this interesting article goes beyond Abbotts current Prime Ministership........10 lies at a time.
http://www.independentaustralia.net/politics/politics-display/is-australia-run-by-compulsive-liars-p...
The NSW premier’s resignation for lying to the corruption commission sharpens the focus of this series. Alan Austin looks at the record breaking dishonesty of Australia's PM.
A CONCEPT TO EMERGE from the week’s extraordinary events triggered by a certain bottle of wine is that lies can be a bad thing.
Well, who would have thought?
There appear to be two confusions over lies in Australian political discourse.
The first is over definitions. Refer article one.
The second is the oft-heard “all parties are the same; all politicians are liars”.
That’s not true.
Our definition of a lie is: a knowingly false statement by a politician, expressed with the intention to deceive.
These have been rare among Australian party leaders. And, until recently, confined to just the one party. But that may have to change
This seems to be the tally among party leaders over the last 20 years:
- Paul Keating, ALP: 0
- Tim Fischer, Nationals: 0
- Alexander Downer, Liberal: 7
- Kim Beazley, ALP: 0
- John Howard, Liberal: 15+
- John Anderson, Nationals: 0
- Simon Crean, ALP: 0
- Bob Brown, Greens: 0
- Mark Latham, ALP: 0
- Kevin Rudd, ALP: 1
- Mark Vaile, Nationals: 0
- Brendan Nelson, Liberal: 0
- Malcolm Turnbull, Liberal: 0
- Warren Truss, Nationals: 0
- Christine Milne, Greens: 0
- Tony Abbott, Liberal: 30
- Julia Gillard, ALP: 0
There are two stand-outs in modern history.
Howard’s tawdry record was already a world-beater by 2004, according to veteran reporter Alan Ramsay:
'John Howard told a lie on May 2, 1995. Then he told more lies to reinforce the first lie. To protect himself from what he judged a serious threat to his last chance to be prime minister, Howard lied and went on lying. Now, three years later, he is telling still more lies to hide that first lie.'
'
Howard lied repeatedly to the electorate and to colleagues. It was a Liberal Senator who gave rise to the nickname ‘the lying rodent’.
But Tony Abbott – who openly admires Howard – has already set a record unsurpassed in Westminster parliamentary history and almost certainly unsurpassable.
But thirty?
Well, let’s check:
1. Anti-Hanson slush fund
In 1998, Abbott supported legal action against Pauline Hanson.
Less than 2 weeks later, he categorically denied so doing to the ABC, and later repeated the lie to the Sydney Morning Herald. When the reporter confronted him with his signed personal guarantee, he said:
“…misleading the ABC is not quite the same as misleading the Parliament as a political crime."
This was so brazen, it was widely said at the time he could kiss goodbye any ambitions to be prime minister”.
2. Electoral Commission re: donations
In 1998, the Australian Electoral Commission asked Abbott to disclose his donors, as required. To avoid doing so, he blatantly lied to the AEC, as revealed by Margo Kingston and others.
3. Meeting with Cardinal Pell
Asked in 2004 if he had met Cardinal Pell recently, Abbott told Tony Jones and the nation:
“Not that I can recall.”
He had met the cardinal just days before, as satirised brilliantly by the Chaser lads.
4. Climate change
Abbott’s statements include that scientific evidence for climate change is “absolute **bleep**” and
“Climate change is real, humanity does make a contribution to it and we’ve got to take effective action against it.”
One of those must be untrue, as Crikey exposes.
5. Labor’s emissions scheme
Abbott said in a 2010 interview:
“Under Mr Rudd's scheme taxpayers will … pay a lot more, $120 billion over 10 years as opposed to $10 billion under our scheme.”
This was immediately challenged:
“Mr Abbott, you know that is not true …”
It wasn’t. And Abbott did know it.
6. Trip to Afghanistan
Abbott lied to PM Gillard about his reasons for declining her offer to visit the troops together.
He confessed later that his false “jet-lag” excuse was because he was lost for words — as he also was soon after meeting the troops on his own:
7. Repeated claims about China’s CO2 emissions
Abbott told the Minerals Council and various others in 2011:
“By 2020 under current plans and current policies, China will have increased its emissions by 500 per cent.”
This was widely condemned as false.
8. Continually calling asylum seekers “illegal arrivals”
Probably the most entrenched lie in current politics. People arriving with no documents, or even false papers, have the legal status of asylum seekers under international law. They are not “illegals”.
9 & 10. BHP's Olympic dam decision
Abbott claimed mine plans were shelved due to taxes. False. He also lied about reading BHP’s announcement.
Laurie Oakes’ withering analysis of this begins:
“Let’s not beat about the bush. To my mind, Tony Abbott tells lies.”
