SOUTH African journalist Anthony Heard pointed out this week that the murder of communist and ANC leader Chris Hani broke an unwritten rule: political leaders do not order each other’s assassinations.
Thus Saddam Hussein is still alive. An exploding cigar send to Havana or a bomb attack over Libya are exceptions, not the rule. Politicians have an understanding not to kill each other. They are the rules of the club or the union.
In politics there are only a few occasions where the common interests of the calling are put above the usual name-calling, denigration and muck-raking within it. I can think of only three others.
The first is ensuring surroundings are comfortable.
The second, equally self-serving, is after a death or retirement in the ranks. Then politicians on opposing side say all sorts of sickeningly hypocritical things about each other: “Distinguished career long and selfless devotion to duty and country fearless exponent of his beliefs” etc etc.
The third is when a politician is attacked by an outsider, notably the media. Then they rally around. They give evidence for each other in defamation proceedings and ensure that the defamation laws remain in a state that make it easier for politicians to sue.
We had a choice example of the third late last month when Liberal Gary Humphries got damages for defamation for a television news segment in 1990 when he was Minister for Education. At the time the schools-closure debate was running. My recollection of that debate was of the Labor Party accusing Gary Humphries of everything short of eating schoolchildren.
But, lo, what is this we see in Chief Justice Jeffrey Miles’s judgment? _ a reference to Labor’s Bill Wood, subsequently Minister for Education, giving evidence that Gary Humphries is really Saint Gary. He is quoted of speaking of Saint Gary’s “”reputation for integrity, hard work, willingness to listen to community groups and to representations and to attend community meetings”.
Now, either Saint Gary went to the John Hewson School of Listening, or the things Labor said about Vampire Gary eating schoolchildren after closing their schools were wrong. “”Willingness to listen to community groups” wasn’t the message Labor was giving about Vampire Gary during the school-closure debate. But in a defamation action a couple of years later it was a suitable epithet for a Labor MLA to apply to him .
Far from “”listening to community groups”, Mr Wood accused Mr Humphries in the chamber at the time of showing a lack of concern about the safety of schoolchildren and of neglecting his duty to them.
In the chamber they attack each other in pursuit of power; in the courtroom they are members of the politicians’ union. No doubt everything they say in both places is absolutely true; it’s just that the meaning comes out differently.
The first two ACT Legislative Assemblies have had 26 people as members in all. Of these, 11 have been involved in or seriously threatened defamation actions to my knowledge, nearly all as plaintiffs. That is 42 per cent.
I haven’t surveyed teachers, clergymen, journalists, nuclear physicists, real-estate agents or used-car setters, but it is a fair bet that nowhere near 42 per cent of them get involved in defamation action.
The catch is that these politicians are the very people who are responsible for defamation laws. Just as they are the people responsible for building Houses of Parliament.
On this occasion, fortunately, Justice Miles appears to have seen through the politicians’ union. Mr Humphries was upset because WIN television said that while he was closing schools his office had spent $17,000 on travel. The true figure was $5000. Well, attacks on politicians’ perks are quite commonplace, and even if wrong hardly go to the issue of moral character. Moreover, I don’t know if anyone who cares about public events ever watches WIN television news, or if they did whether they would take the slightest notice of it. So Justice Miles was right in awarding damages at the lower end of the law’s present scale, at $9000. Perhaps that scale is a little too high, and the lower end of it should be lower than $9000, which is about four months’ average pay after tax.
Speaking of defamation damages. Last week, Justice Higgins awarded $17,000 to a worker because the ABC had said in a story about Parliament House construction rorts that he had dishonestly taken an early lunch. If the worker had been unjustly sacked he would not have got that much. Moreover, Justice Higgins found that one side or other had attempted to deceive the court, but he could not tell which. Thus he leaves open the possibility that a plaintiff who might have deceived the court gets damages. That is a very unsatisfactory law, but you can bet the politicians’ union won’t do anything about it.