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18 May 2010
The Labor Party and its leftist constituency in the media attempt to crucify Tony Abbott for stating an enduring truth about human behaviour
You can almost feel the excitement of the Labor Party and its constituency all around Australia at Opposition leader Tony Abbott's 'latest political gaffe'. There is a distant patter of little feet - like the rats in the attic - as they scurry with gleeful anticipation to fire up the propaganda machines. The Australian electorate is about to be treated to one of the nation's most ferocious campaigns of lies, smear and ridicule. I can see Deputy Prime Minister Julia Gillard and Treasurer Wayne Swann clutching each other in congratulatory disbelief. How could Abbott be so stupidly honest? Jazzing Julia is already calling Abbott phoney Tony.
And the reason for all this joy and anticipation? Tony Abbott spoke the truth about political behaviour during an interview with redoubtable Kerry O'Brien on the ABC's '7.30 Report'. Now let me do a little 'parsing', as one wimpish confused journalist accused me of doing when I pointed out problems of reasoning in a previous campaign.
O'Brien lustily hopped into Tony Abbot for saying, 'We will fund our promises without new taxes and without increased taxes', but a month later proposed a policy that was based on a new tax. O'Brien said he could not understand how Abbott could justify the change and insisted on an explanation. So, okay, this is a reasonable request from a journalist. And he has not accused him of lying, only of reversing an announced general policy. Nor could he on the literal text of the interview accuse Abbott of lying. Abbott replied:
...the point I tried to make at the time was that I didn't like the levy very much, but if we were going to have a paid parental leave scheme any time soon, a decent paid parental leave scheme any time soon, it had to be paid for and this was the least bad way of doing it.
Abbott is making two points here. First, there is need for a paid parental leave scheme. The electorate is not only ready for it but wants it. The fact that the Labor Party has made it a high priority emphasises the nature of its political urgency. A paid parental leave policy is high priority whether it is the government or opposition proposing it. Second, with a policy of such high priority a levy must be exacted if there is no other way of doing it. This is nothing more than acting on prudential judgment. Not good enough for O'Brien:
KERRY
O'BRIEN: No, but I'd like you to explain it. Tony Abbott feels with
conviction we will not have a new tax in any way, shape or form, we won't
have a new tax; a month later, you do.
TONY ABBOTT: Well, again Kerry, I know politicians are gonna be judged on
everything they say, but sometimes, in the heat of
discussion, you go a little bit further than you would if it was an
absolutely calm, considered, prepared, scripted remark, which is one of the
reasons why the statements that need to be taken absolutely as gospel truth
is those carefully prepared scripted remarks.
What claim about human behaviour could be more unexceptionable? It is not only politicians who give in to making unwise, intemperate, or exaggerated remarks in the heat of the moment. I, for one, plead guilty. O'Brien himself is certainly not innocence of such verbal overplay. And it is not only politicians who find they have to reverse a decision. What is different here is that Abbott is being honest about human nature and the weakness it is prone to, something the weaselling politicians of the Labor Party have to have squeezed out of them. Their raucous exploitative reaction in the media today is proof of their manipulative two-faced manner of doing politics.
Notice, too, that Abbott
explicitly used the indeterminate 'you' (meaning 'one') and not 'I' which
makes it evident that he is stating a rule about human behaviour, and not a
characteristic peculiar to him. O'Brien remained undeterred by Abbott's
unexceptionable general statement about human nature.
KERRY O'BRIEN: So every time you make a statement, we have to ask you
whether it's carefully prepared and scripted or whether it's just something
on the fly? No, seriously; this is a very serious question.
Unfortunately for O'Brien, his conclusion does not follow from the delineations Abbott has made. Note also that O'Brien has switched from the indeterminate 'you' to the personal 'you', meaning Abbott. The question properly asked to be consistent with what Abbott has said should be: 'So every time one makes a statement, one has to ask the person whether it's carefully prepared etc?' - which is nonsense. Clearly that is not Abbott's meaning.
His meaning is that in the heat of the moment one may say the wrong thing. Even then the concrete circumstances and the context of the situation will tell the onlooker whether a clarification about meaning (not falsehood) is required. This is quite apart from the necessity of going back on a sincere undertaking when circumstances require it. This is a point I have made about priority. I will come back to changing or removing policy as it concerns Treasurer Wayne Swann.
There is an important point here about meaning, that is, about the status of one's statements if they are mistakes, unwise decisions, incorrect claims or even stupidities. These are different from deliberately telling a falsehood - a lie, in other words. I should not have to spell it out, but being mistaken or making a false claim are not the same as lying. The Labor Party has, as usual, shown how manipulative and unconscionable it is by immediately putting out political ads characterising Abbott as a liar - by his own admission. I do not know how they dare to be so brazenly deceptive - or how people swallow it.
