Has lying become just as acceptable as telling the truth? Is a half-truth, an evasion or a deliberately misleading statement our approved cultural and moral standard of communication?
Lying is often considered part and parcel of political life. The phrase 'political life' — implying a separate and distinct human sphere — has itself come to stand for the moral inversion that justifies means by ends.
Interviewed by the ABC's Kerry O'Brien a few years ago, Liberal leader Tony Abbott got himself tied up in knots trying to explain why a political mistruth was a different kind of beast from the lie that society should not condone. To exaggerate or misrepresent was, he suggested, the common and necessary currency of politics. One might say he was being honest, but is the burglar who comes through the front door of your house any less culpable?
Labor's newly reinstalled leader Kevin Rudd says he wants to purify politics, and make it kinder and more honest. And yet his own standards when it comes to telling the truth are at least as rubbery as Abbott's. Ahead of the ballot that led to Julia Gillard's demise he lent credence to the existence of a petition demanding a special Caucus meeting to decide the leadership. Nobody, however, has admitted to having sighted or signed any such petition.
One of Rudd's supporters, asked about the phantom petition the day after, dismissed the question: 'that's history' ('history' in the sense not of a recorded event but of something that doesn't need to be bothered with any more). If you get what you want, the outcome is all the 'truth' you need.
Similarly, having chosen not to run for leader in March, when he was unsure of the numbers, Rudd falsely claimed he had been motivated by his 'solemn' pledge not to challenge Gillard. The pledge was no more intact then than it was last week when he knew he would win.
Much was made, during her time in office, of Gillard's pre-election promise that 'there will be no carbon tax under a government I lead'. Some believe her about-face in order to win the Greens' support for her minority government so weakened her credibility she became unelectable. On such a basis, it might be argued that the system values honesty and punishes dishonesty. I doubt this explanation.
More telling, I believe, was the electorate's brooding resentment against her for snatching the prime ministership from the man