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Word power

By Peter Botsman - posted Monday, 11 December 2006


Words were bullets in a war fought every day over the newspapers, radio waves and television stations. In the midst of the battles I scanned newspapers, books, Hansard, radio and television for the tight phrase or comment - words that would convey power, meaning, inspiration. Words that would skip over the problems I had to deal with each day.

Almost every week I would list ideas, words and quotations in my scrapbooks and diaries and later, I started to record jokes, quotations and notes on computer. Many would end up in a speech or a report but others might just sit as a reminder, an inspiration or a reference marker, quietly pulling me towards a view or a thought or a destination. Others would just disappear, only to naggingly reappear again at some distant juncture.

The 1980s and 1990s were exciting times. They were “the times when Keating … could remind you of what language can be and what it can do”. Now even State Labor copies the boring, flat, pedestrian, utilitarian qualities of the Howard Government communiqués.

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But we were surely meant to have to endure this new hell. At the end of the Keating era in 1996 there were as many questions as there were answers. Rapier-like words on their own can not win the war of ideas in politics. If the Labor movement is to be an important player in the 21st century it must reinvent itself. It must invest in independent research and thinking and it must learn to change and reinvent its structures and be prepared to embrace new combinations of ideas and policies.

This was what Ben Chifley sensed about post-war politics. It was the deep meaning of his statement “I would rather have Menzies education than a million dollars”. The narrowness of the concept of “Labor” needs to give way to a broader concept of social democracy. This is now decades overdue in Australia.

The quotations, notes, compelling phrases and portraits that I faithfully typed into my computer during the 1980s and 1990s should tell us something about the future as much as the past. Looking back it is interesting to see what I kept from the morass of notes and papers. Some lines still burn with meaning and some rising issues such as sustainability and the environment have become even more important.

My pre-computer quotations remain to be laboured over, but in this volume I hope that it will be clear that many contests of ideas that were thought to be resolved in the 1980s and 1990s are still very much unresolved and open. By putting these odd paragraphs and phrases together I hope it will help the next generation of political advisors and writers to refine their art and their eye. I also hope it will instil in the Labor Movement an appreciation of the need for strong research, record keeping and the power of ideas.

In the future there will be a great diversity of independent public policy research centres and think tanks that operate on the frontier of knowledge and in the jaws of power. In this coming period ideas will not just be about public relations, Australians will come to realise that the best policies and ideas result from public policy contests and debate. Words will have a deep meaning that resonates with ordinary people. fine lines will hopefully be a primer for those times ahead.

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This is an extract from Fine Lines by Peter Botsman.



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About the Author

Peter Botsman is Chief Editor of Australian Prospect and a former director of the Whitlam, Brisbane and Evatt Institutes. pbotsman@bigpond.com. Peter's Working Papers can be found here.

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