Abbott fruitlessly repeated the mitigating circumstances and context of political discussion, especially when dealing with a harassing media that is out to get you. Nobody could doubt that the Fairfax media is out to get Tony Abbott in the same way they were relentlessly trying to bring John Howard down.
TONY ABBOTT: But all of us, Kerry, all of us when we're in the heat of
verbal combat, so to speak, will sometimes say things that go a little bit
further.
KERRY O'BRIEN: Mr Abbott, we're not all leaders of major political parties
who are either Prime Minister or aspiring to be.
Whether one is a leader of a political party or not has nothing logically to do with the truth of Abbott's claim about a human nature. It is true that a leader has more responsibility and needs to exercise more care in making decisions, but that says nothing against Abbott's claims. The assessment about a leader's qualities should not be based on verbal infelicities or the going back on undertakings in themselves. It should be based on the quality of a party's or politician's prudential judgment, on their integrity and competence, and whether policy is ultimately effective and beneficial. O'Brien is making a tricky sidestep to keep the heat of the misrepresentation on Abbott, for O'Brien's tactic is nothing more than misrepresentation at this point. Inevitably, O'Brien reaches the point when he repeats the ridicule that he and his associates on the Left are assiduously cultivating, ridicule that on the evidence of the above has no grounding.
KERRY O'BRIEN: Is that why your colleagues over the years have come to call you "The Weathervane"?
The weathervane comment connotes an extensive leftist scenario about Abbott that will be relentlessly run up to the election at the end of the year. O'Brien continues to work up his fallacious conclusions, all of which has an obvious political purpose:
KERRY O'BRIEN: But what you are saying is that the public are not going to
know from one day to the next when you are saying something that's
absolutely rock solid and when it's not. Are there two Tony Abbotts? The
real Tony Abbott and the Tony Abbott who tailors what he has to say to
whatever audience he has in front of him. We've talked about - I'll say this
quickly. We've talked about the time you told the audience in a Victorian
country town that the climate change argument was "absolute crap". And then
you told me later that you were just being loose with your language. "It
didn't represent my true position," you said. How are we to know when we're
hearing your true position and when you're fudging the truth?
TONY ABBOTT: Well, again, I think that most of us know when we're talking to
people or when we're listening to people, I think we know when we can put
absolute weight on what's being said and when it's just the give and take of
standard conversation.
KERRY O'BRIEN: This is sounding suspiciously like core promises and non-core
promises?
O'Brien is right. It does reek of the core promises and non-core promises campaign that he and the Left worked against John Howard. I have already written a comment on this partially successful campaign, claiming that the distinction between core and non-core promises is perfectly legitimate and a process that everyone runs through often in their lifetime. It was a campaign that had all the fallaciousness and political manipulation of the campaign that will be run against Tony Abbott.
Tony Abbott's frank admission is not only a test for Australia's democratic order, it is a test for all the West's democracies. It is a test about what Edmund Burke called the highest virtue in political activity: the exercise of prudence. Prudence is one of the four cardinal virtues, along with justice, temperance and fortitude. In the political context prudence has crucial epistemological content. It is also a test of whether a politician can be honest without having his admissions manipulated for grubby political purposes.
Finally, on the question of changing policy or going back
on it completely I offer excerpts from an interview with Wayne Swann. On the
reckoning of the Labor Party and its leftist constituency Wayne Swann has to
be an out-and-out liar.
Treasurer Wayne Swann interview
TREASURER: Now, of course we will have to take hard decisions, hard decisions to support jobs, hard decisions to make sure we put that long term investment in place and to make the Budget sustainable over the long term. And of course if that means making changes to policies that we have previously announced, we accept full responsibility for those changes
JOURNALIST: Treasurer, when you talk about unpopular decisions and taking full responsibility for the decisions that will be made, are you essentially saying that there will be broken promises?
TREASURER: No what I'm saying is we have to take some very hard decisions in this Budget. Now, let's just look at the context. We've had revenue write-downs of something like $200 billion over the forward estimates – unprecedented in Australian history, unprecedented revenue write-downs. That means hard choices. And what we must do in the Budget is to create the room to provide economic stimulus now, but also for the longer term to put the Budget on a sustainable basis. We need to find the room in the Budget to support pensioners. We need to find the room in the Budget to put in place those vital nation building investments for the future. That does mean hard decisions and it may mean that there will be changes to previously announced policies and we accept full responsibility for that.
JOURNALIST: Changes to policies, though, is simply a softer way of saying broken promises, isn't it?
TREASURER: No changes to policy is something that has been brought about by the global recession. The world has been turned upside down since last September and we have to react to that in a responsible and measured way, and we're doing that...
JOURNALIST: There's also speculation this morning about changes to skilled migration?
TREASURER: Well, there's no doubt that given the global outlook, the sensible thing to do in this environment is to calibrate and to change your migration policy, and the Government is realistic about that and you'll see what we've got to say about that on Budget night.
Comment: gerard@gerardcharleswilson.com
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