This piece was first published in the Sun Herald yesterday.

 

When I started reporting politics in the late 1980s, prime ministers and ministers lied as a last resort. Fifteen years later, government deceit is just another way to win a political debate or destroy a political opponent. How come?

Sir Robert Menzies once said that political systems have much more frequently been overthrown by their own corruption and decay than by external forces. And that is what’s happening in our democracy, in large measure because of the total breakdown of our democratic tradition of ministerial responsibility and a frank, non-partisan public service.

Here’s how it used to work. One duty of senior public servants was to keep ministers fully informed of important developments and ensure they did not unintentionally mislead the public. Ministers demanded that service because if they misled the people and did not immediately correct the record, they were duty-bound to accept responsibility and resign.

Under this system, public servants and ministers had a great incentive to be meticulous with the facts. If a minister made a false statement, public servants would immediately advise him or her. If a minister had to resign because of the failure of the public service to keep him informed, more than one public service career would also be over. It was a virtuous circle, encouraging ministers and public servants to take their duty to tell the people the truth very seriously.

Under John Howard, the virtuous circle has been replaced with a circle of self-interest which expels the people and destroys their right to know. Here’s how the new system works.

A minister lies or misleads to score a point. His public servants do not advise him of the error. If the lie is discovered, the minister says he won’t resign because his public service didn’t tell him. The head of his department takes the rap and gets a gold star. Public servants down the pecking order quickly learn that unwelcome information is to be bottom-drawered.

We saw a couple of classic examples of Howard’s way last week. Recently, a former inmate at Guantanamo Bay stated that Australian David Hicks had been tortured by his American captors. Hicks’s lawyer said the same. Howard rubbished the claims, saying Hicks had never told Australian Government visitors any such thing.

Good point, we, the people, thought.

Last week, a Senate inquiry discovered that Hicks had told ASIO a year ago that he had suffered beatings at the hands of the Americans. Will Howard resign? No. He hadn’t been told. Would the head of ASIO resign for not advising Howard he was wrong? No. On what basis did Howard make his false claim? He probably didn’t ask for a brief, but assumed what suited him because he hadn’t been told otherwise. Why not? Because the public service knew Howard wanted to create no waves with the Americans so they didn’t tell. Easy, isn’t it?

As an invader of Iraq, Australia has legal and moral responsibilities to ensure that prisoners of war are treated humanely.

Our soldiers in Baghdad knew last November that the Americans were torturing POWs in Abu Ghraib. In the old days, such important information would have reached government quick smart.

Yet Howard and Defence Minister Robert Hill told us after the torture photographs shocked the world last month that they knew nothing until then. That meant that when Howard and Hill visited Iraq this year and spoke to American commanders they did not raise the matter. Or so they say. Both said they should have been told.

If Howard and Hill are telling the truth, in the old days Defence Department Secretary Ric Smith and Defence chief General Peter Cosgrove would have resigned pronto. No excuses.

Instead, when the story broke that Australia had known and investigated, and given legal advice to the Americans last year, Smith and Cosgrove put out a statement denying it outright, and Howard assured Parliament the story was a lie.

But it was true! It took the Senate two days to drag the truth out of Smith and Cosgrove. Did Howard resign? No. Did Smith and Cosgrove resign? No. Instead Hill praised them as great men. Everyone gets off scot-free again, except the poor bastard at the end of the food chain: our main man in Baghdad, Major George O’Kane, whose career is finished.

I reckon the media has to adapt to the new system. We can’t just report what the leaders say as fact any more. Everything they say must be reported as a claim unless they can state what their evidence is and have confirmed the facts with the public service.

As the system becomes more corrupt, its watchdogs must get more aggressive. If we don’t, the public won’t have a hope in hell of getting near the truth of what is being done in our name without our consent.