The Inspector-General of Misconception

by Frank Moorhouse

  There are the few dreamy anarchists who want participatory democracy where everyone has a vote on everything, issue by issue.

  We are inclined towards these dreamy people.

  They are really for more voting but of a different kind. If the governmental process was changed to participatory democracy, we would vote every day.

  Our Assistant has just whispered in our ear, reminding us that here at the Inspector-General’s Office we are not permitted to have an opinion on these matters, being concerned as we are with only cockeyed, rancid, thread-bare and decaying notions in public discourse.

  Our Findings: We find that the idea that Australians are fatigued by voting twice in a fortnight requires urgent medical research; that is, of those responsible for contriving the notion and repeating it.

  They must also write out fifty times, ‘We understand the irony of having to write out fifty times the famous saying, “Those who expect to reap the blessings of freedom must undergo the fatigue of fighting for it”.’

  We find that there is both felt and expressed dissatisfaction with ‘politics’. In this matter we find the electorate guilty of political torpor for not being more enterprising in their electoral activity and candidature, so ensuring that the electoral dynamics rise to meet their expectations.

  Our Inspectors determined that some people were guilty of feigned disenchantment – the voting-how-boring set and the idea that voting is a waste of time. This is a minor offence and is not deemed by Our Office to be thoughtful commentary. Case dismissed. Let it not happen again.

  Those who do not wish to be part of the voting process have a justifiable gripe against compulsory voting. We find them boring but justified. It would be better to leave politics to those who take an informed interest. They may put I-don’t-vote-so-don’t-blame-me stickers on their automobiles if it makes them feel superior.

  A Complaint: The aesthetics of the polling station leave much to be desired. Cardboard ballot boxes contribute if not to disaffection then maybe to the dullness in the presentation of the voting event.

  The ballot box is perhaps the most important and historically significant icon in our society. We would like to see them made of highly polished wood and to appear venerable. We would like to vote in the wooden ballot box in which Chifley had carved his name.

  Polling stations should have framed portraits of the pioneers of the democratic system and displays of the history of the innovations of voting. Each polling station should have a photographic display of the history of the electorate in which the voting is occurring.

  A Political Memorabilia shop at major voting centres should sell political mementos and books on the history and theory of politics. Who knows? Sales may cover the cost of the ballot.

  At least, there should be freshly cut flowers at the polling stations.

  OH-THE-PERFIDY-OF-POLITICS

  One of the cases that Our Office of Timeworn Notions has been investigating is that of political disenchantment as expressed in comments such as, ‘The parliamentary merry-go-round continues as before.’ They, the politicians, ‘plot and scheme over mountains of lobster and lakes of champagne at our expense’.

  We notice that our files on this matter go back over some hundreds of years; indeed we see that as a young prosecutor, we handled a case involving someone known as Guy Fawkes.

  A British TV series Yes, Minister is also taken as evidential, confirming the dopiness of politics and the overwhelming control exercised by bureaucracy.

  The disenchantment with politics is of course always to be found among the young. In the nineteenth century Taine said, ‘for a young person the world always seems a scandalous place’.

  Hence the penchant for revolutionary and other forms of youthful politics such as throw-a-bottle-of-burning-petrol-at-a-police-officer and meeting disruption recently displayed at world forums.

  Orwell described the political piety of youth in his essay ‘Tyranny of Virtue’. ‘Embrace a creed which appears to be free from the ordinary dirtiness of politics – a creed from which you yourselves cannot expect to draw any material advantages – surely that proves that you are in the right.’

  We will make a quick ruling on this: It has ever been thus.

  What Our Office has become alarmed about is that the idea of the worthlessness of politics has spread to the politicians themselves.

  One would have thought that the politicians at least were immune from any such tender feelings.

  (This humorous aside, which assumes the politicians have a tough hide and overriding self-interest, is typical of contemporary journalism when talking of democratically elected politicians and is inserted here not as ‘a joke’, as such, but as a Trap.)

  The ‘joke’ is shockingly Politicist.

  If you smirked you are to learn this chapter off by heart; if you didn’t smirk you are excused from reading on.

  No, what has alarmed us here at the Inspectorate, is a self-lacerating piety in newly elected parliaments, world-wide, which may be evidence that the self-esteem of politicians is being damaged by the intemperate battering of their image by the citizens and the media.

  We are receiving reports daily of politicians stripping themselves of their symbolic perquisites and privileges.

  Recent examples include the French parliament which will no longer have at its disposal a fleet of seven aircraft.

  In New South Wales, Bob Carr removed privileges, refused a salary increase, and did away with the Speaker’s wig.

  Prime Minister, Paul Keating, was howled down because he wanted an impressive ceremonial guard.

  Likewise, the Republicans in the US congress are cutting away at ‘privileges’ of the elected representatives.

  Apart from self-laceration, our Social Implication Unit has detected in some of this a misguided attempt to show ‘we are of the people’ credentials.

