Julian Burnside is a prominent Australian human rights barrister. As a delegate to the Australia 2020 Summit, his ideas for the future include stopping politicians from engaging in misleading behaviour, and guaranteeing funding for the ABC and SBS.
What kind of ideas will you be bringing to the Summit?
Well, I’ve got a few but they’re mainly about making the system work better.
One, a law which would make it an offence for politicians to engage in misleading and deceptive conduct.
Another, which would restore genuine ministerial responsibility.
One, which would improve and guarantee proper funding for the ABC and SBS because they are really the way in which the public in kept informed about what is going on in the running of the system. And, if we’ve got time after that, then some more ideas.
You floated an idea about stopping politicians from being able to lie. How important is that?
I think it’s very important because if politicians are able to lie to us, mislead us about what’s going on and mislead us about what they are planning to do, the whole system will not work according to its design.
Now we can have all these elaborate ideas about redesigning the constitution and reframing the way parliament works but if they lie to us then we can’t hold them to account for the way the system is supposed to be.
So then they would have to step down?
It would vary, it would vary. I mean there’s a great range of misleading conduct, from the minor to the very serious. I’d propose a range of penalties, from fines through to disqualification, through to jail, depending on how serious it was.
You know you’ve got to stand back and ask yourself, why should they be allowed to mislead us? Why should politicians be allowed to deceive us and get away with it? I’ve really never heard a politician explain why they should be allowed to do that.
Section 22 of the Trade Practices Act was introduced thirty something years ago. It says that corporations in trade and commerce cannot engage in misleading and deceptive conduct. That’s the standard that politicians have imposed on business, so if it’s good for business, it’s good for politicians.
Do you think your idea will be well received today?
It’s had very substantial public support—politicians haven’t commented.
Do you think politicians will listen to the ideas presented today?
They will listen and maybe they will say why it is not practical for them to be told not to decieve us, and I will listen to their arguments.
Thank you for your time
Thank you.
Following this interview, I spoke to Julian Burnside at the conclusion of the Summit.
So Mr Burnside are you happy with the way the way the summit has gone?
I think it’s been extremely enlightening and very interesting. I think I would have a few constructive suggestions for ways that it might be improved but I think it’s been a really, really good venture and it was definitely worth while taking part.
Do you support all of the ideas that are moving forward from your stream on the Future of Australian Governance?
Yeah I think I support all of them. There may be a couple where I have some reservations or a couple that I think are less important than others but by in large I am in full support.
Are you disappointed at all that your idea, to make it an offence for politicians to engage in dishonest or misleading behaviour, was not successful in moving forward to the next stage?
Well, it wasn’t really put forward to the group as an idea in the end but I’m not particularly disappointed because I think that there is a good chance that the current government, being an honest government, will enact such a law. It takes an honest government to introduce a law like that because obviously governments that want to be able to lie would not introduce such a law.
But you know, that proposal goes towards good governance and there have been a lot of very important ideas in that area, that have come out of this summit, so no I’m not disappointed at all.
Finally, there has been a lot of talk about whether this summit is just a talk fest. Do you think it has been and is that necessarily a bad thing?
Well, I’m not sure what is entirely meant by the term talkfest but if it is meant to convey something bad then I completely disagree – I think this has been good. There has been some sessions that could have been tightened up, of course, there are some sessions we might have skipped, of course, but overall its been very good, very constructive and I think it should happen again.
