Dialogue: Worshipping public opinion

By GORDON McLAUCHLAN

I think we should be worried by the tyranny of the majority and by the blind worship of public opinion. Public opinion polls are becoming simply a measure of the sound from the bandwagon in many Western countries.

In Australia, the Governor-General is being hounded out of office, not for what he did but for what he might not have done.

Here, Justice Fisher was castigated by Prime Minister Helen Clark for doing over one brief period, as far as we know, what tens of thousands of other New Zealanders have done over extended periods without threatening the stability of the country.

This is her weakness, firing from pursed lips without thinking things through. It's worth reminding her that democratic governments are not at liberty to interfere in the morality of private citizens where no evidence exists that they adversely or unlawfully affect others.

Fortunately, the good sense of most New Zealanders did move public opinion in the judge's favour, probably because no sustained casual accusations were made to keep the tut-tutting going. I'm just sorry he seemed so abject in his response.

Governor-General Hollingworth might have been negligent in the extreme in failing to discipline and suspend priests under his control for sexual offences against children, but no one seems certain of that.

As I read the reports closely I come up against repeated "accusations", political allegations that he has lost the confidence of the electorate, that he has been forced to resign from children's welfare organisations, and that he is damaging the office of Governor-General because of the scandal.

A press report this week noted that a writ had been issued in Victoria alleging repeated abuse of a 10-year-old boy by a priest who later committed suicide. It continued: "Although not directly related to his woes it has helped cement anger at his alleged complicity in the concealment of child sexual abuse by the church in Queensland."

He will soon be blamed for rape and pillage in the Congo.

No one, as far as I have read, has accused him of any crime. Even a Church inquiry into charges of misconduct has not yet been held.

No matter what office he holds, does the man not deserve a fair hearing with evidence presented in a calm and disciplined environment and assessed with judicial reserve?

If at the end of that he is seen to be negligent in his management of the people under his control in such a way that further damage was done to children, then action should be taken against him, led by an order to resign.

I think the Howard Government is despicable for deceiving Australians about the refugee crisis during the last election campaign and for keeping children for months in detention centres, but I think it is right in defending Hollingworth, at least in the meantime, although one might hesitate to endorse its motives.

I suggest that stable democracy would be more damaged if Hollingworth is forced out by nothing more than a surge of trumped-up public anger than the office of Governor-General would be if he stayed.

Dangerous surges of irrational public opinion are not new. William Hazlitt wrote a powerful and penetrating essay on the subject 170 years ago.

But in the electronic age, media can command the attention of millions of people and, even without intending to, inflame feelings against individuals who have simply been accused of something.

It seems suspicious to me that whenever public charges of sexual misconduct are made, a flood of accusations follows from other usually unnamed and often undocumented "victims".

Only countries with a deep puritan tradition could insist that sexual abuse of any sort is always irrevocably damaging to a child when violent physical abuse is of lesser consequence.

If I related here - and I could - examples of physical abuse inflicted on me and my contemporaries over a period of some years half a century ago by fathers and schoolmasters, would a similar flood of accusations follow? People are outraged by sexual licence, but much less concerned with violence.

Yet mayhem and murder are by far the most damaging social threats in this country today.

Take the big fight coming up in Washington DC. City officials, considering a licence for Mike Tyson to fight Lennox Lewis for the world heavyweight title, said they favoured the fight because it might lift tourism and commerce which had declined since September 11.

Thus the Western world's role model for mindless thuggery is welcomed into the sporting arena for purely commercial reasons. Why not stage a live sex circus? Imagine the outrage then.

Calm and thoughtful people will also have been disturbed this week by the publicity surrounding the arrest of a suspect in the dreadful rape and murder of 6-year-old Teresa Cormack 15 years ago.

The fact that he is innocent until proved guilty was referred to only in asides during most television coverage, even by the police, and if you listen to casual talk he is already condemned by public opinion.

Let me end with a quote from Hazlitt: "You see a dozen or score of your countrymen with their faces fixed and their eyes glued to a newspaper, a magazine, a review - reading, swallowing, profoundly ruminating on the lie, the cant, the sophism of the day! Why? It saves them the trouble of thinking; it gratifies their ill-humour and keeps off ennui."