Jargon Hunting

Canberra is the national headquarters of stakeholder engagement, thought leadership and the run-on sentence. This city is awash with jargon, wherein words such as actionable, facilitate and silo are ceaselessly smashed into phrases like core competencies, value chain and driving innovation, to make even the most mundane task sound weighty with deliverables.

Unfortunately, this habit of loading sentences with empty emphasis has slopped over into every day conversation and is now the ambient noise of television. Here are six of the worst.


Passion

Unless you fight, fuck or breastfeed someone it isn't a passion. It could be an enthusiasm, it might even be a career or the sort of hobby that gets you a spot on Collectors but rarely does it require the dreaded 'P' word.


Paradigm

Is worth approximately 20 cents and if you really need to shift one I will happily put it in my pocket.


At the end of the day

It gets dark and I can go home without listening to any more of this bullshit.


Journey

It's not a journey unless you change your mailing address. Try using process, experience or, in the case of reality television contestants, 'transitory moment of lessened obscurity'.


Upskill

If you use this word it's a fair bet you haven't.


May I just say

Absolutely not. Just because you're in front of a camera, flanked by a journalist and sitting under television lights in no way indicates an interest in your opinion.

New York style comes to Canberra

During a recycling purge, I grabbed an old copy CityNews that was open at a Colliers International ad for “New York Style Offices” in Civic, Canberra's de facto CBD.

Included with the usual bumf was the promise of eco-friendly features, to wit, “ability to open windows” (and in case you didn’t get it, this was further clarified) “for fresh air”.

The advert also mentioned water-saving technology but I expect this was just a brick dropped in the lavvy cistern by the real estate agent before inspection. Opening windows, imagine that. New York innovation comes to Canberry.

Tags:
Canberra, Citynews,Colliers International, Canberra architecture.

A message from John Hartigan on behalf of Aussie journalism

Then there are the bloggers.

In return for their free content, we pretty much get what we’ve paid for - something of such limited intellectual value as to be barely discernible from massive ignorance.

News Limited Chairman and CEO John Hartigan in a speech to the National Press Club on 1 July, text via Crikey.


Consider yourself warned. Now go out and buy a print copy of The Australian, you digital backsliders. And no smartarse questions about what The Punch most resembles either.

Tags:
Canberra, John Hartigan,bloggers, journalism.

Broad minds and bar mat mums

Annice Smoel appeared on television last night recounting the terror of the last few weeks and bearing troubling news. People in different countries are… well… they’re different.

It was really scary. I couldn’t understand anything anyone was saying to me. They were all speaking Thai. No one spoke English.

Annice was in Thailand at the time

The police officers handed me documents that were all in Thai. At first I refused to sign. In the end I had to sign a lot of documentation that was written in Thai.

Apparently, Thailand has its own written language and police force.

I asked him [Wichai Praisa-nob, Governor of Phuket] if he could guarantee me that I wouldn’t go to jail and he said yes, but I was very distrusting of the system over there so I was still really scared they might slap the cuffs on and put me in there [jail].

As well as an independent government and a penal system.

But I just had to trust him or Australia, or you guys or someone would kick up a fuss if I ended up in jail and get me out.

Of course, they’re foreigners and I know they do this sort of thing all the time.


While the 36 year-old seemed to struggle with the notion that international travel might require some compliance with local laws and customs, she did remember the Tooter Turtle option – admit nothing, blame others and when the night goes tits up yell “Help me Mr Wizard!” good and loud.

And if you don’t know a wizard then four photogenic daughters, a complacent mainstream media and politicians keen to talk about something other than the budget will do just as well.

The good news for the people of Thailand is Annice doesn’t plan on returning

No, I'll never go back. It was by far the worst experience I've ever been through.

Some of us felt a little like that and our only mistake was watching the telly.

Tags:
Canberra, bar mat mum, Annice Smoel,Thailand, travel.

Lessons from Eurovision (and the Hobart Mercury)

Last weekend the annual wardrobe malfunction that is the Eurovision Song Contest provided a question and an unintended insight. The question was obvious - why did SBS bother sending Julia Zemiro overseas so she could be unfunny in Moscow when Thank God You're Here has proven conclusively she could be just as unfunny in a Melbourne studio - meanwhile, as the ebb and flow of performers washed across the stage, I started to understand why Tina Arena is popular in France.

    There doesn’t appear to be a great deal of competition.

