Hildebrand: Lies, Teals and the art of tactical obfuscation

Peter Dutton and Anthony Albanese ought to be careful calling each other liars, while the Teals are becoming more known as bastions of hypocrisy than integrity writes Joe Hildebrand.

One of the cardinal rules of politics is that you don’t call your opponent a liar.

This isn’t due to some ancient and noble code of honour but because in politics everyone tells untruths, mistruths, half-truths and flat-out porkies. If telling lies disqualified you from politics our parliament would be empty.

Even in those august chambers the word “lie” rarely rears its ugly head. Instead the capital crime is euphemistically termed “misleading the parliament”.

But desperate times call for desperate measures and with today the last day of business before the nation breaks for Easter, the Coalition has loaded its cannon with the L-bomb and is firing at Albanese with abandon.

While Peter Dutton kept up the polite pretence during the second debate last night — saying only that the PM had “a problem with the truth” — campaign spokesman James Patterson unleashed, even setting up an “Albanese live lie tracker” online.

If telling lies disqualified you from politics our parliament would be empty. Picture: Matt Roberts/ ABC/ Pool/NewsWire

“He’s lied about the Coalition’s record on health, he’s lied about the Coalition’s record on education, he has even lied about falling off the stage,” he said.

“But the lie he told tonight about negative gearing is the most bald-faced lie he’s told in this campaign so far.”

This related to the PM’s claim that his government hadn’t got modelling done on negative gearing changes. Instead this modelling apparently emerged unbidden from the Treasury, which if true could mark the first confirmed evidence of initiative being shown by a government bureaucracy.

And so one man’s lie is another man’s tactical obfuscation.

Either way it’s a sign of how desperate this campaign has become and that whether you’re throwing accusations or copping them, politics is, at its heart, a dirty game.

But lo! What light through yonder window breaks? It is the east, and the Teals are the sun!

The Teal “independents” entered parliament en masse last election, bankrolled by an outfit called Climate 200 convened by billionaire climate activist Simon Holmes a Court.

As well as climate, their key platform was integrity in politics and their moral posturing quickly came to define them.

Among their haughty crusading was even an attack on the dark political art of “push-polling”, which is structuring a poll and its questions in such a way that the respondent is effectively bound to answer in the way the pollster wants them to.

One of the cardinal rules of politics is that you don’t call your opponent a liar. Picture: Matt Roberts/ ABC/ Pool/NewsWire

When a poll entered the field asking respondents if they were concerned that Teal MPs “receive significant funding from Simon Holmes à Court, a billionaire investor” Goldstein MP Zoe Daniel was outraged, describing it as “dirty tactics” and “an affront to democracy”.

And so imagine Goldstein’s surprise when a robocall started doing the rounds in the electorate asking if voters would be more likely to vote for the Liberal Party if it distanced itself from “the extreme agenda of its MPs like Barnaby Joyce and Matt Canavan, who oppose taking action on climate change and want to roll back abortion rights”.

By any definition that is a push-poll on steroids, and who was behind it? Why Daniel’s own backers: Climate 200.

Indeed, the robocall even sweetened the irony by praising Daniel’s record advocating for “integrity in politics”.

Meanwhile uber-teal Monique Ryan’s husband was busted pulling down her opponent’s election material, suggesting it’s only other people’s integrity they’re worried about.

Oh and let’s not forget Bradfield candidate Nicolette Boele pontificating about tackling sexual harassment while talking dirty to her hairdresser.

What great bastions of hypocrisy — sorry, “integrity” — they are.

Originally published as Hildebrand: Lies, Teals and the art of tactical obfuscation