Snakes and crocodiles, crocodiles and snakes

Nobody tells the truth all of the time. But when it comes down to politicians whose actions have the power to determine the quality of our collective lives, then somebody in Canberra better start being reliably and consistently truthful about their intentions.

I was once in a tinnie on the Daintree River. I wasn’t alone: there were several other voyagers and a skipper. We travelled slowly, hugging the bank, ducking our heads as we passed under the low-hanging tree branches. On the opposite shore we watched a company of sizeable crocodiles as they sunned themselves on the sand bank.

Suddenly, there was a thud, and something fell out of a tree and landed in the bottom of the boat. One of my companions let out a scream and tried to run to the far end of the tinnie. Two more joined her. As the tinnie lurched and threatened to tip us all into the river, our skipper let loose a spectacular riff of obscene oaths, and roared at us to keep still.

I looked at my feet, where everyone seemed to have focused a collective disbelieving gaze. There I saw a very large snake.

The snake churned and spat and hissed itself into quite a state. The crocodiles on the bank opposite raised their snouts and sniffed, before sliding into the muddy water and disappearing, at least for the time it would take them to get across the river.

Trapped in a dilemma nobody could have foreseen, a dilemma of archetypal proportions, we struggled to decide what action we could take that would be most likely to preserve our lives. Leap into the crocodile infested waters? Or stay in the tinnie with a forked-tongued python casting about for something to bite?

It occurs to me that this is in many ways an appropriate metaphor for voters in this election year. With Prime Minister Kevin Rudd’s expanding portfolio of undertakings that have come to worse than nothing, and Opposition Leader Tony Abbott’s confession that what he says, unless he’s reading from hard copy, is not necessarily to be believed, it’s difficult to decide which are the snakes and which are the crocodiles.

All a punter can know for certain is that neither of them is good for our on-going health and wellbeing. Neither of them has our best interests at heart, but instead see us as prey, our votes the fodder they require to keep them where they want to be, at the top of the political food chain.

The reality is that if we can’t believe what Mr Abbott says, there is no point at all in him talking to us anymore.

That would be a relief, because like so many of his peers, he is increasingly full of sound and fury and signifying nothing.

Politicians, like all leaders, set a tone. If politicians tell the electorate not to believe what they say, then politicians give license to everyone else in the community to lie overtly or by omission, to fudge, spin, deal in half-truths and in general do everything but take responsibility for what comes out of our mouths.

If politicians operate with a wonky moral compass and laugh it off, they give permission to everybody else to go off course.

I’ve argued in an earlier piece that Tony Abbott is not a serious man. Mr Abbott continues to provide us with evidence of this. He now claims he’s being what he calls “fair dinkum” in admitting that he doesn’t always speak “the gospel truth”.

“Late night lovers’ talk” Mr Abbott also asserts, does not hold the same veracity as what is said in the cold light of day.

“Late night lovers’ talk” is not and will never be an appropriate discourse for politicians and voters. Does he mean he’ll tell us anything to get us into bed with him, but once we’ve done it he won’t want us anymore?

Or as the Shirelles so piteously expressed it: Will you still love me tomorrow?

Lack of moral responsibility has been fully disclosed. Engage with this man at your own risk.

Anyone who enters into a relationship with someone who honestly admits they can’t be trusted is in for trouble, and they can’t say they haven’t been warned. Neither can they place blame, and demand accountability when things go wrong. This is the ultimate escape hatch for a politician: “I told you at the start not to believe me and you elected me anyway. So whose fault is that?”

Just when we thought politicians had stretched the definition of truth to its furthest limits, this time it’s Mr Abbott who shows us there is still a way to go.

Prime Minister Kevin Rudd hasn’t come out and told us we can’t believe what he says. However, many of his actions could well lead us to that conclusion. Back flips, broken promises, a backing away from “the greatest moral challenge of our time,” all imply that perhaps there’s a great deal of what he says that we can’t take as “gospel truth” either.

Snakes and crocodiles. Crocodiles and snakes.

And the tinnie’s lurching.

In our culture, footballers are regarded as role models for our young. Many people are indignant when a footballer falls from grace and sets a bad example. If footballers behave badly and are seen to get away with it, our thinking goes, this gives license to the less renowned to do the same thing.

There is truth in this. When bad behaviour by someone perceived as having authority is sanctioned, that behaviour can seem less serious, even a bit of a joke, nothing to get worked up about. The behaviour becomes normalised, even naturalised. Everyone can become a little more numbed, a little less demanding about what’s acceptable and what isn’t.

Standards, they used to be called when people cared about having them. Keeping up standards. Somebody in the community has to be responsible for maintaining the standards that make civilised life possible. If we can’t believe a word anybody says, especially those at the helm of the tinnie, then where does that leave us?

Lying politicians have long been normalised. We hate it but it never really surprises us. It is quite new, though, to hear a politician making a feature of his untrustworthiness. It’s a worrying trend. I’m honest because I admit I’m a liar is a challenging moral conundrum. But he’s only being “fair dinkum,” Mr Abbott protests.

This moral conundrum takes us a long way away from the concept of “fair dinkum”. The concept doesn’t originate in the labyrinthine depths of sophistry. It’s a far cry from the development of a specious argument designed to deceive.

The notion of “fair dinkum” depends for it’s meaning on a concept of straightforwardness, authenticity, and what you see is what you get.

Couldn’t be further apart, really.

So when Mr Abbott tells us he’s only being “fair dinkum” about his unreliability, what is he telling us? That he can be relied upon to be unreliable, and we should rate him as being a fair dinkum Australian for admitting it?

We tremble on the brink of yet another moral challenge: the Leader of the Opposition, a deeply religious man to boot, resorting to sophistry to mess with the punters’ minds.

The term “fair dinkum” is the uniquely Australian signifier of deeply felt attitudes towards profound moral values. We may not use the term as freely as we once did, we may even laugh at it, but we still recognise and treasure the spirit of it, and it forms the bedrock of many of our notions of morality and fair play.

Mr Abbott should wash his mouth out with Sunlight soap for taking the term in vain.

And what about politicians? Aren’t they, or shouldn’t they be role models? After all, they are more visible, and of more generalised interest to the population than any other group. Doesn’t this visibility and power incur responsibility for upholding moral standards at least equal to that incurred by footballers?

Prime Minister Rudd seems quite keen on the notion of great moral challenges. What about this one: politicians take responsibility for what they say in public. They keep their fibs for their personal lives.

In other words, what about politicians behaving in a manner that is consistent with the enormous power entrusted to them by the electorate?

A friend of mine, when asked how he manages to maintain his good spirits in the face of the political atmosphere in which we are currently obliged to dwell, replied that he puts it down to having ensured all his adult life that he has not had to breath the same air as a politician.

On the Daintree our skipper eventually managed to pick up the snake and hurl it back onto the riverbank. He then gunned the outboard and we took off, leaving the crocodiles far behind.

In this election year punters don’t have a skipper to take charge and save us from the predators. We can only do that for ourselves. We can only let them know we’re sick of the lies, and the sophistry, and the back downs from the great and small moral challenges, one after another. We thirst for truth, and we long to trust.

The punters don’t have to settle for liars steering the tinnie.

In the end, being fair dinkum is what separates us from the crocodiles and the snakes. Isn’t it?