 |
|
|||||
Honesty MattersSuganthi Singarayar When the series is considered as a whole it is interesting to see how different people are able to come up with so many different angles on the same topic. There were underlying threads of similarity, as in the notions of the levels of honesty needed to ensure a functioning liberal democratic system and in the definitions of the types of truth and honesty that abound. There was also a consensus on the role the media played. John Schumann pointed out that often political journalism was about "getting the story". He said, "Getting the story on the front page or as the lead item in the news bulletin will, fairly often, involve a little manipulation of the facts, some selective reporting, a judicious choice of words and the application of sanctimony on a grand scale. When this happens we find the truth lying in the gutter, bleeding to death. I must stress that this is not the modus operandi of all journalists and editors." There were also some very different, almost opposite, perspectives on the same subject. ABC radio journalist, Geraldine Doogue, in Wollongong and Queen's Counsel, Julian Burnside, in Melbourne were a case in point. Mr Burnside derided the use of language as a stalking horse for ideas that the writer or speaker wishes to disguise or dare not acknowledge. He said this can be called tact, diplomacy, euphemism, doublespeak or lying. He said that doublespeak uses language to smuggle uncomfortable ideas into comfortable minds. He said that leaders of the Nazi regime were masters at it and the Howard government is an enthusiastic apprentice. Whereas Ms Doogue's take on the use of language was that it is sometimes important not to say things, because it can end up fanning the flames of discontent, prejudice or fear. She said, "Essentially, during 'interesting times' (as Confucius put it) the noblest public contributors link their own values to an overall public context. They may not have the luxury, that is, of speaking totally as they'd like." "They are conscious, even respectful, of nameless fears, irrespective of whether they personally hold them; they absolutely do not fan them – that for me is, to coin an old phrase, a full-bodied mortal sin!" Ms Doogue quoted from the Opposition leader, Mr Kim Beazley's, 2001 concession speech, and said that what she took away from that speech was the "sacred duty to do no harm in public life, however broadly or narrowly you wish to define that." She added that for many people their reading of Mr Beazley's actions and speech would not be the same as hers. She said, "I know that for many people, however, particularly maybe people tonight at this lecture, that whole campaign represents the nadir of Mr Beazley's long and pretty distinguished career in public life." She went on to add that for them it possibly "represented an opportunity lost, not grasped, to try to name our potential; it exemplified all that's wrong with the public debate and the way politics is conducted, in that for one or other reason, this man failed to behave the way people had reliably expected him to behave, based on observing him for many years; that he judged it would be political suicide; further, that in weighing up the risks and rewards of symbolically stating some clear values about compassionate government process, he decided the gains to be made were overwhelmed by the potential losses to the group he believed is the most consistent reformer in this country, namely the Australian Labor Party." From Mr Burnside's speech it is possible that he would be one of the people who disagreed with Ms Doogue. He asked the audience to imagine how different things would be if we had an honest Opposition. "Too timid to take a stand, the Labor party has spent the last eight 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," he said. The differences between these speeches could also reflect the ability of the speakers to speak independently. As Ms Doogue pointed out, her contract as an ABC employee does not allow her to be overtly political. In Adelaide, former Redgum singer, John Schumann argued that truth and honesty in public life was as much the responsibility of the public as it is the responsibility of those elected to public life. He asked what would have happened if John Howard had told the truth about Weapons of Mass Destruction and the real reason for joining America to wage war on Iraq? Would we, the general public, have been able to cope with the truth? What would the truth have meant for our democracy? What about our capacity to participate productively in international affairs? What about Mr Howard's own reputation, would it have been enhanced or diminished? He said, "If we, for whom decisions are made by our elected representatives, expect to be told the truth, we have to be able to accept it. We have to be prepared to shoulder the responsibility and the consequences. And we have to able to resist the temptation to shoot the messenger. Honest politicians are, more often than not, hounded or voted out of office – though it does not follow that being hounded out of office presupposes honesty." In Canberra, Dr William Maley, Director of the Asia-Pacific