Here at the pond we're standing by for a great flurry of moral turpitude, evasiveness and cynicism as we now learn that we all lie, that all politicians lie, that it's good and practical to lie, and that the things you say to your wife are not what you might say to the jelly wrestlers down at the Oxford Tavern.
"Come on show us your tits love. Gawh, they're bloody good tits."
Of course good old Barners didn't quite put it that way:
Sheesh, give Barnaby Joyce a boot, show him a mouth, and the lad's away. A natural.
But suddenly the question arises. What exactly does Barners say to his lover in the heat of passion? Clearly the lad doesn't talk about how he'd like the plastic bottles put into doubled-up plastic bags for safety (climate change? only when I get flushed in bed), or how he'd like the Ratsak in a separate bag (surrounded by Labor rats as he is), or how he'd like the fish kept separate from the fruit and vegetables (you know how the stench of Liberal fishheads ruins a good National banana). And besides, you silly goose of a check out lady, your scanning rate is way too low, you're a goner. Off to dole bludging for you.
Or perhaps he does talk this way, in a low sultry sweet talking way. Want to see my policies? Oh yes, yes, show me your policies Barners. Oh my, oh dear, they're so big ...
Meanwhile, good old Janet Albrechtsen provides her usual moment of comedy in Making history of the wrong kind by launching yet another standard Australian tirade against Chairman Rudd, but first providing a caveat to her Dame Slap rant:
In the same paper, Mike Carlton put Rudd's tarnished reputation down to "a relentless media campaign to destroy the Rudd government . . . naturally this has been led by the forces of darkness at News Limited".
No. The PM is responsible for his fall from grace in the polls. Rudd will never acknowledge that. But, then, leaders rarely do.
She really does make the perfect headmistress. Now girls, you know, as you face looming ignominy, that you only have yourselves to blame. You certainly can't blame me, a lecturing, scolding, hectoring headmistress, because I'm perfect in every way, whereas you lot, you only have yourselves to blame.
Still it's a relief to learn that the media, and The Australian and Janet Albrechtsen have absolutely no influence on the way things go down. What an excellent reason to completely ignore them. If Chairman Rudd's a lousy poker player, and it's all his fault, then Janet Albrechtsen's scolding is a complete irrelevance.
Meanwhile, Mirko Bagaric steps up to the plate elsewhere in the wretched rag to explain that Honesty not always the best policy position.
Oh dear, here it comes, in every predictable cliche laden way we could have hoped for, a determined attempt to explain why lying is for the best in the best of all possible worlds. Honesty is only the best policy for loons with difficult lovers.
Ah the joys of a gritty, realistic, down with it world view:
We all lie. Yet none of us accepts that we are dishonest. That's the biggest lie of all.
Yep, bugger off Pellites and nepotic Jensenists with all your blather about truth telling and personal honesty. Bugger the confessional. I had my fingers crossed. Yah yah.
But hang on, if lying is all the go, and lying is acceptable and useful, and who hasn't muttered a white lie when looking at the size of a man's penis, why then surely we're in the land of the French, those cursed post-structural relativists who've ruined western civilisation.
No, no, no, you can't lie about train timetables:
There is no doubt that lying is normally morally undesirable. For us to plan, co-ordinate and structure our activities it is necessary to have an accurate understanding of the state of affairs in the world. Absent this, our plans and projects would be frustrated. Lies undermine our capacity to achieve our goals and projects.
This is so whether they relate to the traits of people or the operation of systems and processes in the world.
Except of course politics and government, which as we know has nothing to do with the operation of systems and processes in the world.
Plans to catch the morning train, attend important appointments and meet work and other goals and deadlines can be derailed by misrepresentations regarding these matters.
If things are not the way they have been portrayed, our goals are far less likely to be secured.
Hang on, it was only yesterday that David Campbell was saying that Sydney traffic is no worse than it was twenty years ago. (here). By golly, I bet his nose expanded at such length and force that it punched a hole through the press release accompanying the RTA figures. As for the trains ... well we don't mention the trains here ...
But I digress in the usual pond style. Bagaric is a professor, and he explains how there's three kinds of permissable lying. It's okay to lie to protect unjust attacks on higher order interests, such as the right to life, liberty and physical integrity.
The second exception to the general prohibition against lying is where it is necessary to achieve important social goods that cannot be secured (at all or at least not very effectively) through transparent means. Thus, covert law enforcement practices and investigative journalism are sound practices.
And it is probably permissible to tell your children there is a Santa Claus and your wife that you are at work instead of at the pub having an extra drink.
