28th October, 2010
JIM WALLACE

The bedraggled NSW Government has seethed with scandal in recent months. Former minister Ian McDonald resigned amidst allegations that he misused public funds on an overseas trip. Another former minister, John Della Bosca, resigned after revelations of an affair with a woman half his age. More recently, frontbencher Paul McLeay bade an emotional farewell to public life after being caught using parliamentary computer resources to access pornography and gambling websites.  Meanwhile, the list goes on and the Independent Commission Against Corruption has even recommended that criminal charges be brought against former parliamentary secretary Karyn Paluzzano for falsifying employee pay forms and then misleading corruption investigators by lying about it.

When they first took up their seats in their respective parliaments, I doubt any of the politicians listed above ever imagined they would one day become front-page news, accused of corruption or hypocrisy. Yet they failed in their moral duty to be truthful, to the Parliament, their colleagues their constituents and in some cases, to their nearest and dearest.

Recently others in the higher echelons of power have not kept their commitments on key policies; making big promises that they could not, or would not deliver when the seduction of power laid her trap.

Prior to the recent Tasmanian State elections, Premier David Bartlett gave an unequivocal commitment that there would be no place for the Greens in any re-elected Labor government, terming any such partnership ‘a deal with the devil’. When the election delivered the predicted hung parliament, David Bartlett gave Tasmanian Greens leader Nick McKim a Cabinet position to secure power for a Labor minority government.

Federal Parliament has similar examples where the attraction of power suddenly takes a higher priority than keeping election promises and with the Greens holding the balance of power it is sure to make many of Labor’s promises vulnerable. Julia Gillard has already indicated that the carbon tax she assured us wouldn’t be introduced is now part of the government’s agenda and the hung parliament has already called into question Tony Abbott’s keeping of his agreement on the arrangements for the speaker.

But is integrity so malleable? Should we benignly call these incidents ‘backflips’ in the same way we too often hide the reality of civilian deaths on the battlefield in the term ‘collateral damage’.

A dictionary definition describes integrity as ‘the quality of possessing and steadfastly adhering to high moral principles or professional standards’. It can also refer to a state of being complete or undivided, or of being sound or undamaged.

I am as cautious to write on this as the next person would be, as none of us is perfect, but we each have a responsibility to ourselves and our professions to develop and maintain both integrity and courage. These two qualities must be cultivated in developing character, and they are built or eroded in the numerous small, often private choices we make on a daily basis.

World renowned theologian and Bishop Tom Wright, in his recent book Virtue Reborn takes us back to Shakespeare’s Hamlet for a lesson in developing good habits.

Hamlet’s mother has colluded with his uncle in murdering his father and is now the queen of the usurper king. The queen has failed to act honourably, ignoring conscience and virtue for her own ends. Instead, Hamlet urges, she should try to ‘assume a virtue if you have it not’ (act 3, scene 4, line 160). As Wright notes, Hamlet is saying that it is not hypocritical to assume higher standards than we might naturally posses; rather it is the way virtue comes into its own. Urging his mother to abstain from the usurper king’s bed, Hamlet says:

Refrain tonight

And that shall lend a kind of easiness

To the next abstinence; the next more easy;

For use almost can change the stamp of nature,

And either curb the devil, or throw him out,

With wondrous potency.

(lines 165-170)

The basic message is that you have to make a start somewhere in developing good habits.

If charity begins at home, then so too does integrity. There is a tendency today to view the private and public as separate, but this is a clear fallacy.  A person’s private behaviour is very indicative of how we can expect them to carry themselves and act in public life. Private decisions and behaviour are not trivial issues on the sidelines of a glittering political career. Our families have greater claims on our loyalty, trustworthiness and right behaviour than anyone else and the trust we honour or betray there speaks volumes about our personal integrity.

Failure here is also the Achilles heel for our potential effectiveness in public life.  Unless we not only deliberately build our integrity, but protect it by keeping strict protocols on issues like consumption of alcohol, avoiding potentially compromising situations and above all having accountability, we are very likely to see our career crash around us as we have seen happen all too often and in plague proportions, in the New South Wales parliament.

Jim Wallace is managing director of the Australian Christian Lobby. This article is an extract from a lead article in the latest edition of Viewpoint magazine – a magazine which aims to inform and influence policy makers on issues of concern, particularly to the Christian constituency. To read the full article please click here. For more information about Viewpoint or for subscriptions go to www.viewpointmagazine.com.au

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