And while things haven't yet reached such dire straits here in New Zealand, journalists have complained that over the past decade or so, access to accurate information has become more difficult, and successive prime ministers have shown signs of playing "fast and loose with the truth".
These attitudes - towards expert opinion, towards truth, towards evidence - characterise what is beginning to be called "post-truth" politics: a form of politics where there is a willingness to issue warnings regardless of whether there is any real sense of the events being likely to come about, or making promises there is no real commitment to keeping, or making claims there is no real reason to believe are true - all for the purpose of gaining an electoral advantage.
And as the Brexit case and the Trump campaign demonstrate, this has significant consequences not only for national politics, but for international as well.
Some might think this is just how politics has to be: you do whatever it takes to get elected or gain a political advantage because once the votes are in there's no going back.
The problem is, this way of "winning" contradicts the underlying principles of democratic governance.
In place of concerns about illiberal democracy, we find ourselves threatened by the rise of illusory democracy.
When we consider the role of voting in a democracy, it is the means by which the bulk of the population take part in the government of their country: "directly or through freely chosen representatives" (Article 21, Universal Declaration of Human Rights, 1948).
By engaging in the political process in this way, governments are created that "deriv[e] their just powers from the consent of the governed" (US Declaration of Independence, paragraph 2).
These notions - freedom and consent - are fundamental to the process of democratic decision-making.
The attitude towards information that characterises "post-truth" politics is in direct conflict with this feature of democratic decision-making.
New Zealand's Code of Health and Disability Services Consumers' Rights stipulates healthcare services may only be provided to a patient if that patient gives informed consent.
This places a duty on healthcare providers to not only provide patients with an explanation of their condition and the options available to them, including a balanced assessment of the expected risks and side effects of the different options, but also to ensure this information is presented to the patient in such a way that they can understand what they are being told. Without this, the patient is not deemed to have given consent, regardless of whether they have signed the relevant documents.
Similarly in commerce, the Fair Trading Act extends responsibilities to sellers, by making it illegal for them to deceive or mislead customers.
In light of the inability of post-truth politics to provide anything other than illusory democracy, what should we do?
As in other areas where the making of free choices is deemed important, legal and ethical frameworks have been devised and implemented to try to ensure the underlying requirements for consent will be met.
Perhaps it's time to look at something similar for politics.
- Bill Fish is an Associate Professor in Philosophy at Massey University's School of Humanities. This is a revised version of a post first published on the incline.org.nz site.
- Views expressed here are the writer's opinion and not the newspaper's. Email: editor@hbtoday.co.nz
