The Sun 42 WYNDHAM STREET, AUCKLAND TUESDAY, NOVEMBER 6, 1928 LIARS IN POLITICS

Sun (Auckland), Volume II, Issue 504, 6 November 1928, Page 8

The Sun 42 WYNDHAM STREET, AUCKLAND TUESDAY, NOVEMBER 6, 1928 LIARS IN POLITICS

THERE are, of course, no real liars in politics. That assertionis as true as the very obvious fact that there are no George Washingtons left in the political world. And yet during election time all over the civilised earth the people who so carelessly put their trust in politics as a means to prosperity and an easy life are exhorted by many political candidates to believe that all politicians, and particularly those in charge of the State’s purse, are liars. Such is the game of politics, and the more one studies it under the degeneracy of professionalism the easier it is to understand why good citizens with high ideals and the highest standard of old-fashioned honesty keep out of it. Doubtless they recognise that perhaps the greatest difficulty every successful politician has to encounter and overcome is not the temptation to tell lies at all, hut the necessity of refraining from telling the whole trirth and nothing but the truth. If, for example, a great statesman were to inform the people that national economic conditions did not permit any indulgence in big borrowing and extravagant expenditure, and that he had no intention whatever of overloading the taxpayer, he would be very close to speaking nothing but the whole truth: but would the public hail him and support him as an honest man who saw the real truth ? The people would howl him down as a bungling liar. If, on the other hand, another great statesman asserted that he could borrow, say, £100,000,000 at the lowest rate of interest in the world and lend it and spend it for the joy of everybody and the advancement of everything without any cost to the taxpayer or to posterity, nobody or hardly anybody would ever think of saying that the man was telling even a political lie. Indeed, thousands of admirers would go the length of asserting happily that here at last was the whole political truth. And so the clever game goes on with never a lie to spoil its enjoyment for honest and honourable men. It is a curious fact in history that, although many politicians have been impeached and punished for dishonest, corrupt practices and other unmoral weaknesses, none lias been driven out of politics simply for being a liar. And parliaments everywhere are among the very few places and institutions in the world where even the word “lie” is deleted from the language. Thus, a politician may be a brazen “stranger to the truth,” or openly be charged with falsehood, but never in any circumstances, however glaring or grotesque, can a politician be described as a liar. Henee, really, there are no liars in polities. In view of such tradition and truth, it is surprising to hear and see defenders of political parties and politicians protest angrily that their rivals are deliberately telling lies in order to promote their policy and interests which, naturally, are pure truth. And it is all the more surprising when everybody knows that immediately the smoke of an election campaign passes away, and the silly tumult is stilled, the contestants will shake hands and shout exuberantly that what they enjoyed in the fierce battle was the lack of, personalities and mean lies. But if any candidate he stupid enough to assert that administrators pinch public money for the purpose of winning votes, then the truth for once in politics will be the simple statement that such a type of politician is a liar. The plainest truth in New Zealand politics to-day is clear enough. It is this: the country cannot afford to start a carnival of borrowing and profligate expenditure.