George Orwell wrote wise words about many things. Animal Farm and 1984 are two of the most perceptive books about politics and power ever written. The Road to Wigan Pier is a searing social commentary on the living conditions of the working class in 1930s England. What Orwell said about the human cost of unemployment still stands. He invented the terms "Cold War" and "Big Brother".
Orwell was a man of the left but his work is so nuanced he can be claimed by both sides of politics. Dennis Glover, a fellow at The Chifley Research Centre and once Julia Gillard's speechwriter, wrote Orwell's Australia, a thoughtful book about Orwell's influence in this country. And at the same time I would include Animal Farm on my list of the 100 most important books on liberty.
THE DANGERS OF LAZY LANGUAGE
Orwell was a prolific essayist. His best and most important essay is Politics and the English Language, published in 1946. It is just 10 pages long and is widely available free on the internet. His argument is simple. The use of lazy language is a symptom of the decline of clear thinking — and it has political consequences. Lazy language produces in those exposed to it a "reduced state of consciousness [that] if not indispensable, is at any rate favourable to political conformity".
Lazy language is dangerous because it obscures the actual meaning of what's being said. "When there is a gap between one's real and one's declared aims, one turns as it were instinctively to long words and exhausted idioms, like a cuttlefish spurting out ink". Euphemisms can "fall upon the facts like soft snow, blurring the outline and covering up all the details".
Orwell may as well have been discussing the debate on taxes and superannuation in Australia in 2015.
Idioms and euphemisms run riot in Canberra. The rot started a few years ago when governments started describing tax increases as budget "savings". To any normal person "saving" money is not spending it. But to the government "saving" money is taking money from someone else.
TRUE MEANING OF "SAVINGS"
For example, in his 2012-13 budget, Wayne Swan increased the tax on superannuation contributions from those earning over $300,000. In the budget papers the measure was described under the heading of "Major savings" as a "reduction of higher tax concession[s] for contributions of very high income earners". Last year when the Abbott government imposed a "deficit levy" and increased the personal income tax rate from 45 to 47 per cent for those earning over $180,000, it should have learned from Labor. Instead of admitting it was a tax rise the Coalition should have labelled its measure as a "reduction of the personal income tax concession for high income earners from 55 to 53 per cent". This would have been a perfectly true statement. Before the deficit levy individuals earning more than $180,000 got to keep 55 per cent of their income; after, they got to keep 53 per cent.
TAX "CONCESSIONS"
Worse than this is the habit of politicians and the Treasury department to describe the absence of a tax as a "cost to government". This is exactly what Labor's shadow treasurer Chris Bowen did last week in a speech at the National Press Club. Admittedly he was only doing what everyone else does who wants higher taxes. Bowen expressed the view that because tax on superannuation was at a flat rather than progressive rate, wealthy superannuants receive a benefit from the government in the form of a tax "concession" that was a "cost" to the budget.
The idea that when the government doesn't tax you it is somehow doing you a favour completely subverts the relationship between the citizen and the state. It implies the state has a claim to all of a person's income and when it doesn't take all that income it is making a "concession". In fact we should think of it the other way around — tax is something we allow the government to collect from us.
Anyone talking about tax "concessions" is using a euphemism of the left. Coalition ministers and MPs should stop using the term immediately, and then they should go and download a copy of Orwell's essay.
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