This was published 5 years ago
Opinion
We should welcome it when people change their minds
Julia Baird
Journalist, broadcaster, historian and authorRecently someone wrote a column about some of my views on marriage equality with the headline: “Why Julia Baird was wrong”. My daughter, upon discovering this, was delighted. “I could write a book with that title!” she cried happily. “I’ve got so much material.”
She does. While I try to tell my offspring they are more likely to see Halley’s Comet burn a line across the sky than me make a mistake, they know I’m joking. We all err - often.
(I’d hasten to add that I don’t believe my argument - that many Christians were happy about the result of the marriage equality vote, and had felt poorly served by many of their leaders during the debate – was wrong. But that time is, thankfully, behind us.)
Catherine McGregor has admitted she was wrong on Safe Schools.
Just this week I rethought the sugar tax after reading Bernard Keane’s analysis on lack of evidence of its effectiveness in Crikey. I’ve also been wrong in thinking the sugar crisis could best be dealt with as a public health issue mostly through nutrition education and individuals cutting back.
I have shied from what has appeared to be joyless fanaticism about extracting sweet teeth, but the evidence about the damage sugar is doing is undeniable and disturbing. It’s huge and it’s killing us. It might not be the tax, but more must be done.
I was wrong. But we don’t often say we are, in public. Think of the language around the changing of one’s mind, which surely in many cases is a sign of flexibility, of having an open mind, of a fresh interrogation of evidence, of discovering new information, or even just adapting to political circumstances.
Backflipping. Caving in. Flip-flopping. We call for a change, but when it comes, we jeer. Sometimes, this is called for.
Barnaby Joyce called on his colleagues to be honest when confessing they were wrong to delay the banking royal commission.Credit: Marina Neil
Too many politicians dissemble and take the public for fools, most evident recently in the banking royal commission. It took days before Coalition politicians admitted they had been wrong to block or delay it. Nationals backbencher Barnaby Joyce, to his credit, said it straight away, and advised others to be candid: “Just say, look mate, no one ever predicted this. This is completely beyond the pale. I apologise. I shouldn't have argued against it."
But it took a week before Financial Services Minister Kelly O’Dwyer conceded the government should not have delayed the royal commission, after repeatedly refusing to say so during a grilling by the ABC’s Barrie Cassidy. Others were similarly reluctant.
Just be honest. Tell us why you have changed your mind – or if you made a mistake. Political expediency isn’t particularly convincing, but candour is. It’s so galling to see politicians obfuscate or lie to us about what they genuinely think: we heard you before, we scream from the couch.
Which is why we need to stop stigmatising public expressions of doubt or error – when they are genuine and not simply opportunistic - and instead welcome them as healthy and human. Do we really want politicians who can’t change their minds? Have we abandoned the entire concept of evidence-based persuasion?
The host of 7.30, Leigh Sales, in her essay On Doubt, written in 2009 and republished last year, writes: “Even more so than in the media, doubt equals weakness in politics. The politician who expresses doubt is seen as indecisive rather than capable of nuanced thought and self reflection.”
In which case, an honest answer is a risk.
“Politics,” she writes, “is littered with the carcasses of the indecisive.”
So how much of this is our fault? Do we crow too quickly, instinctively, when someone moves position? Think of Gladys Berejiklian responding to community pressure over the stadiums, derided as making a “backflip”. Is responding to the community good or bad? What do we expect from our leaders?
And have we lost our ability to discern the genuine disclosure or apology from the political? Many of the changes of mind over same-sex marriage, for example seemed purely expedient – it was always difficult to swallow the sincerity of Julia Gillard’s stance, but others, like that of The Australian’s Greg Sheridan were genuine and reflected a shift that was happening in many Australian homes.
Victorian Premier Daniel Andrews changed his mind on euthanasia following his father’s death from cancer.
This week, Catherine McGregor, military officer, cricket commentator and Australia’s most prominent transwoman, wrote an eloquent apology for what she had said about Safe Schools. It was a superb example of how to retract, confess and express sorrow that many in her community had felt hurt and betrayed.
If we don’t witness people in public wrestling with their consciences, we are less likely to be candid about the cracks in our own. Or to be cognisant of the fact that only the most rigid and dogmatic never change their minds.
In 1832, Abraham Lincoln – who, it must be remembered, crucially changed his mind about the urgency of emancipating slaves - ran unsuccessfully for the Illinois legislature. At the time, he said: “Holding it a sound maxim that it is better to be only sometimes right than at all times wrong, so soon as I discover my opinions to be erroneous, I shall be ready to renounce them.”
We should stop automatically using the term backflip as a pejorative for public figures who change their minds. The onus is on them, though, to convince us it was for good reason.
Julia Baird hosts The Drum on ABC.