    Even weirdly compelling also-rans Marko Kon & Milaan or Sinéad Mulvey & Black Daisy didn’t have the sort of die-in-a-ditch-to-sell-this-shit stagecraft that a few years in the Johnny Young talent gulag imparts. Of course, at 32, Arena was a mere baby when she picked up stumps and moved to Paris.

    I know this thanks to Damien Brown who, in Saturday's Hobart Mercury, memorably described Libbi Gore as a, “44-year-old wildchild, also known for her alter-ego Elle McFeast who hosted a sports-comedy program 20 years ago”. I’m assuming Damien is either (a) immensely elderly or (b) a 12-year-old who likes the phrase ‘wild child’ because it rhymes. To be fair he could’ve gone with “erstwhile slightly amusing comedian, now an attention deficient media tart, who used to tout for Jenny Craig” and still hit the sweet spot in terms of accuracy.

    Two further factoids floated to the surface. While bogans are regularly pilloried for their use of creative spelling when naming their offspring, the chattering class can be just as naff. Case in point, the fruit of Libbi’s loins goes by the unlikely moniker of Ché Rodin Gorr Burchmore*.

    Equally surprising, these days Gorr can be heard on ABC radio Hobart. I wonder if she’s managed to sign Tim Cox up for some Jenny Craig replacement shake goodness.

*Possibly named in honour of that other tireless self-promoter old trouper Rhonda Burchmore.

Tags:
Canberra, Eurovision,Julia Zemiro,Tina Arena, Damien Brown,Libby Gorr, Tim Cox.

Hello Mr Johnson (hic)

I'm on record as being a fan of Karl Stefanovic's subtle presentation style on the Today Show so, when accusations were made that the consummate professional was tired and emotional after the Logies on Monday morning, I was incredulous.

Now however, not so much...the old trouper weaving his spell. Lisa Wilkinson handled the situation with aplomb but I couldn't help thinking of another screen pairing from long ago.

Tags:
Canberra, Karl Stefanovic,tired and emotional.

(O') Rourke takes Bishop

And in the better late than never category. One of the issues tackled on the ABC's Q&A programme a couple of weeks back (23/04/09) was the treatment of asylum seekers.

In a robust, off the cuff spray David Marr produced one of those rare television moments that stops you mid-coffee plunge and almost lets you forgive an industry that continues to give Meshel Laurie airtime.

Audience member Joe Duncan enquired:

With the latest boat of asylum seekers arriving, there's been a lot of talk about protecting our borders. Shouldn't Australia also have a moral obligation to protect people fleeing corrupt regimes and how do we create a balanced solution with persecuting the individuals involved and stigmatising their plight?

Craig Emerson got first shot and duly repeated Joe’s points, agreed with him and added nothing of substance, at which point skipper Tony Jones tossed the pill to Marr who tucked it under his arm and ran the length of the field with this effort:

DAVID MARR: We have more than a moral obligation, we have actually entered treaty obligations to these people and that treaty - the UN Refugee Convention is an act of apology by the civilised world to the Jewish people for doors having been closed in their faces in the late 1930s that led to the slaughter of millions of Jews in the Holocaust. There is history to the Refugee Convention. It is an act of apology and it is also an instrument to make sure that such a thing does not happen again. And we have an international legal obligation to take, however they come to our borders, to take in and assess the claims of people who are seeking protection. Now, that is our obligation. We have another obligation, as well, which is an older obligation in law, which is not to force people back to a country where their lives might be at risk. They are our two obligations. They are moral, but they are also legal obligations. And it is sad to hear the opposition trying to get up a good scare about boat people again because I had thought, and I think many people had thought, that their fingers were burnt with this the last time around. We haven't, Craig, been talking about this for 10 days. We have been talking about this for 10 years and one of the things we discovered in those 10 years was that temporary protection visas, which violate the fundamental notion that if a person is a refugee you offer them a permanent home, temporary protection visas, by forbidding family reunion, as they did under the Howard government, filled the boats with women and children and that when the SIEV X went down, many who drowned on the SIEV X were children and women seeking to join their husbands and fathers in Australia who were refugees and yet they are once again...

TONY JONES: Okay, David.

DAVID MARR: ...talking about restoring these evil visas.