College of Diplomacy at the Australian National University, told the story of a Dutch scholar, who as a young man had sheltered Jews from the Gestapo. He had lied. Dr Maley said that the same obligation for truth could not be said to prevail in this unusual circumstance. He said, "In the Gestapo case, men and women of goodwill were confronted with circumstances of life and death where public justice was impossible, and the foreseeable consequences of telling the truth to the Gestapo would be devastating in human terms. To put it another way, the Gestapo had no right to be told the truth." Nazism and Stalin's Russia were mentioned by a few of the speakers as states in which lying became the norm and thereby corrupted normal life. Former editor of Eureka Street and currently Adjunct Professor in the Faculty of Humanities and Social Sciences at La Trobe University, Morag Fraser pointed out that many of us had "personally seen the creep of corruption in our own lifetime". She cited Richard Nixon's Watergate, the former Yugoslavia, Rwanda, Cambodia, Chile and Australia under our current immigration and detention regimes as examples. She said, "We have a personal responsibility to know about our world. We can read. We can watch and listen. Many of us have the Internet at our fingertips. We are witnesses. We are not passive bystanders." "We have been warned in advance what happens when we choose, as individuals or as nations, to value power or wealth above honesty, above truth," she said. Of all the speeches, Dr Drasko Dizdar's in Brisbane, was the one that caused people to have to stop and think. As he himself said his speech was from "an avowedly theological perspective". His aim, he said, was to encourage people to think about honesty from the point of view of faith. And people certainly had to think about his speech as he gave it. Dr Dizdar's speech had elements of: "you who have not sinned cast the first stone". His was not an accusatorial speech, rather it was more reflective – how have I sinned? How do I sin? He said that one way the world justifies what it does is to accuse others and thereby absolve itself. "You know the kind of peace I mean: the peace we give ourselves when we gang up against someone else, be it Saddam Hussein or George Bush, John Howard, the Pope or the woman next door," he said. Dr Dizdar said that he didn't want to stand there and tell people who the liars were, or how they should clean up their acts. Rather, he said, he was a liar, and along with everyone else was caught up in the "complex web of lies, injustice, resentment and inertia we call our 'culture' our 'society', what the Gospel of John calls the 'world'. But that did not mean that there was no hope. The people at the seminar were obviously there for a reason. That reason was to imitate someone else who had been honest, but it had cost him everything, including his life, but not his freedom. CEO of Football Australia, John O'Neill said that he thought 'honesty' or 'dishonesty' or lack of 'truthfulness' is worse now, then when he started his corporate life thirty-odd years ago. He said that it was probably easier to get away with a lot of things thirty years ago than it would be today. He also said that then there hadn't been the same level of scrutiny by the media or the ability to pass information around at such high speeds that exists today. At the same time he said the corporate bottom line meant, that particularly in the financial services field, there were a whole lot of smoke and mirrors people who went out of their way to tell half-truths in order to deceive the public. He felt a lot of this behaviour could be attributed to the level of remuneration paid to people who worked in financial services, which did not really reflect the importance of the work they did. He said that the CEOs of major banks did not have the same organisational or operational skills as a triage nurse at a major hospital. Commissioner Robert Fitzgerald said that "success has replaced truth as a virtue, or put another way a that the pursuit of power and influence has replaced the quest for truth and honesty." He said that in Australia as in many western countries, the public's regard for public, private and religious institutions has declined. This decline can in part be attributed to the rhetoric of honesty that surrounds the policies of these institutions or is stated in corporate mission statements, but which is not followed through in practice. However, Commissioner Fitzgerald went on to point out that institutions,
churches and governments are made up of people. He said, "Organisations
act honestly or otherwise only because the people within them act
that way. It is vitally important that we each accept a personal
responsibility to an ethical way of life, one that is based on the
virtues of honesty and that is about developing trustworthy relationships
with others. Leaders of institutions have a particular responsibility
to be people who are themselves ethical, honest and believe in truth
as a guiding belief, for it is they who determine the actions and
conduct of institutions."
Suganthi Singarayar is a journalist and an Uniya volunteer.
|
||||||
