Promises are powerful commitments. Or at least they should be. Promises commit the maker to an undertaking. They should be made in good faith, and with a genuine intention to carry them out.
Unfortunately the people we should most expect to live up to their promises usually don’t. I’m talking about politicians.
Once upon a time in this country, leaders of nations were chosen based on their track record of accomplishments, their knowledge, wisdom, and commitment to the wellbeing of their community. Today, sadly, we seem to be expected to elect people based on who can tell the biggest lies and run the best smear/ fear campaigns.
How often do we hear pre-election promises that are never fulfilled by the party who is elected. Politicians know they can make any promise they want, and then backtrack later using “the budget”, or “things that weren’t disclosed by the former government”, as the excuse.
Politicians of course use the old save-all phrase of: “Well if you don’t like it you can exercise your opinion at the next election”. Which is great, except that prior to the next election the same party makes all new amazing promises to fix a bunch of things, and cons voters into voting for them all over again.
Why is it that we have such a low threshold of expected integrity for our elected officials? Why do we not require our politicians, and electoral candidates, to speak the truth? Why are politicians and candidates for election not legally required to have a reasonable and genuine belief in the content of their political statements?
If I turn up for work and tell a bunch of lies, I’ll lose my job. Some politicians intentionally spread misinformation regularly without any real sanction, and they get paid a lot more than I do. Surely for $200,000+ per year our politicians should be expected to have some professional integrity?
The Voice Referendum clearly showed the damage that lies and misinformation, spread by politicians for political point-scoring, can have on our democratic process.
The “If you don’t know, vote no” mantra spruiked by the Opposition Leader really summed up Dutton’s strategy – spread as much misinformation as possible to create fear in the voting public. It worked and millions of people voted “No” without bothering to find out what they were actually voting “No” to.
The keenness with which some people apparently accepted their own ignorance without question, is another issue that I think warrants some research. Although I suspect the conclusion would be that people with significant pre-existing bias (for example views underpinned by racism and/or bigotry) don’t look too hard for reasons to challenge their existing beliefs. Such people don’t like to be wrong, and like even less to admit they are wrong, so they stubbornly cling to outdated ideology and related views.
While I believe that, for many Australians, Dutton’s fear campaign gave them the excuse they wanted to vote “No”, Dutton’s behaviour was a clear shot across the bow for our democracy. Unless we do something to legally require politicians to have “reasonable grounds” or “a reasonable basis for belief”, or similar, for their political statements, all future elections will be led by media campaigns that bombard the public with misinformation and lies. The purpose of bombarding the public with a myriad of lies and misinformation is so that nobody knows what is true, and consequently voters feel that no information can be trusted – even information from those who are telling the truth!
For politicians who lack credentials and or integrity, this is an effective strategy: They don’t need to prove they are worthy, they only need to get enough people to think the other candidate is unworthy.
We see this happen a lot in the US, where Trump tells so many lies that the average voter can’t possibly fact check them all, with the result it places all information in the political sphere under a cloud of distrust. Who knows what is right, or who is right? Of course, the pre-decided Trump voters just believe anything Trump says without question.
I think the “if you don’t know, vote No” campaign similarly appealed to pre-determined Referendum voters. They didn’t really care what the words were, it was just the excuse that many people were looking for to explain why they voted the way they always intended to.
My question is: How can the electorate be fully and properly informed about the issues we are voting on, if there is so much misinformation being published that nobody can tell what is real and what isn’t?
My experience suggests that misinformation strategies are usually adopted by those who have no substantive policies, and/or no personal integrity, and who are more interested in wealth and power, than reputation. It is the realm of Trump, Dutton, and others: distract, distort and derail. Win by not losing.
We all know Trump has a very loose relationship with the truth. In fact I think Trump divorced truth some time ago, treating Americans as gullible pawns in his ambitions for power.
Dutton, in my opinion, has a similar lack of respect for the Australian public – using Trump-like rhetoric to fuel racism and division for the sole purpose of political gain. He plays populist politics and is the master of the dog-whistle. I don’t believe Dutton is interested in a better Australia for all. I believe his priority is his political career, and that his conduct during the Voice Referendum shows that he’s willing to throw the nation under a bus to become Prime Minister, (by this I am referring to things like: Our democracy is now driven and negatively impacted by misinformation; “Reconciliation” may not be dead, but it is certainly on life-support; racism, racial vilification and hate speech has increased noticeably since the “No” outcome, not only towards Aboriginal people, but across the board; and the ongoing failure to address issues of entrenched socio-economic disadvantage mean that the billions of dollars spent each year to ineffectively address such disadvantage will likely continue.)
Our current Prime Minister is not faring well either. Following his election, Albanese stated in his victory speech that he was “committed to implementing the Uluru Statement from the Heart in full”. Yet after the failure of the Voice Referendum he has gone almost silent about the Treaty and Truth elements of the Statement, seemingly backtracking on plans for a bricks and mortar Makarrata Commission. It seems Albanese is now also putting his political aspirations and career ahead of what he had previously committed to. Another broken political promise.
The question people need to ask, is why do politicians withdraw support for positive initiatives designed to address the entrenched disadvantage impacting Aboriginal peoples and communities?
The answer is that career politicians know that the inherent level of racism and bigotry towards Aboriginal people in this country means that pushing initiatives that white people will label as “Abos getting special treatment” (along with demands that “we are all the same and should all be treated the same”, etc), is generally not the pathway to election or re-election. I think Albanese was lucky that most Australians saw the Statement from the Heart as a motherhood statement and didn’t think it through too much and Albanese’s election was I think more likely linked to a rejection of the former LNP Government than a vote for the Statement from the Heart.
So how do we instil more integrity in our political process? How can we protect the integrity of our democracy and enforce an expectation that our politicians will not lie to us?
I believe Australia needs legislation that holds politicians accountable for electoral promises and similar statements of commitment, other than in exceptional circumstances and if they are found to have lied to the Australian public, either knowingly, or without having undertaken reasonable due diligence to check their facts, then the penalties should be significant, include a judicial option for incarceration for serious offences.
The average Australian can end up in gaol for being broke and having unpaid parking fines, 12 year olds can end up locked up for stealing food because they are hungry and the Northern Territory wants to lock up 10 year olds for such offences. Yet politicians, those in charge of running the country, can knowingly make grandiose political promises they know they won’t keep, for the purpose of deceiving voters, without any legal consequence. How is that situation fair or reasonable? This country can only have an effective democracy if we are provided with accurate information about the issues affecting this country and the policy positions of those we might elect to deal with such issues.
I think Australians deserve better from our elected representatives, and those seeking election, than misinformation and lies. I believe this country needs legislation to stop politicians and political parties from knowingly spreading misinformation and lies.
The potential irony, of course, is that if a political leader promised to implement such legislation, I’d probably vote for them. But if they then didn’t implement the legislation there would be nothing I could actually do about the broken promise. This leads to another practical question: Would our politicians pass legislation that held them accountable for their political promises and stated commitments? A discussion for another day.
I hope this article may have got you thinking. It is of course just my opinion, written from my perspective, based on my lived experience. Whether you agree with what I write or not, I hope you can at least agree that our democracy is too important to be derailed and/or frustrated as a result of political misinformation campaigns and “porky pies” told by politicians. I hope you may also agree that we need some form of legislation to hold politicians more accountable for the promises they make.
Nathan Tyson, Head of First Peoples Strategy and Engagement, Uniting Church Synod of NSW and ACT
This article appears in the latest edition of Ruminations and is used with permission.