Now, there are those who confuse commentary with reporting and regard Marr as a whingeing, latte sipping lefty, whose bias is clear and who, rumour has it, doesn’t even like sheilas. 'Balance' is their preferred slogan in these situations and so, in the interest of balance, let's move rightwards.

Also on the panel was Pat O’Rourke, one of America's funniest writers and an acerbic right-wing commentator who started his career at National Lampoon (hence the justification for running my favourite magazine cover with this post). Jonsey did the right thing and, after a shoulder tap from O’Rourke, waved him on to the field where it looked like he might give Marr a quick and dirty introduction to gridiron.

The result was somewhat unexpected, particularly for fellow panel member Julie Bishop who had just botched an unconvincing cover tackle on Marr.

PJ O'ROURKE: You know, we in the States have much, much more experience with being all wrong about immigration than you do.…. And we are so wrong about it. I mean, build a fence on the border with Mexico, give a huge boost to the Mexican ladder industry, you know. Put US troops on the Rio Grande and know that the United States armed forces are standing between me and yard care, you know. I mean, it's just - the thing is when somebody gets on an exploding boat to come over here, they're willing to do that to get to Australia, you're missing out on some really good Australians if you don't let that person in.

Julie took a run at it but her lack of match fitness was evident.

JULIE BISHOP: (Indistinct) people smuggling (indistinct).

It meant an easy complete for the visitor

PJ O'ROURKE: ...the reason America is a great nation is because of immigration. Let them in. Let them in. These people are assets. You know, one or two of them might not be, but you can sort them out later.

Of course I’ve left a great deal out, and to really get a feel for Bishop’s twitchy, almost to the point of Tourette’s, ejaculatory style of discussion you need to go to the Q&A website.

Tags:
Canberra, David Marr,P. J. O'Rourke, Julie Bishop.

Leo Schofield and the acquisition of knowledge

During 30 years of trade you flog off a lot of second-hand furniture and this might explain why, last Thursday night, a large passel of Canberra’s chattel hoarders clogged up Collie Street Fyshwick for the official opening of Fox Antiques. That and the fact there was free booze.

The other attraction was that Fox owners, Barry and Charlie, had roped in Leo Schofield for a bit of a prose to properly wet the head of the cathedral-like space. Admittedly, ‘roped in’ is too strong a term, public speaking is like oxygen to Schofield, a beaming happy Buddha figure with eyes hooded and lips gently upturned by the ghost of a permanent smile, suggesting he’s spent more time grinning than grimacing. And to give the boy from Brewarrina his due the trajectory of his career makes for some interesting anecdotes.

In a way*, his career parallels this country’s stumbling progress over the past 70 or so years. Starting off as a bush kid, then a move to the city (above a beef and ham shop), even at that early stage hankering for something different, more cosmopolitan. Leaves school (uni’s only for the well to do), works retail then advertising, just as it’s just hitting its stride, all the while buffing up his appreciation of the good stuff, whether it be antiques, art, opera or food. Next journalism, columns about food and arts, reviews (a description of a lobster scored him a footnote in journalism text books), National Trust renovations rescues on a grand scale, go-to culture vulture (Melbourne International Festival of the Arts) and more recently broadcaster and explainer to a new generation of arty acolytes.

In his customary uniform of Italian-restaurant-tablecloth-red-check shirt and dark, double breasted sportscoat, Schofield took the crowd back to mid-fifties Sydney where, as a 19-year-old, he whiled away his lunch hours in antiques stores. Too skint to buy much of anything, young Leo stocked up on information, learning how to read silver marks and decode the stock-in-trade antiques that a certain clock fancier mate of his described as "dead people's furniture".**

It was just a casual remark - setting the scene for stories involving Queen Anne sconces, Tarzan’s Grip and the storage properties of sailcloth but it got me thinking. Schofield had started learning specialized skills by forming personal relationships with those long dead dealers, something that is no longer strictly necessary thanks to the internet.

In fact, the whole process of acquiring knowledge and transferring information has changed irresistibly and along with it, the value of that information. Something North American newspapers are learning the hard way.

Putting aside the esoteric world of reading silver marks (try here or here) this can be applied to virtually anything from financial advice to butterflying a chicken.

Not so long ago if you didn’t know how to butterfly a chicken you had a number of options (apart from wishing your apple-cheeked old grandmother had passed on the skill). You could ask a friend, try and find a magazine that covered it, buy a book or, time and interest permitting, go to a class. Now you go to Google, type in how to butterfly a chicken and choose which youtube clip to watch.

