This is a pretty depressing exercise, with the English language broken-nosed and bruised and bleeding from pretty much every orifice in pretty much every paragraph. From her Barrie Cassidy interview, in order:
‘Tony Abbott will have to look people in the eye at the time of the next election and explain to them how he’s taking their tax cuts away, their family payment increases, their pension increases. He’ll also have to look them in the eye and explain (etcetera)’. You can’t look people in the eye, eye is singular, people is plural. Look Australia in the eye, surely. Look the average Australian householder in the eye.
‘He won’t take carbon pricing away. He’ll engage in a little fiddle, a little fudge to kind of pretend but carbon pricing won’t be there.’ You don’t engage in a little fiddle or a little fudge, you attempt one, you try one on. You don’t ‘kind of pretend’. There is no such verb. You pretend, or you do not.
‘Look, in hindsight I was very concerned about the circumstances of lower income Australians (facing the GST). I was very concerned about it being a regressive tax…But the system changed and you had to accept the reality of the new system.’ She wasn’t ‘concerned’ in hindsight, she copped it in hindsight. She accepted it in hindsight, she said so. And she wasn’t ‘concerned’, she was fighting it tooth and nail as an Opposition politician. And it wasn’t the ‘reality of the new system’ any more than Nauru was. It could have been repealed, like Nauru. Like our part in the Vietnam War. All that it means is she changed her mind. And it wasn’t ‘you’ who ‘had to accept the reality of the new system’, it was ‘I had to accept the reality of the new system.’
‘I think with Mr Abbott in particular what we’ve seen is false claims, reckless claims made day after day.’ What she means is ‘what we’ve heard is false claims’, you don’t see claims, you hear them, or you read them.
‘I mean has the coal industry shut down today, Barrie? Are your news rooms flashing up on their screens that coal is no longer being mined in Australia? Are your news rooms flashing up on their screens that everybody’s Sunday roast is costing them a hundred dollars a roast?’ Newsrooms don’t ‘flash up’ anything. They write copy that is read aloud by broadcasters or run in a crawl across the bottom of a television screen. What she means is ‘news programmes flashing up on their screens’ or ‘news editors writing headlines’ or ‘news readers announcing’.
‘I have been prepared every step of the way to work to get a solution here (on asylum seekers) and I am still prepared to do so.’ You don’t ‘prepare’ to take each step of a journey, you just take it. You don’t ‘step’ to work. You don’t ‘work to get a solution’, you seek a solution, connive a solution, work hard to get a solution, work towards a solution.
‘The central tenant of the refugee convention …’ She means ‘central tenet’, probably, but it’s possible she believes the convention has a person living in it.
‘People smugglers would be sent the strongest message that they cannot represent to desperate people that they can get them to Australia.’ By ‘cannot represent to desperate people’ she probably means ‘they should not tell desperate people’ or ‘they should not make desperate people think’. This is wrong anyway. They can get them to Australia, ninety-seven percent of the time. Or, going via Nauru, ninety percent of the time.
‘Yep, I understand Mr Abbott wants to see Nauru opened, and we said we would do that too. So, we have been prepared to compromise every step of the way.’ She does not ‘understand’ that Abbott wants Nauru back, she knows it. It is not in doubt. ‘Understand’ implies some doubt, and there is none. You can’t ‘compromise every step of the way’. Every step of the way includes complete surrender.
‘I talk frequently to the president of Indonesia.’ No she doesn’t. ‘Frequently’ means at least three times a week. That is, well, frankly, Prime Minister, a lie.
‘Weve got a strong and robust relationship between our two countries; and it’s not fair, Barrie, to see it through the prism of of people smuggling. Our relationship is a deep one on the economy and trade, on education links, on development links within the G20, in the East Asia Summit and the list goes on.’ ‘Strong’ relationship is a lie, we were at war with Indonesia quite recently, over East Timor. Indonesians have hanged some of our citizens despite our protests. They hold Schapelle Corby. ‘Robust’ implies we are frank with them. This is really wrong. ‘Our relationship is a deep one on the economy and trade’ shows no knowledge of the meaning of ‘deep’ or ‘relationship’ or ‘economy’ or ‘trade’. ‘Deep relationship’ usually means sharing a bed, or raising children together. ‘Trade’ usually means an at-arm’s-length relationshoip, not a sharing-the-bed one, and ‘economy’ has never before in the history of the world been intermingled with ‘deep relationship’ in any sentence uttered by a human being.
‘I’ve been conscious of the need to be providing solutions to the problems that our nation faces. That’s why I’ve been so determined to deliver nation changing reforms like carbon pricing.’ Well, not so determined as to not promise you would never do it. ‘Determined’ implies a continuity of purpose more than you showed when you promised not to do only twenty months back what you presently say you have been long determined to do. Being ‘conscious of the need to be providing solutions to the problems that our nation faces’ is a breathtaking thing to say. It implies that there is, or was, a possibility that she at some time did not know, or had not remembered, what it is a Prime Minister does every minute of the year. Better to say, surely, ‘My job is clear, and I have to get on with it.’
