Honesty matters - the ethics of daily life
Julian Burnside
Jesuit Seminar Series 2005
Xavier College, Kew, Melbourne
23 February 2005
It is the logic of our times,
No subject for immortal verse
That we who lived by honest dreams
Defend the bad against the worse.
(Cecil Day-Lewis, Where are the War Poets (1943))
Most people understand intuitively the importance of language.
We all use it every day in order to function in society. Society
without language is inconceivable. But as the torrent of words increases,
we come to know that words can be used to trap us or to free us;
to help us or hurt us.
In most circumstances, language is intended to convey meaning.
Ideally, it should do so accurately. Some writers and speakers betray
this ideal, and use language as a stalking horse for quite different
ideas they wish to disguise or dare not acknowledge.
Depending on circumstances, this technique may be called tact,
diplomacy, euphemism, doublespeak or lying. The proper description
depends on the speaker’s purpose.
Tact sets out to avoid giving offence. It suppresses or disguises
an unhappy truth to spare the feelings of another. It is falsehood
in the service of kindness; a down-payment on future favour. When
tact is lifted from the personal to the national scale, it is called
diplomacy.
Euphemism does not directly suppress the truth, but disguises
it by substituting gentle words for harsher ones. Its intention
is benign, if somewhat fey. Its excesses of delicacy inspired Dr
Bowdler to strip Shakespeare of any disturbing content: removing,
as he said, its ‘blemishes’. Euphemism is especially
needed where body parts and body functions are the subject: a cheap
frock for recognised facts.
Tact is kind; diplomacy is useful; euphemism is harmless and sometimes
entertaining. By contrast, doublespeak is dishonest and dangerous.
When Cecil Day-Lewis wrote the words above, the world was wracked
by Hitler’s war. Hitler had done much to restore the fortunes
and spirit of the German nation, a nation which had been nearly
destroyed by the terms of the Treaty of Versailles.
But Hitler had also been engaged in enterprises which the world
would eventually deplore; much of what he did was masked in falsehood;
and what was seen and known of is worst excesses was covered over,
or denied or ignored by allied powers who did not find truth convenient
in that desperate time. The allies knew of Hitler’s death
camps but did nothing.
In his closing address at Nuremberg, US prosecutor Robert Jackson
said:
“Lying has always been a highly approved Nazi technique.
Hitler, in Mein Kampf, advocated mendacity as a policy. Von Ribbentrop
admits the use of the "diplomatic lie." Keitel advised
that the facts of rearmament be kept secret so that they could
be denied at Geneva. Raeder deceived about rebuilding the German
Navy in violation of Versailles. Goering urged Ribbentrop to tell
a "legal lie" to the British Foreign Office about the
Anschluss, and in so doing only marshaled him the way he was going.
Goering gave his word of honor to the Czechs and proceeded to
break it. Even Speer proposed to deceive the French into revealing
the specially trained among their prisoners.
Nor is the lie direct the only means of falsehood. They all
speak with a Nazi double talk with which to deceive the unwary.
In the Nazi dictionary of sardonic euphemisms "final solution"
of the Jewish problem was a phrase which meant extermination "special
treatment" of prisoners of war meant killing; "protective
custody" meant concentration camp; "duty labor"
meant slave labor; and an order to "take a firm attitude"
or "take positive measures" meant to act with unrestrained
savagery. Before we accept their word at what seems to be its
face, we must always look for hidden meanings. Goering assured
us, on his oath, that the Reich Defense Council never met "as
such." When we produced the stenographic minutes of a meeting
at which he presided and did most of the talking, he reminded
us of the "as such" and explained this was not a meeting
of the Council "as such" because other persons were
present. ...”
Twisting the truth was a commonplace in Hitler’s Germany,
but politicians in many regimes use the same technique: a fact emphasised
by George Orwell in Politics and the English Language (1946) and
in Nineteen Eightyfour (1948). Orwell wrote of the misuse of language
by politicians:
“A mass of Latin words falls upon the facts like soft snow,
blurring the outline and covering up all the details. The great
enemy of clear language is insincerity. When there is a gap between
one's real and one's declared aims, one turns as it were instinctively
to long words and exhausted idioms, like a cuttlefish spurting
out ink.”
It is an astonishing thing that, although Orwell showed the stage
tricks used by the main offenders, those tricks continue to work.
We sit, most of us, like captivated schoolchildren in sideshow alley,
spellbound as the hucksters of language deceive and dissemble. The
contagion of dishonest language has not abated.
