In September 1998 I wrote a column saying, “”Opposition Leader Kim Beazley has trouble with language. And it could cost him the election.”
Last week’s events show that I should be able to recycle that column. Last week Beazley was confronted with his waffly language. He said people would just have to get used to him being prolix. The Macquarie defines prolix as “”speaking or writing at great or tedious length.”
Beazley’s defence is that the nation faces serious issues and he does not want to be glib. The defence is not satisfactory. You can be economical with language without being glib.
Beazley and Prime Minister John Howard approach the politician’s dilemma from opposite ends. The dilemma is that if you state something clearly and circumstances later change you can be accused of breaking promises. On the other hand, if you do not state something clearly you are accused of being devious or of leaving a way out.
Howard prefers to speak directly. He is a good speaker, even if you disagree with what he says. His sentence structure is good. In Opposition and as a mere Minister, the directness earned him the title Honest John. As Prime Minister, he has been too honest (or direct) for his own good.
Beazley, on the other hand, comes from a longer political tradition. His father was a Minister. He knows how an earlier statement can come back to bite you on the behind. So he is an instinctive qualifier. There is an example every day.
At the weekend he was asked about government innovation grants to tobacco companies.
He said: “”Our view would be you should target one the new industries that we need. The new industries are the clever industries that advance our knowledge as a people and advance our productivity as a people. I strongly suspect that cigarettes don’t come into that category.”
Why does Beazley speak in the conditional future tense – “”our view would be”. That suggests the Labor does not have a view yet. Otherwise he would say, “”our view IS”. Instead he says, “”our view would be X Y or Z, conditional upon something left unsaid. You usually follow “”would” with “”if”, as in, “”I would go to the shops, if I had some money.”
Why didn’t he say, “”There are better things to spend our money on than cigarette companies, like clever, new industries”. It says the same in one third the words without being glib and still dealing with the serious issue.
The polls says people like Beazley. That may be because his language always leaves an opening for everyone. In the tobacco example, even the tobacco companies would not be too offended because Beazley only “”strongly suspects” they are not clever new industries. It leaves them open to convince him otherwise later, perhaps with a new packaging system with universal application that deserves a government grant.
Beazley’s habit of not committing himself and leaving options open probably led to Howard’s accusation that he has not got “”the ticker”.
Beazley’s sentences require people to hold clauses in their brain while they wait for the rounding of the idea at the end of the sentence. He uses a lot of double negatives and a lot of noun clauses, rather than a simple sentence structure with subject, verb, object. He uses a lot of “”If …then…” sentences. He uses interpolation and too many abstractions. These things blur his message. He does not use enough examples and analogies to clarify his message.
Some examples: “”There is nothing that gives an Australian a sense of security more than if he or she falls down in the street there will be a decent public health system to deal with their problems.”
“”And one of the many problems with John Howard’s tax proposal is that it requires us to invade a surplus, which in all probability is not there in the dimensions he talks about.”
“”Now that is why in our tax-reform package, which delivers real reform in the sense of making those who are evading tax pay it and then encouraging people to get off welfare and to work, rewarding families and then rewarding business, is at least deliverable in all economic circumstances.”
“”If you increase by $500 million per year the amount made available to the states to operate their public hospital systems you will transform the position of these hospitals in regard to their waiting lists.”
It may be good policy, but who would know?