Opinion and fact: ministerial expertise, cancers, cars and climate

While off-hand, ideologically-driven or politically-motivated opinions disguised as facts are nothing new in political discourse, the past week in Australian politics has seen an intensification of, sometimes weird, outdated or irresponsible opinion articulated as fact.

In the realm of material informed by religious discourse, long notable for its use of non-factual statements and bent truths, Senator Eric Abetz made links between abortion and breast cancer relying entirely on outdated factual studies from the 1950s.

Problematic here is that Abetz - as a minister, a senior member of the cabinet and the leader of the government in the Australian Senate - has among some of the most powerful capacity of any person in Australia to seek expert advice, fact-checkers, the most recent and up-to-date information, and independent authorities who can verify whether or not (and to what extent) the 1950s studies continue to be valid in terms of contemporary medical science and oncology.

The average person who is not a cancer scientist, a gynaecologist or a medical researcher - including myself - does not have the same ability to judge. So this becomes a matter of the kinds of responsibility we expect our senators to have when citing information and facts: the obligation to make use of studies, expertise and facts using the best available resources.

Facts about Australians from lower socio-economic backgrounds were treated more respectfully in terms of drawing on available knowledges than were pro-choice women this week.

Treasurer Joe Hockey stated that increasing taxes on petrol would not hurt the poor very much, because the poor "don't have cars or actually drive very far".

This statement left him open to substantial criticism from commentators that he is out-of-touch with public sentiment and seriously threatening the possibility of convincing the electorate that his budget has any value.

Rather than withdrawing the statement or backing away from his argument, the Treasurer reiterated it, stating that while he was "sorry" if he sounded callous he was merely pointing out the facts, derived from ABS studies.

That use of one of the primary Australian resources of factual information should be congratulated. The facts were a surprise to many, including myself. Being a surprise, they warranted further explanation as to how they were derived, the extent to which they applied to all persons from the socio-economic groups the Treasurer was discussing, and the extent to which there were exceptions to the rule (and how much, then, the tax change would affect those who were the exception).

Facts, however, became suddenly less factual and less grounded in common agreement or common fields of debate, when Mr Hockey stated on Sydney Radio 2UE: ""The fact of the matter is that I can only get the facts out there and explain the facts, how people interpret them is up to them". While facts are, of course, open to interpretation, Mr Hockey rendered them available to broad opinion. The other option available to him was to be the Treasurer of the Australian Government and explain the link between the facts, drawing on further expert advice if needed and stating that he was doing so in order to make the best decisions. As he was elected to do so.

Climate change issues have been subject to an ongoing public stoush between complex and difficult-to-understand expert opinion from scientists (whose work, even if driven ideologically or through personal opinion, is always verified through peer-review to count as scientific work) and some of the most ignorant opinion that relies on the assumption the average non-scientist's opinion should be taken as equivalent to fact, research and expertise.

Senior business adviser to the Abbott government and chairman of the Prime Minister's Business Advisory Council, Maurice Newman, drew on some interesting facts and some published research to pursue his fringe argument that climate change cannot be human-induced.

He argued in an opinion piece in The Australian that attempts to focus climate change responses on carbon reduction were similar to "primitive civilisations offering up sacrifices to the gods".

Newman's piece draws heavily on published research in order to ground his opinions in facts - an effective activity that any student essay-writer does as a regular part of learning assessment. However, what he fails to articulate is a study of his resources and whether or not they are, indeed, expert or biased themselves.

Newman cites the work of "Perth scientist" David Archibald, particularly referring to his book The Twilight of Abundancewhich argues that climate change is not an effect of carbon emissions but the result of shifts in solar activity. What Newman neglects to do is point to the fact that Archibald's fact are not only from a fringe perspective published in an unverified form, but that the author himself was apparently a former CEO of oil and mining exploration companies".

In Newman's case, then, opinion is articulated as fact by following the conventions of citation, in order to make an absurd argument about climate change and an even more ridiculous claim that likens contemporary models of climate action and responsiveness to "primitives" (indeed) fearfully attempting to appease their gods. Perhaps part of the responsibility of Newman, and one all opinion writers (perhaps myself too) should be following, is to consult all sides of the story, to carefully and slowly work through the different knowledges and make judgments based on expertise in order to come to a balanced, informed and informative opinion.

News Cycles, Immediacy and Ignorance

Part of the issue at stake here is the shift towards not only the twenty-four hour news cycle but to the intensification of immediacy in responsiveness. It is, seemingly, less acceptable for a minister, senior commentator or politician to state that further fact-checking and consultation with experts is needed.

Rather, the cycle operates with the assumption that there is a public demand all politicians and policy leaders know and understand every possible fact there-and-then and must have a position on those facts in order to appear as persons of 'integrity'.

Instead of bucking against that system and offering to consult their expert advisers, their departments, parliamentary research officers (etc.), Abetz and Hockey effectively buy into the system of immediacy in such a way as to participate in the "dumbing down" of information and fact, making "opinion" (and ideologically-driven opinion) the central component of all public debate, and pushing "expert opinion" and "informed opinion" to the sidelines, as if expertise and "being informed" are an archaic practice belonging only to dusty halls at a de-funded university.

While opposing the culturally-developed norms of contemporary political and news communication is not an easy task, politicians and opinion-leaders continue to be in substantially strong positions to do so.

Without undertaking some audience research, it would be difficult for this writer to know for sure, but one might make an educated guess that the public and the contemporary audience may well appreciate an opinion leader or politician who offers to go and check some facts, who says "I am still in the process of being informed on this complex issue" and who gives dignity to the government departments, researchers and expert consultants by stating that they are the people to whom she or he needs to return before saying anything further (digging a deeper hole, as John Hewson recently put it).

The problem with relying on the immediacy of hype and spin to cover poor research and a lack of engagement with quality research is that audiences are increasingly aware of how it works, as television comedies such as BBC's The Thick of It and ABC's Utopia demonstrate.

Combined with an intelligent network of commentary and response, opinion leaders and politicians become the least effective in leading the communication of ideas, the discussion of important issues and the effectiveness of public debate.

Responsibility

While it is gratifying to see there is a professional news media in addition to an active online commentary and blogosphere criticising the improper use of statistics, the ridiculous reliance on fifty year-old research and opinionated nonsense about climate, it remains that elected leaders, non-elected opinion-leaders and the "big players" in public debate have responsibilities not just for the information they reiterate, but for the ways in which it is communicated, the frameworks through which it becomes interpretable and the manner in which it affects audiences, readers and listeners.

Ignorance is not a lack of information, but is actively cultivated by a public sphere of communication represented through spectacle, hype, opinion and spin without a grounding in (or respect for) the slow, steady, painstaking research that produces expertise-which is not at all to say that expertise is necessary 'right', truthful or infallible. Just better.

Whether it is through political election, notoriety or status, those who come to be large-scale opinion leaders have not only the resources to help combat ignorance by drawing on expertise and research, but also have the responsibility to do so by disavowing the systems and types of speech that cultivate it.