  An aside, if we may. In Australia it is expressed by a new style of Sunday television news featuring the ‘backyard interview’ of leaders of the state and nation. The politicians pose against a paling fence or a rotary clothesline in shirt-sleeves or even in a detestable tee-shirt, presenting themselves as if they are not a head of state or the bearer of office but really just some Australian bloke giving his or her opinion from around the weekend barbecue.

  We are considering charges of Perversion of Political Deportment against those politicians who practise this and don’t put on a tie. Our mother, who is now on the staff, calls these backyard interviews, quite correctly, Lowering the Tone. It could also be an offence under the Faux Folksiness statute.

  Perquisites of office, such as a fine car and driver, are mistakenly seen as elevating the political representative above the ‘people’.

  Yet the point of privileges and symbolic perquisites is that they are emblematic.

  Gather round. It is what is known as the trappings of office.

  Someone who bears office is not the same as the person in the street. To pretend otherwise is to leech the office of its aura. The running down of the institution and the shrugging off of the trappings of office contributes to an enfeeblement of the institution, but also makes its nature less visible.

  In the backyard interview, political representatives often act as if the office they bear is embarrassing or is of no particular consequence or distinctiveness.

  Oh, but it is! Oh yes, indeed it is.

  Hence our own appropriate trappings of office, here at the Inspectorate. We wear a hooded gown night and day. We wear much fur. We ‘sweep’ into rooms and chambers. We have kept as our car a Bugatti Royale 1932 – one of only six built (formerly belonged to Armand Esders) – a gift to us from the Duc de Berry while in France, and we occasionally use a lovely 1923 hot-air balloon with a wicker cockpit (built for the Emperor of Austria) which we find is a soothing way to travel between our home and Canberra on our way to summit meetings.

  Looking through reports from our Field Officers, we see that we have had the word ‘arrogance’ reported to us i
n connection with a particular politician. Were it so. Oh, for a little arrogance. No. To be more particular, what seems to be missing from democratic politics and statecraft is an appropriate show of import. Or awesomeness.

  Politics is the wielding of the power of life and death and responsibility for the safety of the nation, and the control of the armed forces. These are the cardinal powers of a parliament and, properly considered, are awesome.

  This awesomeness of power should be repeatedly signified by the profound pageant of office. We do not argue for this in the sense of the citizenry being cowed, but in the sense that the citizens, by witnessing this profound pageant, should carry a constant awareness of the hazardous contract of investing others with power.

  And that those who assume this power are themselves also conscious of it and its tricky and dangerous considerations.

  Moreover, we should be wary of those who would have this power disguised and buried by a colloquial and unceremonious style; those who would wish us to believe that their holding of office is of no consequence, is a trifle.

  Furthermore, if politicians and their critics continue to strip the office of its allure and reward, the calibre of people running for office will fall as surely as the night follows day.

  We wish to let this be known now. We ourself, will not run for President unless there is finery, trappings, levees and banquets.

  We want to be known as the Party President or the Fun President.

  The first source of political disenchantment

  The First Source of Political Disenchantment is the absolute misconstruing of the electioneering ‘promise’ by all concerned. The word should no longer be used in politics.

  To believe that an electioneering promise is a promise, as generally understood, may be charmingly naive and may sound like a severe holding of a government to account, but it is a wilful misconception which has gone too, too far. We are Calling a Halt.

  Ye gods. The electioneering promise is an imaginative act. How could it be otherwise?

  It is not a ‘promise’ as in the promise to take a child to the zoo.

  It is a compass reading, not the destination.

  It is ridiculous for the opposition and media to talk of ‘broken promises’ or of ‘costing’ the other parties’ promises.

  It is ridiculous for a politician to offer to give up office if he or she does not fulfil a certain promise.

  A party standing for office has policy directions and preferences not ‘promises’. They may talk of promises but they shouldn’t.

  And at election time these directions and preferences are yet to meet the impact and flux of governance.

  We would be very worried by a government which doggedly (apologies, dogs) and adamantly ‘kept’ its promises.

  This would mean that the government disregarded new data, was deaf to the evolving arguments of stake-holders, was unaware of the exigencies of bureaucratic competence and the availability of resources at any given phase of the governmental term.

  A government which kept its promises regardless of these inputs would be pig-headed (apologies, pigs).

  Holding of Office is not only a learning experience, it is a furnace which melts and moulds personality. Mirabeau said, ‘A Jacobin in the ministry wouldn’t be a Jacobin minister.’

  No, we are not going to explain that.

  All right. A decision-making process may change those involved more than they will change the outcome of that process.

  Finding: On the matter of Wilfully Misconstruing the Political Nature of the Promise, we are charging all political parties and the mainstream media. We are also charging them on the lesser offence of Inviting Ridicule by Taking Promises Seriously.

  The next opposition politician to talk of ‘broken promises’ is sentenced to write out fifty times the old proverb, ‘Wise men change their minds, fools never.’

