Liberal with the Truth

This wasn't an election campaign about truth, it was definitely about integrity but not Truth. You can be untruthful and still maintain your integrity and that is pretty much the mantra of modern political campaigns.

The Liberal party knew that Australia's debt was necessary and likely to be very similar regardless of who was in power, but forget that truth! As long as they kept up the attack consistently it would become the perception and maintain their integrity as an alternative.

The Labor party knew that the mining tax is poorly constructed and poorly communicated, but forget that truth! As long as they kept up the defense consistently it would become the perception and maintain their integrity as a Government.

The problem however comes when you do win or retain Government and you have to deliver. This couldn't be more pronounced in the current wheeling and dealing for the independents support in the hung parliament.

Tony Abbott doesn't want to invest $42billion (well it's really only about $22billion of Government funds, but facts aren't important here) in the NBN, instead he basically wants to keep the status quot and support private investment. The problem is for many many years private investment has ignored both regional Australia and broadband because it isn't seen as profitable.

Telstra once proposed building their own NBN, but they wanted exclusive use of which the ACCC forbid. Perhaps Tony should just allow a Telstra broadband monopoly - Although the public don't like monopolies as much as they don't like Telstra.

Now that Tony is being forced to deal with broadband and the needs of regional Australia (why haven't the Nationals forced him before?) he finds himself having to reconcile the facts of his campaign with the reality of delivering. It's entirely possible he would back flip and sign up to the NBN.

If he were to do so he would be doing significant damage to his integrity, because he can only maintain it if he doesn't concede that his attacks on Labor's Debt, Deficit, and spending are maintained. If he spends $42billion on the NBN then he's effectively admitting he lied to the electorate - or at least that is how people will see it.

The same problem confronts Julia Gillard in the new Independent/National Tony Crook in Western Australia. He doesn't want the mining tax, and he would support Labor if it was gone. Combined with the Greens Adam Bandt this would give Labor the best chance of taking power.

However, if Julia dumps the mining tax she effectively admits it wasn't worth the $10.5 billion dollars in revenue and puts in danger the company tax cuts and superannuation increases that have been promised. As much as people may not like the mining tax they really want it's benefits.

These are important issues that need to be resolved and the leader that navigates them well will lead the country in a minority Government. But there are many many issues and promises from the campaign that are now even more in doubt because of the hung parliament but also because they stretched the truth.

Governments tend to lose Government when they lose their integrity in the eyes of the public, maybe the modern parties should learn how to deal in truth instead of integrity - you can't lose the truth.