Of integrity, adversarial politics and a fake email

Should I Twitter, or sign on to Facebook? What about MySpace, Scour, or hi5? Or what about Google, Skype and MSN chat? Internet mail? Horror of horrors, isn't that as old as the hills?

Technology: how it assumes a life and pace all its own. Is technology - the way it's outpacing life itself - a positive good or negative damnation?

To a few people, all these new-fangled means of cyber communication have come under a cloud, given a bad name by a fake email that all but paralysed the business of government recently: in Parliament, in the corridors of power and on the street, monopolising the air waves on radio and TV, and filling reams of newsprint.

Parliament rose for the six-week winter break with much of the business before it unresolved, sidetracked by traded insults from both sides of politics over allegations of corruption raised by the email that police subsequently found to be a forgery.

Our vulnerability to technology that we have not mastered is clear, illustrated by how a fake email could distract us from our substantive pursuits.

If any good has come out of this, it brought into question the integrity and efficacy of adversarial politics, understandings of corruption and cronyism, tensions within government between ministerial staffers and public servants, and professional standards in media ethics.

Central to the opposition campaign, alleging corruption on the part of Prime Minister Kevin Rudd and Treasurer Wayne Swan, is an ideological conviction questioning government intervention in a market economy that could expose government cronyism.

The Rudd Government's management of the economy in light of the global financial crisis is a bone of contention. That approach has over the week been subject to further glowing endorsement from the Organisation of Economic Co-operation and Development, and the International Monetary Fund.

It has included cash handouts to households, government guarantees to maintain confidence in the financial system, infrastructure building, and a program to support credit for car dealers - the subject of the fake email.

The opposition campaign hinges on alleged favours to a car dealer who is a friend of Rudd, living near to the prime minister in his Brisbane constituency, who puts a utility truck at the disposal of Rudd for his constituency work. It is an arrangement Rudd has declared among his pecuniary interests.

The campaign went into overdrive when a senior public servant in the Treasury gave testimony at a parliamentary hearing that contradicted Rudd's denials in Parliament - which led to opposition leader Malcolm Turnbull calling on Rudd and Swan to resign on account of them having misled Parliament.

The case rested on the email purported to have been sent from Rudd's economic adviser to Treasury official Godwin Grech, who administers the car credit scheme. The discovery by police - called in by Rudd - that the email was a forgery, demolished the Turnbull offensive.

It was to lead to claims and counter-claims from both sides of politics, calls for resignation from both sides, obfuscation, filibustering and generally unedifying conduct in Parliament televised into living rooms.

John Warhurst, adjunct professor of political science at the Australian National University and Flinders University of South Australia, is disappointed with the bad name all this has given to politics. "The vast majority of the public will be disillusioned (with the political process) on two counts," Warhurst tells the New Sunday Times.

There are the theatrical posturings in Parliament, the constant spectacle of disruptive division in the house, and calls for order.

The veracity or otherwise of opposition claims against government notwithstanding, the mud of corruption can stick.

As Warhurst asserts in a commentary he wrote in the online journal Eureka Street, corruption in politics does not just mean money changing hands. "Corruption in politics is more usefully seen as a corruption of the process by which the highest standards of non-partisanship and even-handedness should be applied to the policy-making process," writes Warhurst. "When (corruption) happens special interests are deliberately advantaged over others.

"As revealed once again by this affair, Australian politics at the federal level is not squeaky clean ... But neither is it deeply flawed and corrupt."

Warhurst's colleague, James Walter, head of politics at Monash University in Melbourne, cites international corruption indicators that place Australia generally in positive light. Especially where it applies to the more generally accepted understanding of corruption related to bribery.

Where it applies to the public policy process, Walter shares Warhurst's sentiment. Walter's reservation extends to the media.

In the case of the so-called Utegate Affair, a journalist to whom information had been leaked had sought comment from the prime minister's office on the purported email. Rudd left the journalist in no doubt about the inaccuracy of the information that he had. The newspaper went ahead to publish nevertheless.

Grech is under police investigation over the fake email. Should he be implicated in having a hand in the forgery, he will not have done Walter any favours. Walter, who with collaborator Paul Strangio published No, Prime Minister: Reclaiming Politics from Leaders, is a strong advocate of the Westminster system of an independent public service.

Walter had initial concerns about an "instinctively controlling" Rudd when Rudd first led Labor into government in November 2007. In the intervening 18 months, Walter says he has had cause to be optimistic about a more engaged prime minister, in people participation in government, and in his dealings with the public service.

Walter would be sorry if the action of a public servant were to reverse the prospect of weaning Rudd off a proclivity to authoritarianism and domination of government.

Why might Grech have been the long-term source of leaks to the conservative coalition opposition, as has been alleged?

The charitable view is of a "dry" economist scrupulous in wanting to ensure that the pump-priming approach to government management of the economy does not undermine even-handedness in public policy.

It all made for a week that one commentator suggested has been transformational in Australian politics.