Fairer Australia Campaign Public Meeting

Sister Susan Connelly

The Mary Mackillop Institute for East-Timorese Studies

Thanks everyone - it's great to be here. Before I begin, there is a petition going around that I do invite you to read and sign, it is about the oil in the Timor Sea. You can also buy one of these badges saying "It's Timor's Oil" for $3.00. I am going to East Timor for three weeks and I've been given 100 of them to hand out when I'm there.

Last night I was speaking at a rally in Sydney and I mentioned to a friend that I was to speak here tonight on honesty in government. He replied that it was going to be a very short paper - such is the cynicism of some today.

One of the splendid things about human beings is our capacity to imagine an alternative viewpoint. This is part of the backbone of hope - not an attitude of wishful thinking, but of hope in its truest sense - the conviction that life contains promise, a belief that life and what it contains can be trusted to offer us opportunity, a way through, some grace.

I believe that we are at a time in our brief occupancy of this land, this night, when we are being called to imagine such an alternative viewpoint. There is certainly division in our community about the way forward in dealing with issues in our own nation, as a major power in our own region, and as a minor but symbolically significant player among nations at large. Now division is not necessarily a bad thing. It presents tension because of the choices it poses, and it is in the action of having to continually make choices for the common good that we display our most human capacity - the exercise of freedom.
Major divisions have occurred in our Australian society recently because of a most serious aspect of public life. And that is an apparent lack of truthfulness in our elected representatives.

Examples of deception, cover-up, side-stepping and manipulation include the lies told about children being thrown overboard at the last election; the many lies about asylum seekers to paint them in the worst possible light - for example using untrue descriptors like 'illegals' and queue-jumpers'; the refusal to have an independent investigation into the intelligence services which are so critical to Australia's security; the spurious reasons for taking the nation to war in Iraq; our emerging part in the prisoner abuse scandal, which still hasn't been brought to light properly; the deceit and puppet play over the resources of the Timor Sea.

The pattern of lies and half-truths has been strengthened by the unreliability inherent in the claims of senior ministers, including the Prime Minister, that he didn't know the facts of a particular case, and therefore could not be held accountable.

There is also the perception of government departments being so compromised that they do not advise their minister of uncomfortable details when they suspect that their ministers do not want to know.
These are instances of deceptions which we know about, and they have two important consequences, apart from the fraudulence of any policies based on them.

The first of these consequences is a loss of trust. I simply do not trust people who constantly tell lies, and the situation in the national arena is so bad, that I do not trust anything that is said now by federal government ministers or departments. I have no reason to trust them because there is little evidence of their honesty.

What, I ask myself, has this government done to display inspiring leadership or to promote human dignity? These aspects of life are the real content of the national interest, far outweighing the balancing of books and the delivery of services. If economic management is the be-all and end-all of government, then why don't we just elect a firm of accountants? The sad truth is that too many people feel as I do, that we have been served very badly, and the basis of the bad service is that we can no longer believe what we see.

Another looming deception is contained in the coming trial of Saddam Hussein. The pattern of distortion has become predictable, and so my crystal ball suggests that the trial of Saddam Hussein will be used by both this administration and that of the United States to provide election prelude. Saddam's horrendous crimes will be milked for every appalling detail to prove to the populations of our two nations that it was right to thumb our nose at the United Nations and to attack Iraq and unseat the dictator, and therefore we have every reason to cast our vote the government's way.

The tabloids, commercial television and radio, the talk-backs, will have a field day. They won't discuss the dangerous precedent that the Iraq war has set, and they will certainly forget the weapons deception. They will also not ask why other dictators have not been treated similarly, like President Suharto of Indonesia who murdered half a million of his own people. They won't mention that on our doorstep in Indonesia a person indicted for mass murder is standing for president. Nor will they mention the horrors suffered by the people of West Papua, being murdered, raped and tortured as we sit here, by the same people, the very same individuals who did such thing in East Timor. Timbul Saleum, who was the Police Chief in East Timor in 1999 is now the Police Chief in West Papua. No, it is only crimes of Saddam which have any influence on the popularity of the Prime Minister or the President of the United States.
The omissions, lies, and half-truths which are now commonplace in government are also endemic in those sections of the media whose proprietors have decided to back the government, notably the Murdoch press. Freedom of expression is almost rigged here. The popular media toes the Howard line with the same subservience shown by the government benches.

The second consequence of this atmosphere of deception is the attack on our dignity. It says to the Australian people that we are held in very small esteem indeed, to the extent that any old response will do, whether it is true or not. As the list of lies lengthens, the insult to the Australian people expands.
A further indication of just how contemptuously the government regards the people is the spending of $123 million on saturation advertising, and the first of $19 billion of family payments released on the eve of the election campaign.

A government that can serve the people well by maintaining the fundamental principles of truth-telling and fair play does not have to bribe people to vote for them. The unprecedented amounts of taxpayers' money being spent on shoring up the government's chances of re-election is in direct proportion to the level of its fraudulence. When you think of our lies, they say, just look at your bank book.

The insult afforded to us by this cynicism is the government's obvious belief that we are greedy enough and stupid to fall for such a cheap trick. We deserve better than this, and we have the capacity to imagine something better. Looking in the Australian mirror at the moment shows us not a pretty sight. We can learn from it, however, and what it will teach us is that relationships in national life suffer if deceit and manipulation flourish, just as they do in personal life.

We can imagine ourselves a society where truth is valued highly and where all of us are happy to be held accountable for giving the truth to each other. We can imagine a society where a person's word is taken and given with honour, a society willing to forgo economic gain if such gain means losing honour or dignity. Such a society, I firmly and strongly believe, is not beyond us, because it is not beyond each of us as an individual. It all boils down to the integrity of the individual and the willingness of the individual to cede personal gain for the common good when necessary.

Australian has produced people like this in the past and has millions of citizens who act like this in their daily lives. The trick is to find leaders who will be able to represent us adequately and for us to be willing to hold ourselves and them accountable.