Pollies’ dictionary

The Australian National Dictionary has just published its second edition with lots of new words that have worked their way into the vernacular, like ‘budgie smuggler’ and ‘shirt front’. But with the opening of the 45th parliament and the influx of new senators and members, there is an urgent need for a dictionary of what is really meant by the words and phrases they are likely to come across in political circles. Such a collection that has now been leaked to The Spectator Australia:

Yes: no.

No: yes.

We have a Broad Range of Options: we haven’t the faintest idea what we will do.

Stakeholders: pests, do-gooders and loud-mouths who will not mind their own business and think they have a right to be consulted on everything when they have the right to be consulted on nothing.

We have got the balance about right: it’s a dog’s breakfast, but there are enough bribes in this package to shut most stakeholders up.

Let me be perfectly clear about this: let me be so vague about my labyrinthine gobbledegook that it does not mean anything to you or me, although it enables me to say the opposite when I need to.

I can live with that: what you are suggesting is nonsense, but it might shut you up.

Foreign Aid: money stolen from the poor in rich countries and given to the rich in poor countries on its way to the bank accounts of kleptomaniacs in Geneva (apart from the bit siphoned off to World Vision to help Hamas).

Industry assistance: handout.

Orderly market: rigged market.

Oxymoron: putting two words together that create a contradiction. E.gs: Economics editor of the Age; ethical investment.

Quality press: boring newspapers.

Future leader of the party and influential backbencher: used interchangeably by the parliamentary press gallery as a reward to politicians who have leaked to the media in return for a favourable mention.

Boycott, divestment and sanctions: anti-Semitism.

Consensus: agreeing with me. See also: Divisive: disagreeing with me.

Core policies: the bare minimum we can get away with.

The powerful (economics etc) committee: A committee of MPs who are otherwise unemployable, but for whom a job and extra allowances have to be found.

Free speech: a forgotten concept thought to have existed in antiquity to encourage the free exchange of ideas, but now meaning freedom to express official views and beliefs approved by the ABC and Fairfax.

We won: we lost, but we can dress it up to look like a win. Particularly, where the result is a majority of 1 in the House and a minority in the Senate.

Vanstone, a: a theory of assessing election results by ignoring losses in your own seats which you should have won, and wins by the other side in seats they should have lost.

Mandate: what you would have had if people had voted for it, when they didn’t.

Majority: losing a vote. Working majority: losing two consecutive votes.

Good Working Majority: losing three consecutive votes.

This will never happen again: this will happen again; next time it’ll be worse.

Moral challenge: the last refuge of a failed politician devoid of all meritorious arguments, used especially with respect to climate change and budget repair.

Implied term: a provision in the Constitution omitted from all printed versions and capable of being discovered only by High Court judges.

Initiative: a government scheme imposing new taxes and regulations designed to prevent the citizen from doing anything not already prohibited.

Reform: making things worse; e.g., Senate voting reform where you win fewer seats than you had before the reform.

Vision: an hallucinatory delusion often afflicting clairvoyant politicians; usually incurable.

Removing red tape: conduct a review, appoint more public servants and pass more and worse regulations.

Essay: an abusive diatribe written by a politician in a vain attempt to show he is an intellectual.

Report: a bromide designed to give an air of respectability to an otherwise bald and unconvincing piece of propaganda published by a self-serving institute with three members.

International humanitarian law: a body of law designed to allow the free passage of terrorists across borders.

The international community: a loose collection of failed states and their leaders.

Roadmap (to peace etc): we don’t know where we are, where we are going, how to get there, why we want to go there, or what we will do when we arrive.

Within market expectations: an economic prediction that comes true, but which cannot be explained by any rational process; tossing a coin.

Trend growth: growth in an economy that keeps happening despite the efforts of governments to prevent it.

I have full confidence in the Minister: I have no confidence in the bastard. I gave him everything and he repaid me by stuffing up, chatting up the staff, lying, taking money and conspiring behind my back.

I want to spend more time with my family: I was sprung and although I did not take all the money or leer at my secretary very often, I had better resign before they find out about the donation to my campaign from colourful racing and development identities or what I got up to on the fact finding mission to Brazil.

Fact finding mission: free trip.

I’m right behind you: a term popularised by deputy leaders of political parties to convey the false notion of loyalty to their leader.

Thirty: the number of adverse opinion polls said to justify deposing an elected prime minister; also: the number of pieces of silver required to bribe a member of parliament to take part in such a process.

We would have done worse under Abbott: The last refuge of a Liberal Party scoundrel.

The post Brown study appeared first on The Spectator.

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