When senior politicians speak today, it is essential to listen
acutely to appreciate that they are simply staying on message whilst
avoiding truth, accuracy or anything remotely approaching an answer
to the question they have been asked. Even when they appear to be
answering the question, you have to listen very closely. Remember
the skilful evasions of Mr Howard when he was asked a question in
Parliament by the Member for Chisholm:
“ANNA BURKE, MEMBER FOR CHISHOLM: Prime Minister, was the
Government contacted by the major Australian producer of ethanol
or by any representative of him or his company or the industry
association before its decision to impose fuel excise on ethanol?
JOHN HOWARD, PRIME MINISTER: Speaking for myself, I didn't personally
have any discussions, from recollection, with any of them.
A document obtained by the Opposition under freedom of information
laws records a meeting between John Howard and Dick Honan about
ethanol, just six weeks before the decision. But Mr Howard says
he spoke the truth; that his answer related to a different part
of the question and that he has been taken out of context.
This same inclination to use language in order to deceive has
infected the public service. At a public meeting in April 2002,
I had the opportunity to debate aspects of refugee policy with one
Philippa Godwin, Deputy Secretary of the Department of Immigration.
Philippa Godwin is clearly a woman of great intelligence. I asked
her a question about a fence which surrounds the Baxter Detention
Centre. The fence is described on a plan of Baxter as a "courtesy
fence". I suggested that it was in fact an electric fence.
"No" she insisted "It is not an electric fence. It
is an energized fence". A 9,000 volt energized fence.
The war in Vietnam produced such doublespeak expressions as:
Collateral damage (killing innocent civilians)
Removal with extreme prejudice (assassination)
Energetic disassembly (nuclear explosion)
Limited duration protective reaction air strikes (bombing villages
in Vietnam)
Incontinent ordnance (bombs which hit schools and hospitals by
mistake)
Active defence (invasion).
When Jimmy Carter’s attempt to rescue American hostages in
Iran – a catastrophic strategic blunder – he described
it as “an incomplete success”. When Soviet tanks invaded
Prague in 1968, the manoeuvre was described as “fraternal
internationalist assistance to the Czechoslovak people”. The
same expression may well explain America’s presence in Iraq.
Doublespeak uses language to smuggle uncomfortable ideas into
comfortable minds. The Nazi regime were masters at it. The Howard
Government is an enthusiastic apprentice.
The victims of ‘protective reaction air strikes’, or
‘incontinent ordnance’, or ‘fraternal internationalist
assistance’ often flee for safety. A small number of them
arrive in Australia asking for help. They commit no offence under
Australian or international law by arriving here, without invitation
and without papers, in order to seek protection. Nonetheless the
Australian Government refers to them as “illegals”.
Like all doublespeak, “illegals” is used for a purpose:
these people are immediately locked up without trial. No doubt it
seems less offensive to lock up “illegals” than to lock
up innocent, traumatised human beings.
They are also disparaged as "queue jumpers": a neat
device which falsely suggests two things. First that there is a
queue, and second that it is in some way appropriate to stand in
line when your life is at risk.
When the “illegals/queue jumpers” arrive, they are
"detained" in “Immigration Reception and Processing
Centres”. This description is false in every detail. They
are locked up without trial, for an indefinite period - typically
months or years - in desert camps which are as remote from civilisation
as it is possible to be. They are held behind razor wire and slowly
sink into hopelessness and despair.
Mr Howard’s pathological dishonesty has deceived a nation
into accepting these obscenities, while he massages our conscience
with soft words for hard things. This has become the hallmark of
his government. Their prevarication about their knowledge of prisoner
abuse in Iraq is becoming increasingly apparent. In the wake of
Rod Barton’s revelations (4-Corners 14 February 2005), Senator
Hill took cover behind the distinction between interrogation and
interviewing: a distinction no doubt lost on the shackled and hooded
prisoners, already softened up by order of our US allies. It is
a distinction which shames those who understand, and makes collaborators
of those who hear it without protest.
At its foundations, democracy depends on a base level of honesty
in politicians. The essence of democracy is that the elected representatives
are chosen because their constituents think this candidate or that
will best represent their views in parliament. If a candidate lies
about his or her beliefs and values, the democratic process is compromised.
The greater the lie, the greater the damage to the true course of
democracy.
Equally important, the conduct of politicians sets an example
for all of us. A generation of children is learning by watching
our leaders: Mr Howard won the 2001 election by lying: he said,
falsely, that some refugees had thrown their children overboard.
