Repeated reversals and broken promises are feeding a broader collapse of trust that reaches from economic policy to government transparency and defence.
Anthony Albanese has acquired another cross to bear over recent months. It’s one that will dog him, the more so for having come up in both One Nation and coalition party research, and which is now being wired into their scripts.
It’s the idea that Albanese is a liar. A person whose word and whose promises cannot be relied upon. Who cannot be trusted. Who, caught out, will not admit to conscious deception but who will give earnest explanations for why his earlier statements have been superseded by events, were not made under oath, or meant something else at the time. A person who, when his own words are quoted back at him, will often excuse his dissimulation with the claim that everyone does it, and that his bad example was not even particularly bad.
I have encountered some dreadful liars in politics in over 55 years of observing the species at close range. Albanese, on his record as either a batsman or a bowler, would not even make the first XI on merit or innate skill.
That’s not the important point. He’s being saddled with a reputation for being careless with the vérité at a time when the honesty and reliability of mainstream politicians is particularly at the fore. Moreover, he made very good political mileage over three years in opposition from the wilful and conscious prevarications and fibs of his predecessor Scott Morrison. People have not yet been able to forget Morrison’s knavery and Albanese’s explicit representations that he would be different, indeed would return Australian government to its previous high standards, and to open, transparent and accountable government. Some, indeed, were silly enough to believe him.
Others, too cynical to believe that a machine man without much of a history of idealism, inspiration or exemplary government, nonetheless were inclined to expect that he would honour explicit promises, such as, during his first term in government, that he would not interfere with tax breaks legislated for by the previous government. Or that, before the second term, he would not interfere with capital gains taxes.
As it happens, I think these undertakings should never have been given, least of all by a Labor government. After being given, they should have been repudiated as soon as possible, if only to give a new government the leeway and scope to address chronic problems of the economy.
Breaking constantly reiterated promises has him now described as a liar by his enemies
But Albanese did more than volunteer these promises. He had not even been corralled into his undertakings by the opposition or by the conservative financial press but had made a virtue of them, based on Labor mythology that it had failed to win government in 2019 because it had made too many promises. Even after being elected, he had pretended that he remained committed to the promises, and neither he nor the treasurer, Jim Chalmers, ever thought aloud about de-emphasising or dropping the commitment. Until, that is, the reversal of the promise was suddenly announced, without any effort to prepare the public for the about-face. There was a claim that the reversal was justified by new events.
Even if I thought that the advantages of breaking a promise that should never have been made were worth the political damage that would occur, it was hard to avoid the conclusion that Albanese had been very politically clumsy in the way he went about it. He was being criticised from his left for being too timid. Those critics said he should drop the promise as soon as possible because the money would come in handy. But Albanese insisted that keeping faith with voters was more important. He was openly fearful that voters of the centre and the right would punish bold policies and broken promises. He had reiterated the promises so often and so loudly, even after the elections they were intended to influence, that voters had some right to expect that these, at least, were promises the government intended to honour.
The strategy was to keep the lie alive for as long as possible, and then to pretend that circumstances, or government desperation, had changed. When the promises were broken, voters were entitled to feel themselves conned and betrayed. It is hardly surprising that many voters of conservative disposition (since these were the ones most likely to be appeased by a promise of no change in policy) would feel themselves tricked and swindled. They were entitled to deduce that they should never again be taken in by an economic or taxation promise coming from the Albanese government. That would include promises made over the future of superannuation policy, taxation on superannuation income or payouts, and the future tax or asset-test treatment of owner-occupied homes and investments in aged care.
Voters will, of course, not only suspect that explicit economic promises are bare-faced lies, not even sincere statements of intention. They will also have general reasons to distrust those who have made such promises in the past, or successor ministers who give every appearance of governing in the same way.
A reputation as a liar feeds into the One Nation narrative
The party most in a position to take advantage of Labor’s carelessness with the truth is not the Coalition, which has integrity and trust problems enough of its own. It is Pauline Hanson’s One Nation party. She is given much more than a broken promise that might have influenced some of her constituencies to play with. Her general critique or complaint about government is that politicians are liars, that they are not to be trusted, and that they govern not in the interests of the people at large but for their own people, and for insiders and lobbyists. She was the first to raise the slogan about Albanese’s being a liar, about “firing the liar” and about breach of trust. She too has used the example to ignore as relatively unimportant questions asked about trust in One Nation, or its own issues of honesty and reliability. She is probably also strengthened in her determination to make general and vague promises anyway, if only to give herself room to manoeuvre. Calling Albanese a liar is win-win for her.
By no means does a reputation as a liar always mean that one becomes ineffective in politics. Scott Morrison thrived for at least a while, even being distrusted by his own side of politics rather more than by the other. The public learnt him to be a fraud, even with the things he seemed to hold most dear. It took time to become a liability.
