"More honesty would make politicians' jobs easier," says Geoff Carmody.

Would it?

Politicians get away with lies for one reason only. For the most part we, the electorate, collude in our own deception. Most of us want our pollies to tell us soothing lies. We want them to reinforce our beliefs.

And, above all, we want to believe our "leaders" actually have the power to address difficult issues when, all too often, they are as helpless as we are.

Very occasionally, under desperate circumstances, a politician can win by telling the truth. Usually, though, deception pays off because much of the electorate WANTS TO BE DECEIVED.

I also disagree with the main thrust of the article. Although telling the truth sometimes works in politics, mostly its a bad idea for those who want to get re-elected. Voters may respect the truth-telling politican more but not vote for him or her. Gross lies are a bad idea however.
Howard did not lie in getting GST. In fact, he had no real choice but to tell the truth .. but a lot of preparation went into its acceptance.. and it did contribute to an earlier Liberal election loss..

I don't see how honesty would help the ETS campaign, but if you were to take a position of high morality, why wouldn't you go the whole hog and admit the following:
We know from the Vostok ice cores that historically it's warming that causes increases in atmospheric CO2, not the reverse, as has been sold to the public.
We know that polar bear numbers are 5 times what they were 50 years ago. Once again not quite the line sold to the public.
We know that Michael Mann's 'hockey stick' graph showing dramatic late 20th century warming is a fraud based largely on the tree rings of one cherry picked tree. The IPCC are to be congratulated for removed it from their last report, but quickly replaced it with new lies in the 'gate' series. Yes, there were 1 or 2 newspaper retractions of 'gate' stories, but that still leaves many others which the IPCC has had to reluctantly admit to.
We know that the IPCC computer models have been wrong over the past decade and we know that they can't even predict the known past let alone the future.
We know that 2500 IPCC scientists did not agree to anything. Only a much smaller number of IPCC employees and a handful of independent contributors did and some of them are currently under multiple investigations.
We know that ground based temperature measuring stations have become unreliable in places due to urban heat influences and measuring stations have been chopped and changed over recent decades so that recent data is the least reliable.
We have highly reliable satellite temperature data which is conveniently ignored by most proponents of AGW.
We have independent scientists producing peer-reviewed reports of much better theories related to climate change which are suppressed and largely ignored.
We have false claims by the IPCC that their entire report is peer reviewed when researchers have found 30% of it isn't.
Highly respected institutions such as the Royal Society who have supported AGW have recently had a revolt by their members and are now rewriting their positions on AGW.

HONEST politicians would benefit from telling hard truths- dishonest ones who are in government for the money, perks and contacts would most definitely NOT benefit one bit.

The truth is relative to the point of view you have and the way the "facts" are presented. As statistics can be manipulated to say what you want, so quite often can science.
We the people want to be lied to because the truth is far too painful. We do not want to know that despite the finner debating points of global warming we are making a mess of our environment, we prefer to not notice the issues involved in the overpopulation of our cities. We find it easier to blame other countries and cultures for the instability in the global political situation, homelessness is not a result of the social and economic structure of our society rather they are just a drain on my taxes.
The truth that we are a greedy selfish self centred community that has lost all sensitivity to our environment and fellow man so that we can have everything now no matter the cost to others and to future generations is far to difficult to take. So best we ignore such truths and stick with the happy storey the polies have for us.

CO2: Not sure what planet you are from, but here on Earth the real data suggests the opposite of what you are suggesting. Cherry-picking buzzwords does not an argument make!
I've just come back from a Climate Science convention and your cute little stories do not successfully counter the real data and real analysis done by real climate scientists. The ocean is warming much faster than we thought when the IPCC report was put together.
The energy industry has *much* more to gain from misinformation than the scientists do!
To curious onlookers: by all means read the anti-GW arguments, then ask the experts for the facts: more messy, not as simple, but real.
Naked truth as no chance when profits are made by lies.