Wow Vanilla, that is a heartfelt post and I read it with a great deal of interest. It is easy to be cynical towards those in political life but I also know from experience that most pollies enter the profession because of that initial ideological desire to do good (their version of good anyway).

Sometimes that desire gets caught up in a world that does not always value the truth and where political expediency may win out over honesty more times than we would like. The public prefers honest politicians, but politicians don't trust that this is true and continue to play the game and so the cycle continues. While he was not perfect, I admired Don Chipp's 'keep the B*s honest' approach.

Regarding truth and honesty - you can often ask two people to explain a situation and both parties will retell two different stories while truly believing their version to be correct and that the other is lying. In fact it is possible both are telling their version of the truth as they perceive it. When mediating between two warring parties this is often the case and requires some skilfull reality checks on both sides.

RObert made an excellent post when he talked about where the advantage sits in an outright lie where the intent is not honourable as opposed to a white lie to avoid hurting someone's feelings.

Humans do naturally prefer honesty and we are a better society for it, I think this is why people have become cynical about our politicians and maybe the cynicism has gone too far but unless we refuse to accept dishonesty in our leaders, they will keep believing they can get away with it. If we accept it as the norm the pollies will have a 'mandate' to continue.

1. If we want democracy, active citizens, politicians must be honest.
2. If we want long term relations, productive relations, mutual benefits , we must be honest.
3. If we want the others to respect us, we must respect our self, we must be honest
4. If we want the others to listen to us, we must be honest
5. Our society stands on our integrity, honesty if we lose them very soon we will convert our society to a jungle.

There are the lies that oil social interaction, "you look fabulous", "that hair-cut is great" or the helpful not outright lie "love that colour on you, but a longer length would make you look sensational".

This is simply good sense. We may be more intelligent than some of our dear friends, but it is hardly conducive to friendship to point that out all the time.

Then there are the public lies. The whoppers that cause cynicism at worst and distrust at best. The "core" and "non-core" type of lies, that we have hopefully left behind.

Clearly there are times when national security means that not all the truth can be revealed all the time. The difficulty is knowing what to say when. This is where a strong sense of integrity is needed. Where to compromise, how much to compromise? Vexed questions because nothing is ever quite as it seems.

How often have we thought to ourselves in hindsight, that we would done something differently?

Please forgive me for interrupting everyone at this juncture - but I just want to interject to Vanilla that I used the email address she gave me but gained a "failure to deliver" notice in return.

Sorry Romany. It's an old address and doesn't seem to work. My normal address has my real name attached to it. However, I have another — butwehavegotworldenoughandtime@gmail.com

Can you try that?