Opinion: Politicians don’t lie, they only misspeak

You and I tell lies or refrain from telling the whole truth for personal gain. Politicians do none of these things. They misspeak, writes Mike O’Connor.

Some years have passed since Hillary Clinton revealed she had been shot at by snipers when disembarking from an aircraft in Bosnia.

“I remember landing under sniper fire. There was supposed to be some kind of a greeting ceremony at the airport, but instead we just ran with our heads down to get into the vehicles to get to our base,” she said.

Except she didn’t. When video showed her walking calmly from the aircraft with daughter Chelsea and chatting with a group of children on the tarmac before being driven away, she claimed she had misspoken.

She thought she had been shot at and had to run for her life, but on second thoughts, remembered that she hadn’t. No snipers, no shots, no running.

You and I tell lies or refrain from telling the whole truth for personal gain. Politicians do none of these things. They misspeak.

Federal Treasurer Jim Chalmers suffered an attack of the Hillarys when he claimed Reserve Bank governor Michele Bullock didn’t say government policies were helping sustain inflation.

She had said precisely that, and everyone including the Treasurer knew it, but there’s nothing like a shovelful of misspeaking when it comes to ducking the blame for the plight of those poor souls having trouble feeding their families.

Jim Chalmers, Penny Wong and Anthony Albanese have all ‘misspoken’.

Anthony Albanese suffered an attack of the Hillarys when he said that ASIO was vetting all Gazan residents seeking entry visas, claiming that he was directly quoting ASIO boss Mike Burgess in saying this – except that he wasn’t, because Burgess has said no such thing and the Prime Minister must have known this. Misspeaking, or deliberately and calculatingly misleading Parliament?

Is a half-truth also a half-lie? It’s a question that could be put to Foreign Affairs Minister Penny Wong following her remarks on the release of her government’s inquiry into the death of Australian aid worker Zomi Frankcom in an Israeli Defence Force air strike on a World Central Kitchen convoy.

“Zomi Frankcom and her colleagues from World Central Kitchen were killed in an intentional strike by the IDF,” Senator Wong said.

What the senator failed to mention was that her own government’s report had found that there were armed men in the convoy in contravention of World Central Kitchen’s policy, men who “gave the appearance of the presence of Hamas”.

The report said it could not rule out the possibility that the aid group had inadvertently hired security guards with links to the terrorist group, and said drone video footage showed at least one of these men firing a weapon into the air, and that Israeli targeting procedures were similar to those used by the Australian Defence Force, all of which casts the incident in a somewhat different light.

Misspeaking, or a calculated attempt to mislead?

Misspeaking has now been elevated to an art form in Australia, and become so ingrained in the political process as to be accepted as the norm – or has it?

Riot police face protesters in Bristol, southern England, earlier this month. Picture: Justin Tallis/AFP

The riots that erupted in the UK following the fatal stabbing of three little girls were driven in part by far-right extremists, but that was only part of the story.

As they spread, the marchers were joined by people who saw the riots as an opportunity to show their frustration and vent their anger at the way that they had been treated by the political class.

They had been told for years that their country would regain control of its borders, that immigration would be controlled, that their standard of living would improve and that problems plaguing state services such as the health system would be addressed.

Sound familiar?

None of these things has happened. They have been misspoken to for decades, and it is not difficult to understand the fury of those people who feel that they have been treated like idiots and that their country has lost control of its own destiny.

Taking to the streets was their way of saying that things had to change.

No excuse can be made for the actions of the extremist thugs who terrorised immigrants but it would be a mistake to think that the riots did not signal a deeper, more far reaching sense of anger.

It would be equally naive not to wonder if an ever-increasing number of normally mild-mannered, she’ll-be-right Australians are tiring of self-serving misspeaking leaders who play them for fools and if one day this suppressed anger will explode onto our streets.

Originally published as Opinion: Politicians don’t lie, they only misspeak