Opinion: Deception replacing passion in politics

BARNABY Joyce, Rob Pyne, Donald Trump: rarely has the public had to put up with so much unabashed balderdash from the mouths of pollies on all sides.

AMERICAN writer Mark Twain once opined “there are three kinds of lies: lies, damned lies and statistics.”

I think the events of last week allow us to add a fourth variety: fevered political rhetoric. I’ve spent years perusing politics through a microscope lens but rarely have I seen so much unabashed balderdash, from the mouths of pollies on all sides, as I’ve seen in the past seven days.

The first howler came from Deputy PM Barnaby Joyce who, in the great Aussie tradition, snatched underdog status the moment he heard former New England MP Tony Windsor wanted his old job back. Like most of us, I fail to see how Joyce, sitting on a 15 per cent margin with all the advantages of incumbency and all the resources of major party leadership, can call himself an underdog.

Deputy Prime Minister Barnaby Joyce snatched underdog status the moment he heard former New England MP Tony Windsor wanted his old job back. Picture: AAP

After his clumsy intervention into the Johnny Depp “Boo and Pistol” saga, I’m surprised Joyce was keen to embrace any metaphor of the canine variety.

Just when I thought opposition to reforming Senate voting rules couldn’t be more shrill, the rainbow coalition of Labor and host of single issue micro senators – some supported in 2013 by as few as one in 200 voters – unleashed a cynical hysteria worthy of Orson Welles’s War of the Worlds.

Allowing voters to allocate their own preferences above the line on Senate ballot papers – and not allow their choice to be hijacked in shady backroom deals – apparently is the death knell for Australian democracy because it will somehow “disenfranchise” (take away the voting power) of millions of Australians. How, exactly, is beyond me but, in the tradition of political exaggeration, I suppose no lie is too big.

That brings me back to Queensland where, last week, I was gobsmacked by former Labor MP Rob Pyne’s claim that he’s so disgusted by politics that he enjoys a “good bath in Dettol” whenever he returns home. This silly statement was clearly for public consumption in his own seat of Cairns where Pyne will find it difficult to be re-elected as an independent. Like One Nation MPs before him, Pyne is exploiting old-fashioned cynicism to paint himself as the true non-politician.

With all due respect, Rob, after two terms on Cairns Regional Council, and after engaging in party preselection, you are, by definition, a politician who has long known that tough political exchange is grubby but essential to making good policy in a state as diverse as Queensland.

Moreover, your successful election means you were the beneficiary of that system. To now claim shock and ignorance seems disingenuous, and points rather to dissatisfaction at losing a political argument in the party room than anything else.

Rob Pyne claims he’s disgusted by politics.

But the last example is arguably the most dangerous, and the fact it’s thousands of kilometres away might not save Australia from its effects come next January. I’m not talking about a single statement but a collection of angry tirades, actions, attitudes and manipulations – the likes we haven’t seen since the anti-communist cold war days – all wrapped up in one candidacy: the injudicious juggernaut that is Donald Trump.

Sadly, Trump’s campaign is the perfect embodiment of The Big Lie.

How else can we describe a white billionaire Republican businessman – the quintessential elitist insider – playing the political cards of a rebellious common man? Worse still, this type of political maverickism, while endearing to angry Americans both rich and poor, isn’t just cleaving vote choices. It’s clearly dividing America with a level of hate and violence not seen since the Democrats’ campaign of 1968.

Trump only confirmed fears when he implied – and since retracted – monetary and legal support for those who “roughed up” anti-Trump protesters.

It was the lowest of lowbrow populism that some commentators are already warning could be the first step toward an American Kristallnacht (Night of Broken Glass) – that terrible event in 1938 Germany where government leaders urged violence against their enemies. Has the great political lie come to this?

Why deceptive rhetoric is replacing honest passion isn’t easy to fathom.

Maybe it’s shallow political coverage in a web and TV age. Maybe it’s the final evolutionary stage in two-party political systems that have traditionally limited electoral choice. Whatever the reason, we can only hope voters everywhere read, think, reflect and reason. It’s the only antidote.

Dr Paul Williams is a senior lecturer at Griffith University’s School of Humanities.
Twitter: @PDWilliams1