What we can learn from Tony Abbott's words

Updated

Most politicians measure their words with great care and few needed to exercise more caution than former US president Bill Clinton facing the Starr inquiry in 1998.

Asked whether Monica Lewinsky's affidavit lied when it said "there is no sex of any kind in any manner, shape or form with President Clinton", he famously replied:

"It depends on what the meaning of the word 'is' is. "If the 'is' means is and never has been, that is one thing. If it means there is none, that was a completely true statement."

Call it a case of the past making the president very tense.

In politics words are weapons. And we live in an age when the political class values nothing more highly than the ability to deliver a line and maintain discipline. The result is that much of the public discourse has all the nutritional value of a TV dinner: pre-cooked, snap-frozen, reheated and unappetising.

Ask politicians whose fault it is and they will blame the rise of gotcha journalism. Ask journalists and they will say it's that the major political parties are now value-free and poll-driven, and craft their words based on market testing.

So correspondents weigh every word leaders utter because qualifiers, or slight shifts in rhetoric, can carry great meaning.

For weeks in the lead-up to committing Australian troops to Iraq, the Abbott Government's standard response to being asked if a promise of military support had been made was there had been no "specific" request. It turned out there had been a "general" one.

The progression of Tony Abbott up the political food chain has been a case study in a man learning message discipline. One of the big criticisms of him, levelled by his own colleagues, was that he was "too loose": think "sometimes shit happens", the infamous "bullshit" rebuke to Nicola Roxon, and his admission that in the heat of political debate he was guilty of overcooking an argument.

Mr Abbott was once thoughtful and unpredictable in an interview and would always try to answer questions directly. Now he has become famous for the three-word slogan and the world is poorer for it.

When it comes to the sweet science of using words the Prime Minister is a slugger, not an artist like Mr Clinton. But Mr Abbott pounded simple lines to deadly effect in Opposition as he honed in on Labor's bruises.

The astounding thing about his long years as opposition leader is that the mantra he developed for the 2010 election barely changed in three years. In politics not having to ditch a message that you have spent time and money developing is gold.

In 2010 it was: "We will end the waste, pay back the debt, stop the big new taxes and stop the boats."

In 2013: "We'll scrap the carbon tax, end the waste, stop the boats ... "

But perhaps because the Coalition recognised that the mantra was wholly negative, one line was added: "... and build the infrastructure and the roads of the 21st century."

Spoiler alert The following analysis gives away some of the answers in our Tony Abbott 'before or after' quiz.

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A new analysis mines more than 200,000 words Mr Abbott uttered in Parliament and in speeches in the 12 months before and after the election. It is a fascinating portrait of the changing times.

Some words that loomed large in Mr Abbott's parliamentary lexicon before the election all but vanish after it, simply because of the shift to the Treasury benches.

For example, there is less need to call for a suspension of "standing orders" when you are in government, nor do you use the words "prime minister" as often when that's now your job.

When you are opposition leader you desperately want "change". You rail against the influence of "unions" over Labor and the inability of the government to make its "surplus".

In Mr Abbott's pre-election speeches all politics really was "local" and he often talked of "schools", "education" and "families".

Now in government, his language is more optimistic, with a focus on the "future", "building" and "investment". And his world is larger, with the concepts "international" and "trade" new favourites.

With all the troubles of a fractured Senate, and the bid to wind up two taxes, it's little wonder that "repeal" was on the PM's mind, and often on his lips, in the first half of this year.

The attack on Labor's record was most often recorded in three words that Mr Abbott used so often as a triplet that the concepts appear almost exactly the same number of times in Hansard: "debt", "deficit" and "disaster".

Unsurprisingly the word "co-payment" didn't feature at all before the election because it was a secret.

In opposition "Qantas" didn't rate much of a mention either, but at the beginning of the year, the troubled airline was so much in the news the PM name checked it repeatedly.

And the Prime Minister's pretty sure he knows what Australians want - "certainty" - but saying it and delivering it are two very different things.

Topics: federal-government, australia

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