Notice how easy it is to elide from talk of Santa Claus and telling your wife you're at work when you're down at the pub having a drink, ogling pole dancer before having a fuck with a hooker?
Now where does Tony Abbott fit in this behaviour, apart from believing that wine turns into blood, bread into flesh, and there'll be pie in the sky by and by, along with nice Easter rabbits handing out chocolates and tooth fairies to put coins under the pillow?
He is occasionally expedient with the truth on non-core issues to attract his audience. Is this justifiable? Yes, if it is a means to improving the greater community good by removing an incompetent government.
Gotcha! It's simply impossible to resist the Godwin's swear jar, and evoke the spirit of Hitler and Mussolini, and any other politician that blathers on about non-core issues in an untruthful way. For who really can define what's the non-core issues, and who - especially the righteous, the anointed and the chosen, who believe themselves sacred vessels of leadership - wouldn't see it as totally justified for them to be in power, rather than anyone else.
Hence you can come out with "climate change is crap" and then a crap climate change policy designed to deal with something that doesn't exist.
And here's where Bagaric swallows the ethical kool-aid:
It is a judgment call whether federal Labor has reached this level yet, but the scourge of pink batts, school halls and non-action on refugees, human rights and the environment makes it a line-ball decision.
But, but you goose, Tony Abbott is promising, at least if you can believe him, and it's not some kind of non-core evasion, a policy of non-action on the environment, or at least a feeble, half-hearted response, and rather than non-action on refugees, a firm policy of prison and ejection, and is already in the process of demonising refugees and using them as baseball bats as we return to the days of "boat people terror - they're pouring in from the north".
Is this the point of judgment calls and non-core promises?
Three more years of good intentions and excuses for doing nothing may be more than the country can tolerate.
What isn't line ball is that it is good finally to have a bit of honesty and maturity on the lying front. Those who still maintain they never lie need to do one of two things: stop lying or do us all a favour and drop the occasional fib.
Oh spare my days. Take a look at the Abbott interview again (and here it is, with transcript and vision).
Or listen to Abbott on the Neil Mitchell show (and you can read about that here). He sounded like a flustered, flummoxed goose.
He couldn't even deliver the standard political lies politicians would normally use to lie their way out of that kind of situation.
For god's sake, can we stop before it gathers full force the righteous claptrap about politicians showing honesty and maturity by admitting they lie.
Abbott's problem was that he failed to lie convincingly and well when confronted by fair average questioning, and instead resorted to dissembling and fair dinkum talk about fibbing a little. It's a standard Catholic response, shifting the debate to ethical terrain rather than getting on with the business of lying.
We all know - at least those who didn't come down in the last ethical shower with Bagaric - that we lie, and that politicians lie. What we want is a convincing liar, one who can lead us to the promised land, or at least get the trains to run on time, and the Sydney traffic to improve. And if they can't improve them, then to lie with glib plausibility, Bob Carr style, and shower us with bread and circuses, or at least the Olympics ...
The trouble with Abbott is that he's an inept, unconvincing liar ... and if he can't lie well, how the hell can he run the country well? Say what you will, Chairman Rudd knows how to fib in Mandarin ...
Oh wait, by Bagaric's standards, that makes him fit to run the country, by showing honesty and maturity on the lying front ...
As usual, Shakespeare makes more sense than Bagaric, and managed to do so some four centuries earlier:
(Aside) Two truths are told,
As happy prologues to the swelling act
Of the imperial theme.--I thank you, gentlemen.
(Aside) Cannot be ill, cannot be good: if ill,
Why hath it given me earnest of success,
Commencing in a truth? I am thane of Cawdor:
If good, why do I yield to that suggestion
Whose horrid image doth unfix my hair
And make my seated heart knock at my ribs,
Against the use of nature? Present fears
Are less than horrible imaginings:
My thought, whose murder yet is but fantastical,
Shakes so my single state of man that function
Is smother'd in surmise, and nothing is
But what is not.
Yep, nothing is but what is not in politics. There's truth-telling and then there's devious lies, and then there's the wood come to Dunsinane, and babes untimely ripped from the womb. And then there's Tony Abbott blithering away, his dull brain wrought with things forgotten. Like lies about the grand policies which will transport us all to paradise before the year is out that vanish from view just as he steps in front of a microphone to explain his grand vision ...
Give me a man who can tell a barefaced, or bald-faced lie:
How dare you try to falsify my person? You are discovered in a barefaced lie, and now want to bully it out.
Life; or, The adventures of William Ramble Esq., by John Trusler, 1793.
And here's an exegesis on bald-faced, boldfaced or barefaced lying, way more useful than Bagaric ...
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