Pollies and image: is it the connection that's wrong?

Given one of the meanings of the word "image", politicians should perhaps be applauded universally for their apparent failure to live up to the mark!

My trusty Concise Oxford reminds me that one definition of this elusive quality called image is "artificial imitation of the external form of an object." Thus it might be said that the last thing we need from those who presume to lead us is more artificiality. After all, is that not where the problem lies? Is that not what we have all come to despise about our public officials liberal Western democracies?

I have, after 22 years in public life, developed a theory on the way people in such democracies perceive their politicians. It goes something like this: we are reviled, even hated, as a collective ("They’re all a bunch of self-serving creeps!") but we can be, and generally are, praised and trusted at the individual, local level ("They’re all a bunch of self-serving creeps -- but that Tom Smith, or Mary Brown, is OK")

Implicit in this is that the punters loath the general run-of-the-mill politician (whom they’ve in the main never met) but have some regard for a local Member, the one who helped, perhaps, on an immigration or public housing matter, or broke through the red tape on their mother’s will. Incidentally, this is not something confined to politicians: my theory is that people have a low opinion of most doctors (but generally think the world of their own GP); they have a poor image of lawyers (but respect their family solicitor); and they think all businessmen are rapacious (except the one they know locally who helped out with the school donation).

So if "image" is in reality something artificial, and if we broadly condemn the collective but exempt the individual, why does the issue continue to cause us so much anguish? And what should, or can, be done about it?

The issue causes us continuing anguish because most people yearn, unconsciously perhaps, to follow and respect their leaders. That’s not some sort of an oddity on their part, but a fairly robust desire to want to trust and have confidence in others.

But what the voters are confronted with are daily challenges to that sense of trust and confidence. The media has the job of challenging and confronting elected officials – and ridiculing them into the bargain. This is not new. One has only to flick through the pages of Punch in 19^th century England to see the treatment meted out to politicians. And to those in Australia who, in their twilight years, remember through misty eyes the golden days of the statesmanship of Bob Menzies or John Curtin, a reminder is needed that these leaders, too, were lampooned and derided just as ruthlessly in their own day.

In the early 1990s in Western Australia, public behaviour by the State government of the day reached such a controversial point that a Royal Commission of Inquiry was appointed to inquire into the government’s activities, particularly its links with the business sector. One of the outcomes was the creation of a high-powered five-person Commission on Government (COG) . The role of this commission was to hold the WA Government and Parliament up to scrutiny, look at how things actually ran (as distinct to how we thought they ran), look at the personal and political behaviour prevalent at the time, and find ways of correcting any bad behaviour.

The COG reports were, in my view, classics – well-researched, realistic and idealistic, all at the same time. The three volumes could, and should, be helpful to students from all over Australia for years to come for inquiries into government and government process have trawled so well.

Ethics and image bobbed up time and again. In its No 3 report COG noted:

"Throughout our inquiries we have been aware of significant public concern about the perceived decline in ethical standards of politicians. A recurring theme has been the lack of integrity and honesty of elected representatives…"

Trying to separate perception and reality, the Commissioners observed:

"…It is difficult to conclude categorically that there has been an actual drop in standards of behaviour."

The Commissioners then went on to borrow an observation from Britain’s Nolan Committee which was also toying with this notion of perceived lower standards: "We can say," said Nolan ," that conduct in public life is more rigorously scrutinised (emphasis added) than it was in the past, that the standards which the public demands remain high, and that the general majority of people in public life meet those high standards."

The Nolan Committee did note however that "…there are weaknesses in the procedures for maintaining and enforcing those standards."

There were views expressed to COG in Western Australia that while there was a large level of cynicism and scepticism these reactions by the public were perhaps a healthy – rather than an unhealthy – sign of life in the West. But the Commissioners then made an important observation that warned that:

"…when scepticism turns to cynicism and complacency, it can impair public confidence."

I found it instructive, then, that the argument had now returned to that word "confidence" and all that it implied – how to establish confidence between elector and elected and how to maintain it.

But in reality, and this is my own experience, confidence and trust can’t be contrived, or shaped, or manufactured or PR’d; or at least if those artificialities are present, the confidence and trust cannot be sustained. In the end, people – be they voters or work acquaintances or friends – know instinctively who to trust: it’s part of their ‘training’ as members of the human race.

Thus it is that all the Codes of Conduct in the world, all the Manuals of Ethical Principles for MPs, all the Registers of Pecuniary Interests, all the induction and training schemes for newly-elected politicians….all of this will be to no avail if the elected representatives are unable to capture the trust and confidence of their voters, and keep it!

A long-retired Federal MP from W.A., John Hyde, held the view that "…our pollies know more or less when they are behaving badly." I agree with that. Similarly, a retired State Minister, Keith Wilson (a former clergyman) said his own intuition "…is that everybody has some instinct about what is right and what is wrong. . ."

I agree with that, too.

So the answer to how we improve the image of politicians? My answer is that we should actually dwell less on image and more on those elements of our behaviour which (a) are likely to attract adverse media comment, and (b) which in turn, by being reported, reduce the trust and confidence of which individual MPs of all parties are capable.

It is perhaps in our rush to improve the image of politicians, in being seen to be wanting to raise standards, that we force ourselves into an artificial world which, by definition, does not exist: a world where politicians are charismatic, elegant, handsome, articulate and faultless practitioners of their craft. Back in the real world the voters are generally happier with people they can trust, in whom they can develop confidence and a comfort zone. Perhaps we can help the voters back into that real world by dropping the connection between politics and a better image.