‘Indonesia is a very important partner to us and we do cooperate very strongly with Indonesia on people smuggling. And they have seen some success for the efforts in the past few years. They’ve disrupted around three hundred people smuggling ventures, they’ve made arrests, so Indonesia has been actively working with Australia to try and combat this very evil trade.’ It’s not a ‘very evil trade’. It’s been the salvation of thousands and provided Australia with a quarter of a million good citizens if you count the Vietnamese. Most boat people regard their smugglers as their saviours and their heroes and find it appalling that they’re arrested and dare not say so. If they’d ‘disrupted three hundred people smuggling ventures’ they’d have made a thousand arrests and they’ve clearly not done this, so this, too, Prime Minister, is a lie. ‘They’ve made arrests,’ she says, but clearly they haven’t made many, and have not put anyone, I’d say, in gaol. Which means we don’t ‘co-operate very strongly’, a phrase she seems to have coined, as dizzying in its jangling nullity as the others.
The trouble with her seems to be us that she responds to every question with an impulse to lie; or to avoid revealing what is going on; to conceal as much as she can as a general policyand leave the questioner ignorant. And this is why she gets into such tangles of language.
The obvious contrast is with Bob Carr, whose instinct is to tell as much of the truth as he can, the truth in its multivarious international difficult complexity, without, however, getting himself into political quicksand by saying too much. She conceals many, many things, and gets herself into a flummox doing it, many things it would be harmless to reveal. And he reveals, with acuity and eloquence, all he can.
It goes without saying he would be a better Prime Minister.
Leadership is always, always about mastery of language. And she speaks the language like a timorous foreigner. Like a Peter Sellers Indian, really.
And it’s a pity.
Name:
I would normally think it was a bit unfair of you to parse in so much detail spoken words in an interview but hey, its Julia Gillard, of hyperbowl fame. So press on with my blessing.
Engrish coupled with spin. A funny filleting Bob.
“Indonesians have hanged some our citizens despite our protests.”
I must have missed that one. When did that happen?
Perhaps Bob is thinking of Barlow and Chambers? They were hung in Malaysia – but heck its in the same ballpark…
There were/are Andrew Chan and Myuran Sukumuran. Not hanged yet, but on Death Row.
Malaysia/Indonesia: same difference.
“have hanged”/”not hanged yet:” same difference.
hanged/firing squad, actually:same difference.
Does credibility count for anything around here?
If we had some Indonesian nationals awaiting execution here do you think we would be feeling friendly toward Indonesia? This is the point of the sentence, our relationship with Indonesia.
I agree I got it wrong. But the point stands.
Always depressing to hear Gillard speak. Bit of a dead horse situation there, Bob
Did Keating once walk these Canberra hills?
Yet her actions and achievements are very considerable, especially given her parliamentary and the world situation.
Worst of times, best of times.
And no glimmers that I can see at the end of any tunnels
Abbottisms certainly do not make my heart sing…
I knew there was a reason why I can’t stand listening to her. It’s because she never says anything. She gets tongue-tied trying to avoid any moment in time and her sentences are a desperate mixture of past, present and future tense.
God help us.
She really has to cut the crap and just start calling a spade a spade, otherwise she’s in danger of becoming an enigma wrapped in a death sentence.
Patrick, I wanted to ask the same…
Thank you for asking this. When will Bob start writing about Abbottisms?
There are no Abbottisms. He speaks in clear declarative well formed sentences, albeit hesitantly. It is foolish to imagine he does not.
I too wish he did not. But he does.
Bob,DeadBoofy has listed some Abbottisms below, what do you call those?
Bob, he may speak in clear declarative well formed sentences, but his arguments are now almost exlusively jesuitical casuistry – the use of words to obscure the truth.
And what of the 72 seconds of silence?
Not especially declarative, I would have thought.
Then there is the “wheels on the bus” strategy. “Up and up and up” and “down and down and down”
Blood oath.
There has to be an Abbottism. A derivative of Howardism.
Both Abbott and Gillard will “stay the mission” though, and that’s about the only exception that I can recall to the rule that an Abbottism must be in some part, negative, simplified and aimed at the lowest common denominator.
There has been another soldier involved in “an operational indecent”. More speak of some sort to follow.
On a side note, and off topic – Indonesian President is back on page 5 somewhere I imagine. The ABC were covering his speech, which he delivered in Indonesian. I cannot find a copy of the speech, There was no translator on hand obviously as the transmission was pulled and they went back to the news room.
I just find it remarkable that no one cares what the Indonesian president said, or didn’t say.
No he didn’t. He did.
