Opinion & Commentary
Honesty the best policy for those in government
Abuse the virtue of honesty, and the fabric of civil society starts to tear apart.
Coming Apart: The State of White America, 1960-2010, the recent provocative book from social scientist Charles Murray, calls for a recovery of virtue to revive the ailing civic culture of the US.
Virtues create habits, and habits shape what we do. One of the four so-called "founding" virtues Murray identifies, quoting Jefferson, is honesty.
We could do with a hefty infusion of the virtue of honesty in the federal parliament.
It has been bad enough that Craig Thomson, recently shunted to the crossbenches, has refused to explain the allegations against him or to co-operate with police investigations.
But the reputation of the House of Representatives itself has been tarnished by the antics of the one person who should be above reproach: the Speaker.
The Traditional Anglican Communion's Archbishop John Hepworth obviously knew something about Peter Slipper, who stepped down from the role, that Julia Gillard did not.
Slipper is a priest in the TAC. Hepworth stood him down from his legal and pastoral duties until inquiries into alleged misdemeanours cleared his name.
Misbehaving religious leaders have cast a long shadow over churches.
As Peter Costello remarked recently, there is something to be said for Slipper's readiness to answer the questions of investigators.
Now that the allegations of Cabcharge fraud have come to the boil, the public wants to see whether the Gillard government has a similar capacity for self-reflection and admission of error.
Sadly, few members of the government, the Prime Minister included, seem to have that kind of understanding of their own.
Lockdown, evasion and denial appear to be the standard responses the Australian people get from this government whenever the proverbial hits the fan.
Worse, the Prime Minister and her colleagues still believe that if enough spin is pumped out, the public can be duped into thinking these gaffes are actually significant victories.
Some people turn on Tony Abbott and blame him for his lack of support. It's true that the Opposition Leader has been very negative at times. But the job of opposition leader is to oppose. That's what we pay him to do.
The wider Australian public is steeped in common sense. It knows a dud government when it sees it. And it knows when its political leaders have lost their moral compass and are out of touch with public expectations.
No wonder Newspoll figures show Gillard's leader satisfaction polling has been trending down more steeply than Abbott's during the past year.
Eventually the Prime Minister will go to the country and the electorate will make its decision about the future of the government. The sooner the better, frankly.
The risk in the long term, however, is that Australians will become so weary and cynical that their confidence and trust in the parliamentary system will be corroded. When our political leaders lose their moral compass they quickly lose the capacity to make decisions in the best interests of the nation.
Instead, decisions become self-serving, made with a view to shoring up the party machinery and the factions. This kind of behaviour is not necessarily unlawful. But it is what Murray describes as "unseemly" - that is, it is unbecoming, unfitting and indecent.
"Unseemliness is a symptom of the collapse of codes of behaviour," says Murray, "that depend not on laws and regulations but upon shared understandings regarding the fitness of things."
It is, he says, "a symptom of hollowness at the core".
The core of our parliamentary democracy is the bond of trust between the government and the electorate. That bond depends on the virtue of honesty.
The repeated evasion and spin of the Gillard government is unseemly.
By continually loosening the bonds constraining decent behaviour in the parliament, it is now threatening that core.
