Now that the Coalition are in government the lies haven’t stopped. In fact, I think it’s reasonable to conclude that the Coalition government are using lies and exaggeration to justify the overwhelming majority of their agenda in which they are breaking many popular pre-election promises.

So, we know the Australian government lied its way into power. We know the now Labor opposition tried to lie their way into keeping power. We know that the government is lying in order to cover up its real policy agenda. Yet, knowing all of this changes nothing.

This contempt for voters and for democracy more generally is a predictable product of the conflicting pressures politicians face.

This framework for thinking about political strategy gets sophisticated enough to explain the rise of the Tea Party (in various forms in many countries) when we add two more considerations: preselection – or primaries as they’re known in the US – and campaign funding.

Preselection is the process whereby the parties select their candidates to run in elections. In the US, let’s imagine the values of voters along a particular political spectrum are as shown in figure 8.


fig 8.

When running in primaries, the same driving forces are going to apply as above. The most effective strategy for Republican candidates will be to cluster around the red dot. However, the red dot is a long way from the centre of the spectrum where that candidate will need to place themselves in order to compete against their opposition Democrat candidate in the election. Thus the well-known phenomenon of primary candidates espousing extreme views, with the winning candidate having to frantically tack back to the centre once they are the only one left standing.

The Tea Party represents the backfiring of this strategy, where grassroots members are preselecting candidates who aren’t interested in moving back to the centre. The distance from the middle of the political spectrum leaves many Tea Party candidates unelectable outside of religious conservative stronghold electorates and absolutely unelectable as president, even though they may one day win primaries. However, their very presence in elections allows their opponents to shift further to the right without penalty, thus potentially shifting the entire politics of the country in that direction. The Republican party may lose, but democracy may lose even more as a growing number of people find themselves without candidates who represent their views.

This backlash is not limited to the US. The rise of ultra-right politics in Europe and the rise of the Greens in Australia and elsewhere are largely a result of the same phenomenon. Major parties positioning themselves side by side on the political spectrum opens up a lot of territory for other parties to move into. However, for Australia at least, preferential voting systems will see the majority of votes ultimately returning to the parties in the centre, making the strategy sustainable.

This framework explains many of the lies told by both major parties in the Australian federal election in 2013. Tony Abbott’s Coalition government have won power through four principle strategies:

1) Exaggerate or lie about the record of the government they were trying to replace.

2) Make promises to the electorate they knew they wouldn’t keep (given the evidence of the budget).

3) Make promises to corporate donors they intended to keep.

4) Excuse breaking the promises to the electorate by inventing a budget and debt crisis.

These strategies have allowed them to appear to be all things to all people while actually delivering to their corporate backers. The reality is that it’s much harder to justify to a corporate donor why you haven’t given them value for money than it is to a voter as to why you haven’t done what you said you were going to do. In a system where all the major contenders stretch the truth, lying isn’t that much of an electoral liability.

This model for thinking about political power in our democracies is far from complete. Social structures and organisations as well as solidarity among elites also play a huge role. However, what is presented here is enough to explain why politicians lie and why, in many instances they have no choice but to do so. The honest ones are highly unlikely to succeed in forming government.

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Who would pay $10,000 for a table at a fundraiser? Photograph: Alamy


Corporations don’t give their money away for nothing. There is an understanding (rarely made explicit) that large campaign donations buy political access and favourable consideration in policy development and legislation. Why else would a corporation, which is bound by law to pursue profits, make these donations?

Interestingly, many businesses give money to both sides of the narrow political divide; sometimes different amounts, sometimes exactly the same amount. In the lead up to the 2013 federal election in Australia, for example, Inghams gave Labor and Liberal parties each $250,000, Westfield gave them each $150,000 and ANZ gave them each $80,000. By my count, over one third of donors (excluding individuals) gave to both the coalition and Labor during 2012/13. This is not unique to Australia but occurs in all democracies, just indirectly in those places where direct political donations from corporations are illegal.

Donating equally to both sides is clearly not about helping one side win. It’s an implied threat: “if you don’t treat us well we’ll give you less and they’ll be ahead.” When both major parties have the same policy on an issue, it effectively removes that issue from democratic scrutiny. This is the aim of many political donations from businesses who stand to lose from policy changes that would be popular with the electorate. Only areas of difference between contenders end up being discussion points during elections, the rest is passed over in silence.

Such a big deal is made out of the few policy differences between major parties that during campaigns they can appear to be poles apart. However, as I have discussed previously, the main contenders in developed democracies are actually very closely aligned with respect to political ideology and policy – particularly economic policy.

