely visual entertainment viewed through the window of the electronic media.

In such a time, do the lies of politicians even matter?

Politicians are relying more on political song and dance.  But the average Australian’s growing cynicism towards them shows that, while specific political performances often fool us some of the time, in a general sense we are accepting it less and less.

To Australians, a lie is a lie.  An accumulation will bring the conservatives unstuck, something which unseated Labor.

As we try to teach our children, there is no future in lying.  The smoke-and-mirrors method of trying to change policy course from that agreed, generates considerable confusion, bitterness and loss of faith.

The political manifestation of this dilemma for the federal Coalition is, of course, in the Senate, where it does not have the numbers, and where a large part of its effort might well come unstuck.

There is nothing unique about the mire in which the conservatives have trapped themselves.  In all the Western democracies, with few exceptions, politics has become dependent upon sophisticated forms of lying.

Surely, however, the effort to be truthful with the public remains an essential element of democracy.  Our current politics is cutting the ground out from under the practice of public debate.  And our sense and understanding of the issues are endangered.

In commercial life, the trend increasingly is for individuals and companies who make misleading or false claims to consumers to be penalised.  Should politicians continue to be kept honest only during election campaigns?

Democracy is not a fixed institution guaranteed to work perfectly for all time.  Rather, it is about evolution.  In response to the transformation of politics into showbusiness and politicians into political actors, perhaps stronger measures are needed to hold political life to the standards expected in real life.

What about making lying in politics a criminal offence - especially the artful breaking of election promises?

This article appeared in the Brisbane Courier Mail, October 9 1996.