Politicians tend to be cynical about truth telling, and sometimes admire the capacity of others to stall, prevaricate, and find distractions. There’s even a moment sometimes for marvelling at the capacity of a politician to persuade himself of his own bullshit. Scott Morrison was ever a one for always believing what he was currently saying and believing himself while saying the exact opposite the day after.
The Albanese government is now confecting what it might subsequently call a long-range agenda. It involves artificial intelligence (AI). It involves the community, down to individuals taking some charge of what is force fed to them on social media. It involves the protection of children. It involves questions of balance between free speech and the coercive power of the state, at a time (always the most dangerous one) when the most authoritarian members of the state are utterly convinced of the moral righteousness of their causes. It involves the virtual certainty of conflict with the AI and social media transnationals, and the inevitability that these will demand the assistance of the US administration in resisting pressure. That they have recently lost a major court case in the US, or made some censorship arrangements with the European Community, does not mean that the power balance has necessarily changed.
Albanese now has a social media agenda of sorts, but it won’t change the lives of most Australians
For the moment it gives the government the appearance of being involved in a cause. A sense of government doing something. And sitting in nicely with the ambitions to lead the world with data farms, and with a leading role in AI.
It’s an interesting agenda, albeit with some political weaknesses. First, it may involve a grudging public support, perhaps even among those people turned off politics. But it will not galvanise them into any particular action or framework of mind, and it is a long way from transforming the economy, or resolving existing issues of the cost of living, slow growth and interest rates. Potential One Nation voters are not expecting to be deeply engaged in AI jobs, or in educating themselves for such jobs.
The real agenda remains in economic management, hopefully more inspired economic management. And that involves Albanese showing some real leadership over the labour force, vocational education and migration, each against the current tide. It’s not a task helped by a reputation for being slippery with the truth. Nor for giving every appearance of guilt and bad conscience whenever the skulduggery is caught out in fresh rorts. On matters such as this, Albanese is Labor’s worst enemy. And he is the worse for attempting, badly, to make the public service an active player in deceit and cover-up.
In the long run, cred matters. Particularly over things that are thought to matter. Albanese, on form, has no claim to public trust during future elections. He has form. It’s not merely a matter of economic or tax policy. He promised an attack on corruption within government but consciously sabotaged the legislation he had pledged to deliver. He promised that government would again follow due process, be open and transparent in its activities. It is entirely unreconstructed, and virtually every claim to the contrary is a lie. I have seen the public service from a time when it had little trouble attracting the best and the brightest young Australians, and from a time when it could offer them secure and satisfying careers. It’s now a long way from that, and the main reason is poor leadership, and the poor example set by ministers. Their ‘new ways’, including compulsive secrecy, are not better ways. Public service productivity and public service integrity are in decline. Politicians on both sides of the mainstream are to blame, because their own standards are so low, and expectations are uninformed.
Cred, or declining cred, also affects Australia’s place in the world. The Albanese government has not improved our standing in the world, whether in the immediate neighbourhood, among nearby nations expecting Australia to show some guts and resolve in dealing with regional problems, and in the western alliance, dying because the US has gone rogue.
Australian national security policy, and its national security state, are more shrouded in secrecy than any of its allies. The public is not in on the joke. Senior ministers, public servants and defence officials routinely lie to and mislead the Australian people about our defence commitments and capacity. Whether they realise it or not, many decision makers have become corrupted by the spoils system.
Diminished cred undermines faith that politicians, bureaucrats or soldiers could lead us in war
Defence policy involves the consent of the governed, and trust in ministers and officials. It also involves at least a public understanding of where Australia is in relation to defence and foreign affairs, so that deployments or responses to events do not catch the nation by surprise. Albanese short-cuts, involving sustaining a small army of insiders and spivs, are no substitute for national cohesion.
The fact that most Australians trust China rather more than the US suggests that our national leaders would have some work to do in preparing the population for war. I don’t think Albanese, Penny Wong or Richard Marles are up to it, and I do not think our professional military are either.
I suggested last week that there is not a consensus in Australia that this nation would support the United States or Taiwan if China were to invade it. None of the very recent bugle calls, including assertions about a Japanese intervention, have strengthened the case. I doubt that Albanese has the moral, political or military power, or the cred, to drag the Australian people into such a conflict. The national trust in Albanese is not there. That the US would be “by our side” is reason enough by itself for mutiny or insurrection. Australia would not, after all, be going into battle to support gallant little Taiwan. It would be there for America.
It would be like every single Australian military expedition in support of America in the past 80 years, doomed to failure, defeat and the loss of much blood and treasure. And very serious damage to our relationships with our neighbours and trading partners, including Japan, Korea, Indonesia, India, and China. Australia might not want Taiwan to be incorporated into China – though it stood by doing nothing when Hong Kong was absorbed. That we disapproved was not judged to make it our struggle, let alone our inevitably futile struggle. If military adventure is what our boffins want, we would be better trying to bring peace to Southern Sudan. Or stationed on the southern border of Canada, very far away from Albanese, Marles or Wong.
John Waterford AM, better known as Jack Waterford, is an Australian journalist and commentator.