Stop the spin and call it like it is, says author

 

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We live in an age where hot days are "heat events", firms have "organic strategies for success" and spying on welfare cheats is "covert optical surveillance".

The vague, sterile terms of management language have invaded every sphere of life, according to best-selling author Don Watson.

Watson has pinned down spin in his entertaining new book Bendable Learnings.

Watson previously revealed the decay of public language in Death Sentence and the Dictionary of Weasel Words.

In Bendable Learnings he has complied over 1000 examples of spin in government, media, education and business.

Some are laugh-out-loud stupid, others slightly more sinister.

Watson says government bureaucrats, who have always spoken in a confoundingly irritating language, have adopted the same management principles as those that rule the private sector.

"There are a great many `frameworks', `platforms' and `scaffoldings'; `objectives', `outputs' and `inputs'; a lot of stuff that is `key, strategic and enhanced' and a lot of `underpinned vision': as if every worker in a health department is never far from a dictionary of civil engineering, he writes.

Centrelink's description of spying on welfare cheats is "covert optical surveillance".

The Tasmanian government defines outcomes as:". . .the benefits or other long-term changes that are sought from undertaking the project. They are achieved from the utilisation of the project outputs. Outcomes are linked with objectives, in that if the outcomes are achieved then the projects objective(s) have been met."

Watson blames management theory of the 1980s.

"It put everything into abstract nouns, to make everything sound more scientific, to give it more gravitas", he explains.

It worked like a virus or a parasite.

"It attaches itself to ideologies and to political correctness. The ALP loved all this," he says.

"During the ALP's 1980s renovations the party adopted this language."

Watson should know, he was once Paul Keating's speech writer.

Kevin Rudd, Keating and John Howard speak plainly, he says.

"Well, the Prime Minister is discretionary. Rudd understands language he knows the difference between plain and spin and knows when to use it."

An academic historian by trade who has written several books on Australian history, Watson has also written for TV, stage and film.

His book American Journeys, a narrative of his travels in the US after Hurricane Katrina, won major awards last year including The Age Book of the Year and the 2008 Walkley Award for non-fiction.

Watson urges people to reject spin as a method to obfuscate true meaning.

He is concerned about its influence in education.

The education system has rolled over and surrendered to management language, he says.

For example, the Edith Cowan University writes about student priorities policy as ". . .issues arising from the contributing feedback processes and are generally underlying causal issues being different from specific issues identified and addressed within the contributing feedback process".

Students themselves are getting better marks by writing in obscure language, says Watson, because they're being fed a lot of spin and it's expected of them.

He cites an example from an HSC English assessment task titled Write a Feature Article, created by the NSW Education Department.

"It will take a specific angle on the effects of institutional policies on individuals and be based on a range of texts that communicate various attitudes and beliefs about such effects. It will explore the questions of what these attitudes and beliefs are and how the texts communicate ideas and institutions and their beliefs on individuals."

Explain why this task makes you want to be a journalist, Watson asks.

On the subject of journalists quoting vast amounts of spin in their stories, he says many are in an awful bind.

"Pollies are rightly accused of spin but journalists also judge them on their ability to spin.

"They're also not asking politicians to speak plainly, to say what they really mean. About 90 per cent of politicians don't speak concrete language."

In this age of spin, even the weather isn't simply weather any more.

Watson's book has many examples.

After the catastrophic bushfires earlier this year, Victorian Premier John Brumby talked of wind events and a reporter even asked him: "Just on your warning yesterday that we can expect more of these extreme climactic events. . . how is that going to be factored into planning for these events in the future?"

Brumby also told 3AW radio: "It's not so much a heat event today, its a wind event and you are going to see intense winds."

Watson advises people to write and speak as though they're addressing an old digger.

"Call it like it is," he says.

"Put some passion back into our language."