I imagine an ad where a set of policy questions are asked of TA and they alternate his answers “No” and “Shit Happens”.
To be fair to Abbott, there’s not a whole lot else to say really, is there?
What about a silent film montage of Abbott (black and white) Abbott in the various hair net fluoro looks slicing fish, silently staring answer, on the tank, sprinting from Parliament, with Roxon at the Press Club etc etc, pull back the screen is in a picture frame, and down the bottom on the picture is written “this is not Tony Abbott”
A la Magritte, (I wish you had never mentioned Semiotics)
http://opinionator.blogs.nytimes.com/2012/06/25/haunted-heart/
Yes, I also wanted to ask this question. But it is a more difficult task to criticise the English with TA… There is so little of it
e.g. “Stop the boats”
“No Carbon tax”
“No”
“No”
Why should Bob Ellis answer to you?
Dingham
Syria is now over the flames of war, under the shadow of the wings of death. The current and future heroes of Syria are being hunted like animals, black hooded, murdered in the streets and piled into mass graves while the rest of us sit and debate what should be done, and how, and by who. Syrians stream over borders now, as humans, fleeing from unimaginable horrors. They are protected under international law, the international law that ensures human rights. These laws are the product of two world wars. These laws are the only shred of hope that emerged from a world reduced to rubble and bones and born into the third world war, the cold war, and yet, these international laws, they were written and they have survived.
I sit in the early hours of Monday morning, watching the story of the Allied bombing of Germany on SBS, completely absorbed in my own mind. We will sit and debate films, of which Downfall was the greatest, Saving Private Ryan second, Beneath Hill 60 third.
How quick we are to forget, to smooth over, to distance ourselves from modern history. How silly it seems on one hand to accept U.S troops on our soil, and embrace the US defence posture as their outer perimeter while simultaneously, wantonly, abhorrently, recklessly trying to ignore the most important pieces of international law to ever have existed.
But of course, after months and months of the most vacuous political climate in my lifetime, of a bland and strangled media littered with the odd honest diamond shining out of the rough, Australian’s are demanding action, right now, yesterday, real action, we are standing up for it.
The central illusion in all of this is that faith can be restored in a hollowed out democracy that does not represent it’s electorate by subverting the international protections that exist to ensure each human being is treated as such, a human being, it can’t. Now even the staunchest politician right of the Greens are guilty of commodifying asylum seekers to votes, to public approval.
The Australian people are expected to support a policy which infringes on human rights. Never mind the razor wire, the SERCO guards, the sewn lips, the suicides, the roof tiles or the riots. If not for the protection of people from other lands, if not to honour the lives lost, who fought under this flag and who equated the fight, the carnage, the apocalypse of the second world war to some kind of fight for a better world, then oppose offshore processing to ensure that our own people be considered human beings, with human rights in any future conflict.
Let the complexities of the situation in Syria stand as an example to complacent entities who may rest on the assumption that future conflict is an impossibility because Captain Team Police Force America will ride in on a drone and save the day regardless of reality. It won’t.
Once it seemed each person left of Costello was against offshore processing. You want to save lives? Embrace the Ellis plan, take the whole queue, now.
If Australia cannot abide the most important pieces of international law to ever have existed, what is to stop the next nation state closing borders to the Red Cross, dropping cluster bombs, laying land mines or hey, writing people off as subhuman and loading them into ovens?
Stop the boats, take the queue. Otherwise the tears cried by so many, the blood shed, the 60 million people that died in those world wars are all for naught and the tears cried by our current stock of politicians can only be interpreted to be tears cried for the slide of civilisation into a new dark age of inhumane obscenity.
In my opinion ‘look people in the eye’ is OK – just like ‘most businesspeople wear a suit’ (not necessarily ‘suits’).
Julia has been very effective at campaigning for the Carbon Tax everytime I heard her her voice on the weekend I was unable to stop myself switching off whichever evil electricity sucking applicants she was on.
The campaign making fun of the carbon tax’s impact really irks me. 30% of families receiving compensation are worse off, 10% receive no compensation and by definition are worse off. Yet it’s all fun for the ALP.
Tell me they don’t have teenagers running their media campaign, after seeing Emersons video I think they may have.
Though Emmo and Swannie have seemed a little deranged since Rudd challenge and with 22% primary vote in QLD it doesn’t really matter does it.
That was the experience of being not all that well to do under the Howard government in a nutshell. Finding yourself inexplicably feeling sorry for people who have a lot more money than you, on financial grounds. It’s a really horrible and invasive form of social conditioning.
Man up, Irish folk hero guy. Fight your fear of the effect a price on carbon might have on high income earners. Be a warrior.
Nero fiddled while Rome burned, or so the story goes. The fact is that there is little in the way of firefighting that a fat young emperor was capable of doing anyway; and there is little point in parsing the speech/replies given in a verbal interview with no chance to edit the text or sort out the incongruities.
