- The Guardian
- Issue #2174
Affinity
If you feel an affinity, you feel a connection with a person or group of people. The weaselly use is that you don’t have to want to help those people in any way. Liberal Party leader Sussan Ley says she feels “a particular affinity” for working mums. Lucky working mums!
In Sussan’s words: “I feel a particular affinity with working mums because when I was in those years of my life it was chaos it was chaos and you went to bed exhausted”
Ley’s bright idea for childcare was subsidising nannies, so maybe she feels more affinity for women who can afford nannies.
Ley has said she wants enterprise-level bargaining “where businesses and their staff can strike agreements that reward higher performance.” Enterprise-level bargaining gives employers much more power over all those tired working mums Ley feels an affinity for.
Strong (action)
Older readers might remember when Campbell Newman, trying to hang on to the position of Queensland Premier, used the word ‘strong’ 23 times in one short speech. He lost the election. Foreign Minister Penny Wong, not to be out-Newmanned, has said that the Albanese government has taken “stronger action on Iran than any previous Australian government.”
To be precise, they’ve declared Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps “a state sponsor of terrorism,” and have (strongly) expelled the Iranian ambassador.
Zomi Frankcom, an Australian humanitarian worker, was murdered by an Israeli drone, but the Albanese government was saving its strength for Iran, so Israel got a “deeply concerned” from our strong Foreign Minister.
Progress
Progress is a super-weaselly word because it’s so subjective and relative. One person’s progress is another person’s “what happened to the forest that used to be next door?”
Murray Watt says that “the Greens party paid a very big political price for being seen by the Australian people to be blocking progress.” Murray Watt has approved a gas extraction project in WA which will release 6.1 billion tonnes of carbon emissions. Murray Watt’s idea of progress is everyone else’s nightmare.
Expensive
This is a selectively-used weasel word. Usually when someone calls a thing “expensive,” there’s a lot of other stuff they don’t mind paying for. Gurmesh Singh is the new leader of the NSW National Party. He’s also big in blueberries, an industry rife with reports of modern slavery. There have been calls for a Royal Commission into exploitation on blueberry farms, but Singh has called the idea “expensive and time-consuming.” We wonder what Singh was thinking when then-Nationals leader Barnaby Joyce claimed around $675,000 for being a drought envoy for a few weeks.
‘Productivity’
As in ‘productivity growth,’ ‘productivity improvements,’ or ‘productivity push.’ This word is weaselly because it’s almost never explained. Capitalist productivity means nothing more than corporate profits. For instance, a recent paid editorial by Google asset Bikash Koley in the Australian Financial Review argues that Australia must continue to invest in undersea cables to facilitate “Australia’s digital export economy, AI ambitions and productivity improvements.” The translation is ‘Australia must spend its money in a way which increases corporate profits.’
Colourful
This is one of many weaselly euphemisms which do the job of making people who are obnoxious, racist, sexist, drunk, or otherwise awful sound like fun. See also ‘feisty,’ ‘outspoken,’ ‘mercurial,’ or ‘blunt.’ Former Liberal adviser David Gazard has called Barnaby Joyce “somewhat colourful.” Unless Gazard is referring to the deep red tinge Joyce’s face is famous for, he probably means one of the other things.
