By Danny Fairfax
Everybody knows that politicians are liars. A recent survey showed only 7% of the population think that politicians are trustworthy. The election campaign for the March 27 NSW election only served to confirm people's suspicions. Lies were spread by the major political parties on the issues of law and order, electricity privatisation, heroin use and the Lucas Heights nuclear reactor.
Are politicians just naturally lying characters? In fact, politicians are amazingly candid when speaking at business functions, passing memos to each other and dealing with their pals from large corporations.
Here is just a selection of things that politicians have said in these situations:
- "We do not want compulsory student monies flowing out to anti-Kennett and anti-Coalition campaigns and other fringe activities of the hard student left." — Victorian Liberal Party briefing document.
- "History has always shown the Liberal Party to be on the side of capital and free enterprise." — Federal industrial relations minister Peter Reith.
- "One of the first people internationally to define the Labor Party was Lenin when he described the Labor Party as altogether bourgeois and altogether liberal." — Federal Labor leader Kim Beazley.
- "The ALP's opposition to the plan to build a new nuclear reactor at Lucas Heights is based on the realities of politics in an election year, and in particular the need to win [the federal seat of] Hughes, rather than objective safety-focused concerns." — Federal deputy Labor leader Gareth Evans.
- "If greater police powers mean a reduction in civil liberties, then so be it." — NSW Labor Premier Bob Carr.
These comments were not intended to reach the ears of ordinary working people, but somehow slipped out. All these quotes are distinctly different from the sound bites fed to us at press conferences and in television interviews. Politicians make grand promises that they claim will improve the situation for absolutely everyone — only to unleash policies of austerity and cutbacks later.
Politicians' lies conceal the truth about their function: to serve big business. Big capitalists make sure of this by pumping funds into the major parties and favouring the party that does what they want the most. Politicians' huge salaries and superannuation packages make them part of the ruling elite.
All this guarantees that politicians of the major parties, and the overwhelming majority of the minor ones, are always in the pockets of big business.
But it is not enough just to recognise that politicians are liars — 93% of us already know that. We must take action. Voting every three of fours years is not democracy. To change society we cannot rely on the lying politicians, but on our own power in mass campaigns for social justice.