- The Guardian
- Issue #2172
Risk vectors
Attorney-General Michelle Roland wants to sell the unsellable – Freedom Of Information measures that make it harder to get information (see Guardian #2171). By a total coincidence, that makes it harder for journalists and non-government politicians to embarrass the government. This sort of secrecy was criticised ferociously by Anthony Albanese in opposition, but now he’s in government he’s all for it. They don’t like it being easy and they don’t like anonymous FOI requests. If the request is anonymous, how will government departments know who to punish?
Of course Labor can’t just admit that, so they’re saying that letting journalists and other politicians know things is dangerous. Since ‘dangerous’ sounds too simple, Roland is trying to impress us all by telling us that scary new technology and the ability to lodge FOI requests anonymously creates “risk vectors that could be exploited by offshore actors seeking government-held information for potentially nefarious purposes.”
‘Risk Vectors’ would also be a great name for a hero in a space opera; ‘Captain Risk Vectors, flying to infinity and beyond.’
Nature Positive
Some weasel words are obvious because you can’t imagine the negative. Nobody wants to be ‘nature negative,’ so what does ‘nature positive’ mean? Enough for there to be a ‘Global Nature Positive Summit’ in Sydney, where Tanya Plibersek gave a speech. Plibersek spent her time as Environment Minister opening coal mines and taking selfie with koalas, so maybe “nature positive” means that no matter how much environmental damage she’s done, Tanya knows one end of a koala from the other.
Diversity of views
This one sounds good. We wouldn’t want everyone forced to have the same ideas, would we? Really it depends on the topic. If it’s an important topic and there are actual facts involved, maybe accurate or informed views are more important than just diversity for diversity’s sake.
Rupert Murdoch’s Newscorp has defended itself against accusations that it encourages climate denialism by paying denialists hefty sums of money to write opinion pieces. It does a lot of that. The News spokesperson was indignant and defended their habit of encouraging climate denialism by invoking the old diversity of views.
When the US invaded Iraq and Australia joined in, out of hundreds of Murdoch papers, exactly two opposed it.
Dual use
Almost anything can be ‘dual use,’ as anyone who’s ever made a paper plane out of a letter from Centrelink knows. Most of the time, ‘dual use’ refers to things that can be used for civilian or military purposes, like fertilisers that can also be explosives. ‘Dual use’ is very popular with nations that sanction others, because it means they can stop all manner of useful and starvation-preventing things from getting to their victims.
Now Israel is into it. Israel is still limiting aid shipments into Gaza, including barring basic items, such as tent poles, that it classifies as “dual use” because it says they have the potential to be used for military purposes. It’s true that tent poles can hold up tents to shelter soldiers or weapons, but in this case ‘dual use’ is a transparent excuse to stop tents sheltering genocide survivors.
Social engineering
A venerable Weasel Word, ‘social engineering’ sounds creepy and dystopian. It suggests that the government might be putting mind-altering drugs in the water supply, or at least a poster of the Prime Minister’s face in every house that we have to say “Good morning Albo” to at the start of the day (that really would be dystopian). In practice, ‘social engineering’ just means ‘equality promoting measures the writer/speaker doesn’t like,’ most recently anything that involves being fair or non-hostile to trans people.
