Just when we thought things couldn’t get worse, just when we though all those dial-a-cliché fair dinkums had stretched our patience to the limit, we now have two candidates promising us reality. Tony’s worst ad – the one with the tune only slightly worse than the Exclusive Photography ditty – asks voters to stand up for real action. In the last couple of days Jules has promised to show us her real self. The avuncular Kochie is asking for a real debate. Last night on Neighbours Donna chattered about wanting a real wedding.

What the hell are these people talking about?

Let’s resist the existential angle and stick to the campaign. I have innumerable questions about real action, real selves, real debates and real weddings, but I’ll focus on the obvious: what isn’t reality? I saw Inception the other day. I enjoyed it. I enjoyed it and then I left the cinema and promptly forgot about it. I wasn’t thrust into a state of confusion: real debates, fake debates, real action, fake action. The only confusing bit is candidate gobbledygook.

Julia has promised to shake off the shackles of stage management. Her peculiar promise was made at a press conference. What’s real about a press conference? What’s real about an election campaign? Is Big Brother more real than Neighbours? Cameras, a voting public, a damn big prize at the end manipulates performance. It has to. But lies and spin and gamesmanship don’t affect reality. It might be a version of reality, it might be orchestrated reality, but by most definitions it’s happening. Sadly, no dreams have been tinkered with, my friends.

A chapter of my last book explored identity management. In short, I wrote about how the self we are at work of course differs from the self we are in the bedroom or the self we might be in a coffee shop or in a sex shop or in church or at a political rally but that none of those selves are any less real: they’re real at that moment.

I’m bored, I have a warped sense of humour, and truth be told I’d be maniacally delighted if being really real manifested in leaders saying what they really really thought. I’d maim to hear Julia claim to actually believe in gay marriage or for the Mad Monk to divulge that he likes ‘em barefoot and pregnant. I’d be even more giddy to hear that they’re bored too. That they’re sick of being on the buses. Sick of having digital recorders thrust up their noses. That Jules is exhausted having to devise new hairstyles everyday. Of having to move ever forward. That said, while it might make the campaign more entertaining, it wouldn’t make it any more real. More real, really real, core promises, non-core promises. In the words of Boston Legal’s fabulous Judge Sanders, it’s jibber jabber.

May wasn’t so long ago when Tone tested our faith by admitting he has some problems with the truth. Not that anyone was truly shocked. We’re all very used to exaggeration and hyperbole and every possible euphemism for lie. My guess is that voters are less interested in reality, less interested in jibber jabber and much much more interested in vigour, fervour and - God forbid - policy.

Dr Lauren Rosewarne

04 August 2010