I’m no Clay Shirky but it does seem to me that most of the old ways in which knowledge was communicated, and more importantly the economics that underpinned those processes, has taken a slide. What replaces them, and whether it will generate equally entertaining anecdotes, remains to be seen.


*Admittedly in a highly tenuous way beloved of hack blog writers casting around for a link
**Paul Keating for those under 25

Tags:
Canberra, Leo Schofield,Fox Antiques, knowledge.

Aussie net on light fibre diet

When the Prime Minister decides to pony up $43 billion for a national infrastructure program it kind of gets your attention but there's more to this politically than just fat internet pipes. Double dissolution or internet filtering anyone?

After more than a decade of business as usual it was a reminder that governments still have the power to do the unexpected on a grand scale. Recognizing the death-grip Telstra had on the old copper wire fixed line network was unbreakable, Rudd and a small coterie of ministers spent the past two months working on what could be described as the Field of Dreams National Broadband Network plan.

Build it and they will come.

Following yesterday morning’s announcement, legions of geeks, propeller heads and average Aussie porn enthusiasts all celebrated the promise of universal high speed broadband with self-inflicted friction burns. By last night, with equal predictability, the Coalition was already setting up roadblocks.

The effortlessly grey Nick Michen was almost rubbing his hands with glee as he conjured up various obstacles to the project; local councils, the need for a Senate committee and... something else... that's right the Coalition could vote against the project.

Whether or not the NBN comes to fruition it looks like the Ruddbot T-2009 has neutralized the opposition. Block the project (which would mean practically slipping roofies into the Nationals' teapot to get them to go along quietly) and you’re obstructionist luddites who’ve handed the government a nice big double dissolution trigger. Support it and share a large slice of freshly half-baked blame cake if it goes tits up or starts dying slowly like a blue whale on a Greenpeace manned beach.

Meanwhile I’d make a small wager that by building this system from the ground up, some of the technical problems Comms minister Stephen Conroy will have with those pesky ISPs over internet filtering will, over time, become way less mission critical. Even more enjoyable for the government is the NBN (aka Ruddnet, Ruddstra etc) will smash the Telstra monopoly like a candy Easter egg kissing a concrete floor.

A quick spin over to the gold standard for lame corporate blogging, Now We’re Spinning, shows just how entertaining Telstra fanboys can be, stamping their tiny feet at the unfairness of it all.

Tags:
Canberra, National Broadband Network,Telstra,Ruddstra, Ruddnet.

Don, Karl, Neil and the Underbelly

Overheard from a Channel Nine Sydney sports report:

...the 20-year-old drawing comparisons with the incomparable Don Bradman.

Really? So is the Don incomparable or is Phil Hughes that good?

Of course the Nine Network often provides viewers with short jolts of non-comprehension mixed with delicate slabs of unintentional humour. On Friday morning those two stalwarts of Queensland journalism (yes, that would be Karl Stefanovic and Neil Breen) turned their finely honed analytical skills to Kiwi criticism of Matthew Newton's accent in Underbelly 2.

Breen's considered opinion? New Zealanders are touchy whingers who just liked to take offence. Kind of like those hillbilly rednecks up north, eh Neil? That's the trouble with lazy cliches masquerading as content, they can resemble double-sided sticky tape.

Next up the editor of the Sunday Telegraph (yes, again that would be Neil Breen, who replaced former editor Jeni O'Dowd several years ago when shocked News Limited senior management discovered she didn't have a penis*) took on the notion that Underbelly somehow glorified criminal behaviour.

From the Breen perspective, this was a bit of a beat up by some old journo who covered the orginal story back in the day. Well Pat Booth, the journo referred to, did point out in some detail what a waste of space Terry Clark was in this article, he also wrote the first book on the Mr Asia gang, and Clark apparently wanted him dead because of his work on the story.

So how an old pro like Booth managed to confuse over 13 hours of prime time television, heavily promoted by in-house promos, media interviews and profiles, intensive advertising and the release of a soundtrack as glorification is hard to imagine.

Just as it's hard to imagine Neil and Karl ever voicing an opinion that isn't absolutely predictable.

*Admittedly a cheap jibe at News Ltd, O'Dowd was actually moved on because she had a vagina.

Tags:
Canberra, Karl Stefanovic,Neil Breen, Underbelly.