  How come most of the major political decisions of the last twenty-five years in Australia have been consensually correct (at least at this point in history) – national reconciliation, Mabo, deregulation, anti-discrimination policies, pro-arts policies, redress of women’s rights, closer scrutiny of the secret services, withdrawal of governments from heavy censorship, etc, etc?

  If political life is so corrupt and wrong-headed, why hasn’t the sky fallen in?

  In Australia the bridges don’t collapse, the penicillin isn’t adulterated, and in polls most people say they are happy.

  Oh, we hear the cry, ‘What of corruption in high places?’

  There will always be corruption.

  A society remains functional as long as too many people aren’t corrupt in too many places for too long.

  The key to reducing corruption and catching the corrupt is this: The rewards and incentives to expose corruption have to be higher than the incentive to be corrupt.

  That is, anti-corruption efforts have to be based on whistle-blowing and the rewards for whistle-blowing have to be great. There has to be a form of bounty-hunting in anti-corruption efforts. Sometimes this will simply be in the form of significant career advancement for lawyers and government investigators who seek out and expose corruption.

  It is agreed in Our Office that it is time for a shift from the endemic negative thinking about politics and politicians.

  The next political commentator to say something along the lines of, ‘What would you expect from a politician?’ is sentenced to a week in Somalia and on the way there on the plane, to write out, ‘I will cease posturing in the style de cynisme délibéreé’ two hundred times.

  We have been handed a note from our Fire Department who has suggested that some anti-politics commentary and throw-away lines are simply a way of ‘playing with fire’; that, given the crunch, they don’t really mean what they say.

  All we can offer by way of caution to these people is that the fire which warms us at a distance will burn us when near.

  The second source of political disenchantment

  There is a deeper and sadder and inescapable source of Disenchantment with Politics and about this we can do nothing.

  This disenchantment comes from seeing the political life as a mirror of human imperfection; as a daily reminder of the intractable nature of some of the less attractive and irrational particulars of the human condition.

  ‘Those in Power’ thus become a target for the rage against the very frustrating nature of the injustice and cruelty of things; The Rage Against Life.

  For this human lament, no charges will be laid.

  Finding: Liberal democratic politics is an evolving and organic process. It is improving.

  Recommendation: In the future, much more publicity should be given to candidate pre-selection.

  Throw out the dumb self-seekers; keep the smart self-seekers; find high-calibre people who are pragmatic and smart and who see party politics as intellectually restrictive and work to loosen party discipline.

  Pay politicians more, give them more privileges and more trappings of office.

  And throw to the sharks those who abuse their office.

  If we don’t do these things we are slowly doomed to mediocrity in elected positions.

  DESIRE FOR THE END OF POLITICS

  One of Leunig’s cartoons contemplated:

  … the international year of nothing specific.

  Which would make the conferences rather terrific

  … with short funny speeches which don’t really matter.

  Leunig’s cartoon went on to dream of a year of ‘complete unimportance’.

  We, at The Office, felt that urgent action had to be taken to stamp on this insidious, oh-so-faux-naive worldview.

  For a start, we are the Worriers of the World and this sort of thinking could put us out of work.

  Lying behind this well-meaning, dreamy Leunigian sigh is the widely held yearning for an apolitical life.

  A life without political crisis or conflict. The endless warm summer of buzzing bees, the soft grass, ripe fruit, the jolly dad and m
um, a child on a swing. Home-made billy carts. Swimming in the creek. The Eden of childhood.

  The world-without-politics view has had practical expression in the US. The shortening of terms of political office so as to get rid of ‘career politicians’.

  Others talking about taking power back ‘to the people’ away from the crowd of corrupt professionals in Washington.

  It has its Australian expression in the old anarcho-libertarian slogan, ‘No matter who you vote for, a politician always gets in.’

  There is a widely held view that if politicians and generals vacated their positions, the world would quietly go about its business in a peaceable way.

  Along with the politicians and generals, we should get rid of the priests.

  Much conflict would also be removed by the elimination of religion (for a start, in Northern Ireland, the Middle East, the former Soviet Union, Afghanistan, India, the former Yugoslavia).

  Oh, and then there is the media. Get rid of the media.

  What lies behind the dream of the apolitical life?

  Lying behind it is a Predilection for Dopey Suspicion. The first suspicion is that crises are perhaps fomented by politicos without true justification; that political people are in the business of making crises.

  It is true that politicians do realise that by declaring or perhaps by creating an ‘emergency’ they increase their authority to act; that is, they are permitted by the emergency to wield more power.

  So they bring in ‘emergency regulations’, they seek emergency powers.

  We were reminded of this here at The Office while discussing Aeschylus over morning tea: ‘Prophets find bad news useful.’ (The Greeks said it all.)

  And yes, ‘Politicians find bad news useful.’

  Hence the paradox of a party in opposition welcoming bad economic news for the country.

  The other belief of the Leunigian humanist is that if there are true crises, they could be resolved some other more gentle, non-political way.