We know you don’t like Gillard and never have. But sabotage her at your and our peril.
Abbott is still lurking, with Morrison Pyne Mirabella Abetz and Bishop just waiting to get their miserable trotters back into the trough.
Keep it up Bob : shooting oneself in the foot is very easily accomplished.
Doug, is it really sabotage do you think, to take Gillard to task on this issue; one widely noted and commented on by many anyway?
The manner of her communication is exasperating to most; to mention why will hardly sink Labor. Think of the unschooled Pauline Hanson who at the height of her power commanded over a million votes nationally, yet had difficulty seeking clarification on a question put by an interviewer using more than than three miserable syllables.
Constructive criticism might well be the go, Stan.
But I doubt Bob has any likelihood of rapprochement with Gillard; the ‘King’s Speech’ type role might have been just what is needed.
I wonder whether Bob threw his hat in the ring. He should have. Insisted on it.
I am familiar with a similar situation involving Hanson which never went ahead. She never saw there was a problem.
Another soldier cops it in Afghanistan. He’s SAS, 7th tour, committed to the cause.
Julia Gillard’s comment to the press: “This is a dreadful blow for our nation”.
Without wishing to invoke the Lennon lament – ‘you may say I’m a dreamer’ – but I continue to believe it would be better for her, and we the people, if she and other pollies operated on the principles of speech that apply to courtrooms and advertisers – truth without misrepresentation.
So instead, she ought to have said “sadly, we see today another senseless death of an Australian serviceman as a function of our unnecessary and demeaning obeisance to the American military machine”.
…what did Abbott say in a similar situation? Simply: shit happens.
Watching Morrison, Mirabella, Pyne or Abbott on TV, I’m pleased that there is an alternative, no matter how Aussie Julia’s language use is.
Helvi, Abbott did NOT say that in a similar situation. He said it in a completely different context and was viley traduced by the gutter press.(I thought everyone knew that.)
My apologies to Abbott, pass them on please, David Black.
I’m sorry but I usually go to sleep when Abbott starts umming and erring…
Sorry again.
There are plenty of people who speak ‘Aussie’ and do so clearly, in well structured sentences, free of jargon. Her problem is not that she speaks ‘Aussie’ but that she speaks patronisingly and ignorantly.
…I have heard lots complaints about Julia’s broad Australian accent, my sister-in-law, law who is Russian wanted to be accepted and adopted a very strong aussie accent. I have no problem with accents, I have my very own.
I also have no problem with Julia, dress-wise, speaking-wise or policy-wise,even if I had, she still is a better choice than Abbott.
There might be better ones in the Labor party, but Rudd is not one of those…
oops, there is one law too many.
Abbottism : endless repetition up to and beyond the point of nausea. Alternated with periods of unaccountable silence.
Gillardism : A tendency to repeat what might otherwise be commonsense, in an attempt to reach the lowest common denominator.
Ellisism : A tendency towards loose cannon behaviour, as the sufferer leaps agilely from topic to topic.
The obvious contrast is with Bob Carr, whose instinct is to tell as much of the truth as he can, the truth in its multivarious international difficult complexity,…
This is very true Bob, I always have the feeling that Carr when interviewed is taking us into his confidence and explanining the lay of the land. Downer was always keeping as much as he could from the public, and I sometimes have my heart in my mouth when Carr begins to speak and tell, as if I should turn the TV off for fear of learning too much. That said his argumentation on Insiders regarding Assange seemed to me naive, and his soft spot for all things America, well the easiest person to sell to is a salesman.
Bob Carr as PM would have us announcing the same solution ten times a year (and nothing happening).
Why do you say that?
When has he done that before?
Please answer this.
I ask you to answer this, or admit you made up a lie..
Bob Carr is as shallow and uninteresting as a puddle.
I’ve never read or heard him say anything memorable or profound. On the contrary most of what he has said that I recall (recoil from) has been anti-working class, anti-union tosh.
This is the man who literally and in all other meaningful ways gave the finger to demonstrating public sector workers protesting against his government’s downgrading of workers’ compenssation entitlements.
He is the precursor of Barry O’Farrell in that and so many other regards. And so history will judge him.
A little off topic, but I just watched the firt episode of Aaron Sorkin’s new TV series “Newsroom”. Being the first episode, it was a little clunky and highminded in having to establish the major roles. Full of that smart repartee that Sorkin did so well in Westwing, and there is a great Hepburn/Spencer type relationship played by English actress Olivia Munn and Jeff Daniels, with Sam Waterson playing a sort of Melvyn Douglas role.
First episode was about the Louisiana Gulf Deep Horizon leak.
A lot of good lines, best line from Munn’s character as she gives a full blown speech on reclaiming the 4th Estate, she is there to ensure “they speak truth to stupid”.