Snakes and crocodiles, crocodiles and snakes

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?