In “Leaders and dung beetle”, Watson reflects upon the change in political language. The catalyst is the list of obituaries for John Cain, Victorian Premier in 1982. He was a man of “stern integrity and self restraint”.
Fast-track to “Morrison from marketing”; “plodding in the ashes, searching for words or gestures to show … that he understands.”
Watson believes that his marketing background influences his language and the spin he uses.
The result is a “dung beetle: he starts with nothing much at all and by unstoppable single-minded exertion he pushes it through every interrogative thicket and every hurdle of logic and evidence until he’s created a ball of bullshit several times his own size.”
Morrison drowns out his doubters “in a storm of platitudes and shameless demotic saws”.
“What he says may be off the point, beside the point or have no point at all, but sooner or later it becomes the point.”
Watson satirises the Government’s marketing gloss which relates to climate change. Comparing responses, he notes that the European Union is dedicated a quarter of its budget to tackling climate change. BlackRock, the world’s biggest funds manager, is “getting out of thermal coal”. These determined actions are juxtaposed with the government’s spin. Morrison will allow our emissions reduction targets to “evolve”. We are improving our “resilience and adaptation”. He has sworn to “keep us safe” (in his customer-care mode. This will occur “without a carbon tax, without putting up electricity prices and without shutting down traditional industries upon which regional Australians depend for their very livelihood.”
He believes one needs to be in marketing to appreciate the import of the response.
Morrison is renowned for his stunt – he went into parliament with a lump of coal and assured the public that one had nothing to fear from coal. However, he has since, says Watson, claimed it was “non-thermal”. Perhaps, he cynically suggests, it was a painted rock.
“Loyal customers that we are, why wouldn’t we believe him”.
Return to English Language: commentators and linguists
