Honesty the best policy for public figures in Australia

SYDNEY - Shocking, distressing, unforgivable, unacceptable: with those words the leader of Australia’s biggest state accepted the resignation of a cabinet minister who had been shown on television leaving Sydney’s best-known gay sex club.

Family man David Campbell, 52, apologised to his wife, his party, to those who had elected him and to his cabinet colleagues.

“These are some choices that I’ve made,” Campbell said. “They’ve caused a great deal of embarrassment.”

New South Wales Premier Kristina Keneally, of the view that Campbell had done the right thing, insisted there had been no wrongdoing.

He was entitled to use his government car to drive to the venue, had not paid for sex and the club was an out-and-proud place where homosexual men could meet and have sex with other homosexual men.

So why did Campbell resign?

After all, Australia’s second-largest political party is led by an openly gay man and the federal climate change minister is a lesbian.

Many think Campbell acted hastily. A newspaper poll with 30,000 respondents found that three-quarters believed the television channel that blew apart his 20-year double life was wrong to do so.

“My position has always been that the private life of MPs is precisely that,” said Bob Carr, a former New South Wales premier. “Are we to drive from public life people whose probity is blameless because of entirely private conduct?”

Apparently so - if those public figures are caught out being dishonest with the public. It is about transparency rather than sexuality.

Last year, a cabinet colleague of Campbell’s was obliged to resign after his six-month affair with a 26-year-old woman was exposed.

Newspaper columnist Mark Day talked of the erosion of the “walls around ancient no-go zones” that now oblige public figures to live by the same rules in private that they espouse in public.

Campbell’s downfall, he said, was brought about by hypocrisy not homosexuality. And he defended the role of the media in exposing it.

“When politicians stand for election they say, in effect, ‘Here I am, this is what I stand for, these are my values - vote for me,’” Day said. “Therefore, if the truth is revealed to be something other than the intended projection… then the public is entitled to know it, too.”

Geoff Field, an openly gay radio personality, said Campbell was stupid and morally wrong and that he was the author of his own destiny.

“This case should illustrate that honesty is always the best policy,” Field said.

Unsurprisingly, given the level of sympathy for Campbell following his abrupt exit, Keneally has backtracked quite a bit from where she was on the day he was removed from office.

She said she had accepted his resignation “on compassionate grounds” and not only that he could remain a member of parliament but that he could expect a return to the cabinet when a bit of water had gone under the bridge.

She even expressed remorse for using terms like shocking, distressing, unforgivable and unacceptable.