During their last term in office, the minority federal Labor government in Australia were more or less forced by independent MP Andrew Wilkie to attempt to implement restrictions on poker machine gambling. Prior to the discussion of reforms beginning, gaming industry lobby groups were giving similar amounts of money to both major parties but slightly favouring Labor. As soon as Labor started talking seriously about reform, the donations began to dramatically favour the opposition Liberals. The leader of the Liberal party, Tony Abbott, came out strongly against the reforms and they were eventually abandoned.

During the period in question, surveys showed that a large majority (70-75%) of Australian voters supported poker machine reform to limit the impact on problem gamblers and their families. The voters lost that one as they usually do when wealthy industries are lined up against them.

The gambling interests won the game and showed the Labor party that they weren’t bluffing. If I were a gambling man, I’d put money on poker machine reform not being raised by major parties in federal politics in the near future. The gaming industry has effectively paid to have the issue taken off the national political agenda. The view of the voting public is no longer relevant.

There are many more examples of this process where corporate and other wealthy entities punish reformists by shifting financial support. The best-documented examples in recent Australian political history are the mining and carbon taxes and the Future of Financial Advice (FoFA) reforms. There has been plenty of coverage of these issues so I won’t repeat the stories here.

Once a policy issue is effectively silenced, ongoing donations to both major parties help to entrench major party dominance. Large donations to both the Liberal and Labor parties further marginalise minor parties who may seek to break the silence on policy issues that the corporates or elites have purchased. In Australia, the Greens are strong advocates of poker machine reform so donations that advantage the major parties over the Greens are still worth making for corporates who want this issue out of the spotlight. When it’s a two horse race, the game is relatively easy to control.

A consequence of this donation-driven approach to politics is that many areas of open political debate between and within major parties are in policy areas that the wealthy elite don’t care much about, like same sex marriage or abortion, or represent divisions between corporate interests. Of course, some vestiges of ideological differences remain and show up in areas such as industrial relations and welfare.

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A demonstrator shouts in Times Square. Photograph: Mario Tama/Getty Images

Democracy theoretically puts the power of governance in the hands of the people. The origins of the word come from the ancient Greek words; dêmos, meaning people and kratos, meaning power.

However, many have argued that modern western political systems are closer to plutocracies than democracies. A plutocracy is ruled by money rather than by the people (ploutos means wealth). The costs of running a modern election campaign make it very difficult for candidates to win without substantial financial backing. Sourcing those finances is inherently corrupting because big corporate donors only give money in return for political favours. Combine this with the ice cream stall electioneering strategy of both major parties occupying very similar political territory, and you have a system ripe for voter disengagement.

The public’s faith in politics in Australia is at an all-time low with only 43% of voters in a recent poll believing that it makes a difference which of the major parties is in power compared to 68% as recently as 2007. Similarly dismal attitudes towards politics can be seen in the UK with only 33% believing the system of government works well.

In Australia, there is bipartisan support for many fundamentally antidemocratic policies such as pursuing so-called free trade agreements, which, at their core, are about ceding sovereignty to multinational corporations. There’s also bipartisan support for punishing asylum seekers who try to come here on boats seeking our protection, bipartisan support for following the US into any and all wars and bipartisan support for valuing economic growth above the wellbeing and sustainability of our society. The entire international trade and finance regime has substantially eroded government power, leaving immigration and national security as final frontiers where sovereignty remains pretty much untrammelled.

The degraded state of our democracies explains the popularity of figures like Russell Brand, whom I mentioned in my last column. He speaks directly to people who are politically aware but disillusioned, suggesting that if there are no candidates who represent our interests and our aspirations we should not vote. Only by withdrawing our participation from the broken system can we hope to fix it or build something better.


Russell Brand: “what’s the point of voting?”. Photograph: Karen Robinson/Observer

Devastating critiques of our current political and economic systems abound but almost always seem to become self-contradictory when they come to providing solutions. They claim that neoliberalism has fragmented the population and eroded sovereignty, making coherent political change more difficult. But at the same time, the solutions often rely on some nudge or tweak or restriction after which everyone will just be nice to each other. In other words, they rely on changing human nature.

This situation of disillusionment with the political economy combined with a lack of viable solutions has been around ever since the ancient Greeks experimented with different forms of democracy. The challenge has always been to develop a system that can’t be gamed or corrupted by power seekers or empire builders (ie people who have expansive ambition that trumps other concerns). Power seekers are a motley crew. Some are high functioning psychopaths, seeking power for power’s sake, some simply want to dominate a field of endeavour. Others have ideological reasons for wanting to change the world.

Power seekers can be a source of innovation and creativity. The challenge is to contain them, because, if not kept in check, they and their kin will corrupt or bring down just about any social or political structure that spreads power broadly through society.

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Don’t forget to include war and pseudo–antiterrorist actions as one way politicians lie.