Refugees were the hot issue in November 2001. Mr Howard showed that
it is OK to lie as long as you win. The effects of this, and his
many other excursions in dishonesty, will take a long time to eradicate.
“Family values” is one of the great catch cries of
the Howard Government. They came to office in 1996 under the banner
of “Family Values”. On the 8th July 2004, in a major
speech in Adelaide, Mr. Howard declared that he stands for a “fair
and decent society”. These are noble sentiments, but are they
to be taken at full value or are they to be understood as a special
code?
Just a month after the Adelaide speech, the Howard government
won an important refugee case in the High Court. Mr al Kateb arrived
in Australia in mid-December 2000. He was born in Kuwait. His request
for asylum was refused. He found conditions in Woomera so intolerable
that he asked to be removed from Australia. Eighteen months later
he was still here because, being a stateless Palestinian, there
was no country where he was entitled to be and no country was willing
to receive him.
The Migration Act provides that a person who comes to Australia
without papers must be detained, and they must remain in detention
until either they get a visa or they are removed from the country.
When the Keating government introduced those measures in 1992, one
supposes that Parliament suspected that either of those two outcomes
would be available in every instance.
They had not allowed for the anomalous case of stateless people.
You might think that a government which has paraded itself virtuously
as committed to a fair and decent society, committed to family values,
might quickly amend the law to account for these few anomalous cases.
But what the government did, in fact, was to argue at every level
of the court system that al Kateb, although he has committed no
offence in Australia, can be held in detention for the rest of his
life. The government won in the High Court, on 6 August 2004.
The thought of an innocent person being jailed for the rest of
his life is so shocking that it is impossible to resist the impulse
to try and do something about it. Anyone, even the most hardened,
must find it a dreadful thing to imagine the circumstances of a
person being held in detention forever when they have not committed
any offence. It should be a matter of real concern that a government
ostensibly committed to a ‘fair and decent society’
is willing to argue for the right to jail the innocent for life.
Unhappily, most members of the press seem to be unaware of this
decision, or unwilling to discuss it. Andrew Bolt, Janet Albrechtsen
and their like are voices widely heard, but they cannot bring themselves
to acknowldge the depravity of gaoling innocent people for life.
They are accomplices to the dishonesty of the government.
Likewise, the treatment of the Bakhtiyari family is impossible
to reconcile with Mr Howard’s asserted adherence to Christian
values and family values.
The family’s claim for asylum foundered, apparently because
the government thought they came from Pakistan, not Afghanistan.
Like all asylum seekers, they were jailed in Woomera.
Locking up innocent people for years has certain fairly obvious
and predictable consequences, especially if the prisoners are children.
Depending on their age, resilience and personality, children will
retreat into depression and incontinence, or they will take charge
by harming themselves or attempting suicide. Either way, the effect
on children of prolonged detention is devastating.
The Bakhtiyari case gained a certain notoriety, because the two
boys escaped from Woomera, having tried to kill themselves at the
tender ages of 12 and 14. Regardless of doubt about which country
they had fled, one thing is clear: we damaged these children. They
are not to blame. The harm they have suffered was the obvious and
predictable consequence of the treatment we inflicted.
It continued just before Christmas, when their house in Adelaide
was raided and they were taken to Port Augusta in preparation for
removal from Australia. The baby had a dirty nappy: the mother was
not allowed to change it; the younger girl wet her pants in fright;
but she was not allowed to change before the 5 hour drive. Alamdar
- his face made familiar to us on TV as he screamed in terror through
the steel bars at Woomera - Alamdar is afraid to sleep at night
in case of another sudden, wrenching raid. And all the children
are haunted by terrors childhood should never know.
Showing compassion to the Bakhtiyari family would have been consistent
with family values, Christian charity, fairness and decency –
the values Mr Howard claims to hold. His government chose to remove
the family, despite increasing public concern.
The government's policy of punitive deterrence has succeeded in
shutting off almost completely the trickle of unauthorised arrivals
to Australia. The drowning of 353 people on SIEV X effectively ended
the people smugglers' trade. It is difficult to imagine that sparing
the Bakhtiyari family would have triggered a spate of new arrivals,
eager to spend years behind razor wire. From there on the cruelty
was truly pointless.
The decision whether to remove the family or let them stay was
an interesting test of Howard’s pretended Christian values.
He failed.
