Plain speaking: Julia Gillard and Tony Abbott ahead of the first leaders debate at the National Press Club last year.
Plain speaking: Julia Gillard and Tony Abbott ahead of the first leaders debate at the National Press Club last year. Photo: Getty Images
Dark connotations lurk behind our politicians' bland phrases.

Although there is consensus on little else in contemporary Australian political discourse, it is generally accepted that this is an age of deep disengagement from and cynicism with the political process.

In his book Sideshow, Lindsay Tanner traces the negative impacts of the media's entertainment focus and the 24-hour news cycle, documenting the sheer crushing banality of the 2010 election campaign and expressing distress at what ''the serious craft of politics … is becoming''. Similarly, Waleed Aly noted last year that in Australia ''we report politics as though it is sport, and sport as though it is politics''.

The current reporting on the carbon tax has seen an almost relentless focus on style, stunts and presentation: in addition to the tiresome criticism of Julia Gillard's appearance, witness the emphasis on her supposed woodenness, accent, choice of words and speaking pace. Against this superficial backdrop, the question of Gillard's credibility extends beyond the charge that she lied to the voters prior to last year's election - Laura Tingle notes that ''so much of the apparent anger about the carbon tax isn't about the carbon tax at all but about the Prime Minister herself''. This focus is perpetuated and reinforced as columnists delve into Gillard's public persona: exploring ambiguities, attacking perceived contrivances, and wondering endlessly who ''the real Julia'' might be, as if this mattered more than her policies.

This emphasis on authenticity has continued, and the Coalition deployed the theme of action over words during the 2010 election campaign; its ''action contract'' contained such items as ''reject Labor's massive new mining tax''. The message was clear though unswervingly negative, and it nearly worked.

Australians are not alone in distrusting verbose politicians; plain speech has long connoted sincerity. In George Orwell's 1946 essay Politics and the English Language, he lamented that it was ''broadly true that political writing is bad writing'' and charged that ''inflated'' political language camouflaged meaning:

''A mass of Latin words falls upon the facts like soft snow, blurring the outline and covering up all the details.

''The great enemy of clear language is insincerity. When there is a gap between one's real and one's declared aims, one turns as it were instinctively to long words and exhausted idioms, like a cuttlefish spurting out ink.''

Orwell's incisive essay is as relevant now as it was the day it was written. Political theorist Bernard Crick has suggested, though, that there are ''dangers in Orwell's much-praised plain style''; one can ''tell lies or spin stories in monosyllables and simple sentences'' as well as in long, archaic words. Crick argued that ''the plain style'' was ''no guarantor of truth'', provocatively suggesting that Orwell ''could be read by propagandists as sensible advice to keep the propaganda plain and simple''.

It is often overlooked that plain speech can also be used to obfuscate. John Howard - rarely associated with verbal flights of fancy - was accused of dishonesty for his part in the ''children overboard'' affair and the Iraq war.

Writing in 2004, the philosopher Raimond Gaita analysed the disquiet many felt about the Howard government's mendacity, and the way in which such people were dismissed as naive ''moralists'' by political commentators. Gaita noted: ''Lying in politics would not matter if truth did not matter to us.''

Corrupt political language often seems oblivious to both historical and contemporary reality - can our representatives, on both sides of the chamber, really be unaware of the dark connotations that lurk behind bland phrases such as ''the Nauru solution'' or the ''Malaysia solution''?

As Tanner notes, the ''routine misuse of language'' in political discourse is ''insidious'': terms such as ''regime change'' or ''collateral damage'' are ''bland phrases that hide the realities of an invasion, a massive loss of life, and widespread misery and destruction''.

Where is truth in the 2011 political scene? Although we might assume that it is to be found in plain, simple statements rather than in grandiose speechifying, this seems unlikely. Are ''great big new tax'', ''envy politics'', ''queue jumpers'' or ''stop the boats'' any more honest or meaningful than ''programmatic specificity''? Given the high living standards enjoyed by most Australians - in stark contrast to much of the world - are ''battlers'' and ''struggling families'' truthful descriptors?

As the debates over the carbon tax and other policies continue, and as coverage focuses ever more intently upon surfaces and symbols, we would do well to remember that cuttlefish ink may be squirted in abbreviated as well as extended form.

Sarah Burnside is a freelance writer with experience in law and policy, and a member of the ALP.