Facts alone won't save Australia's fatuous political agenda

15 July 2013

In the midst of widespread disillusionment with Australian politics, there is suddenly hope for improvement. Contest is a vital ingredient of democracy, and the ALP's recent change of leadership has suddenly made the party competitive during this year's federal election campaign.

In a further surprise, the contest is likely to be enriched by a standard of truthfulness that we have not seen in many years. This is the promise of new fact-checking websites, including The Conversation's Election Fact-Check, former Fairfax editor Peter Fray's PolitiFact, The Australia Institute's Facts Fight Back, and the fact checking reports to be presented by journalist John Barron on ABC news and current affairs programs.

But while the fact checkers will promote a new element of rigour in the campaign, the quality of debate will remain compromised by a lack of scrutiny on what determines the political agenda, which is the necessarily limited range of topics that are debated. It is one thing to be able to trust facts that we are presented with, but another to know that they are relevant to our wellbeing as a nation.

It is pleasing that PolitiFact is able to demonstrate that foreign minister Bob Carr's claim that boat people 'are not people fleeing persecution ... they are coming here as economic migrants' is 'mostly false'. But even if Carr's claim was mostly true, how does discussion of the comparatively small number of economic migrants justify its place on the agenda, compared with issues such as the mental health of Australia's youth?

Which of these two issues has more bearing on our future wellbeing? While mental health has largely fallen off the agenda, others — such as inheritance taxes — are kept off the agenda. It has to be asked whether this is by design, and whose design it is.

The formation of the political agenda should be the result of a rational and orderly process that is transparent and based on good argument and solid evidence. But more often it's either ad hoc, or determined by popular media and various lobbies and sectional interests. We could use a 'PolitiAgenda' website, which would undoubtedly demonstrate the fatuous nature of what makes up much of the national agenda.

We would set ourselves up for a better future if we allowed academic researchers to become more influential, as they are able to challenge old assumptions and set out blueprints for new possibilities. Popular media, on the other hand,

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Facts alone won't save Australia's fatuous political agenda

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