The removal of the Bakhtiyari family reflects on the character
of this country's leadership. Mr Howard, Mr Ruddock and Mrs Vanstone
are personally responsible for the shocking damage suffered by those
children. They hold themselves out as Christians; but at Christmas
time in 2004 they denied kindness or compassion to 6 children whose
lives they have blighted.
Unfortunately, the government seems concerned that mercy and compassion
set a bad precedent. By removing the Bakhtiyaris, the government
sent a message: not to people smugglers, but to us. Its message
to us is this: We hold absolute power; we do not have to acknowledge
public sentiment; we can crush anyone who messes with us.
This is why honesty matters. Imagine the reaction at the polls
if John Howard had told the truth. Imagine if, in 2001, he had said:
“I know the asylum seekers did not throw their children
overboard – they were just doing what any decent parent
would do – they were trying to save them from the Taliban,
or Saddam Hussein.”
Imagine if, in 2004, he had said:
”My government locks up innocent people. We treat them
cruelly, because we want to discourage others from seeking help.
We have power to gaol innocent people for life. I will not help
the Bakhtiyari children at Christmas time because I don’t
have to. I will show compassion for popular victims.
Imagine how different things might be if we had an honest Opposition.
Too timid to take a stand, the Labor party has spent the last 8
years nodding passively at every failure of human rights, every
bit of dishonesty, every erosion of basic rights. By tolerating
the government’s dishonesty, the Opposition has failed itself
and us.
Imagine also how different things might be if the press in this
country had shown some spine over the past few years. Many –
perhaps most – journalists in Australia today shy away from
unpopular truths, and have oddly displaced values. The recent case
of Cornelia Rau provides an interesting example. Cornelia Rau was
held in immigration detention for nearly a year – initially
in a Queensland prison, then in Baxter. Her mental derangement was
plainly apparent to other detainees. The officials at Baxter deemed
her to be mentally sound, but showing ‘behavioural difficulties’
– eating dirt, tearing her clothes off. She was held in isolation
for most of the time. As long as she was Anna, ‘an illegal’
no one outside the refugee network was interested, despite Pamela
Curr’s valiant attempts to bring her story to light. Once
it was revealed that she is an Australian citizen, the press was
in uproar. The story ran for weeks.
In the wake of the Cornelia Rau story, other stories of systemic
cruelty in Baxter emerged. For example, Francis Milne, one of the
centre's volunteers from the Uniting Church told the story of Hassan,
a 37-year-old Algerian man. He spent 9 weeks in solitary confinement
in Baxter because he had threatened to commit suicide. He was subjected
to a cavity search in front of two females.
And there is the case of Amin, who was in Baxter with his 7 year
old daughter.
On the 14th of July 2003, 3 ACM guards entered Amin’s room
and ordered him to strip. He refused, because his 7-year old daughter
was in the room. When he refused to strip, the guards beat him up,
handcuffed him, and took him to the “Management Unit”
– the same place Cornelia Rau spent much of her time.
The Management Unit is a series of solitary confinement cells.
I have viewed a video tape of one of the Management Unit cells.
It shows a cell about 3½ metres square, with a matress on
the floor. There is no other furniture; the walls are bare. A doorway,
with no door, leads into a tiny bathroom. The cell has no view outside;
the light is on 24 hours a day. The occupant has nothing to read,
no writing materials, no TV or radio; no company yet no privacy
because a video camera observes and records everything, 24 hours
a day. The detainee is kept in the cell 23 ½ hours a day.
For half an hour a day he is allowed into a small exercise area
where he can see the sky.
There he stayed from 14 July until 23 July: each 24 hours relieved
only by a half-hour visit from his daughter. But on 23 July she
did not come. It was explained to him that she had been taken shopping
in Port Augusta.
The next day, 24 July, she did not arrive for her visit: the manager
came and explained that the daughter was back in Tehran. She had
been removed from Australia under cover of a lie, without giving
Amin the chance to say goodbye to her.
Anyone who has visited Baxter knows stories like these. But these
stories disappear without a trace because the press, with some honourable
exceptions, are only interested in the suffereings of an Australian
resident.
In presenting an unbalanced view of Australia’s conduct,
by not exposing the dishonesty of the Howard government, the press
engages in its own form of dishonesty. They help maintain the comfortable
illusion of our own worthiness, and we are blind to a society turning
sour. When the process is complete, when we have been stripped of
our liberties for our own protection, when the values which once
held this nation high have been terminally debased, then we will
realise that honesty matters.
Julian Burnside QC is a refugee rights advocate and author.
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