With a new crop of MPs having just been elected, I thought it might help if I initiated them into the holy rites of political double-speak. At the outset then, dear members and senators, you must understand that in the world of politics, words take on entirely different meanings from those you have hitherto ascribed to them. You might have naively thought that you could get away with tired old dictionary definitions. But in politics, let me assure you, that is not the case. As Humpty Dumpty observed: ‘When I use a word, it means just what I choose it to mean—neither more nor less.’

First, we have ‘reform’. This used to mean a change in government policy that would lead to some sort of improvement to our mortal lot. A reform was to make things better, like the Reform Bill that gave people the right to vote. But that meaning has long since been abandoned in politics; even those who now advocate for reform, which is most MPs most of the time, no longer believe that their reforms will improve anything. Reform means change, usually for the worse. Take law reform, a popular pastime of politicians. After years of reform, the law has now become a mass of labyrinthine gobbledegook that few can understand and fewer can put to any practical use because of its mind-numbing complexity and the crushing expense of litigation. As a wise old judge observed about the mirage of law reform: ‘Aren’t things bad enough as they are?’ Just look at the nightmare that defamation law has become since it was reformed.

And look at tax reform. It used to mean less tax and fewer taxes. Now, it means more tax, and taxes on activities that were hitherto tax-free, like the exchange of goods and services which is now subject to tax. Indeed, tax reform has now broadened its ambit to include taxes on doing nothing. By what perverted twist of logic, you might ask, can a tax on the unrealised increase in the value of assets in superannuation be called a reform, when the poor taxpayer has done nothing but invest his hard-earned superannuation? Moreover, as the tax reform project expands, it picks up the strangest crusaders, like the free-enterprise Liberal party who actually voted against tax cuts and threatened to repeal them. And the other essential feature of these years of tax reform has been that the states are given the goods and services tax to waste, on the ground that it is more efficient to have six governments wasting money than one government doing all of the heavy wasting by itself.

You should also familiarise yourself with ‘vision’, as you will use it more often than any other word in your new vocabulary. It used to mean that the afflicted visionary had flashes of delusion and messianic trances that teetered between sanity and madness. Nowadays, it means a benign and reflective disposition where visionary politicians can lead us to the sunlit uplands of prosperity if only the public will vote for them. But the same delusions of vision remain, that governments can create prosperity, control the weather and improve behaviour, when in reality all they can do is destroy self-reliance and substitute the dead hand of government for the natural strength of personal incentive.

Next, you will need to have the word ‘initiative’ ready at hand for frequent use. Politicians love initiatives and are forever claiming that their every act is one initiative after another, no matter how mundane, harebrained or wasteful it may be, as most of them are. Even building a basketball court is now an initiative of national importance.

Close on the heels of the initiative comes its bosom companion, ‘investment’. An investment used to mean placing money in some worthwhile venture where it might produce a profit or a benefit for the person investing. Today, it is nothing but a euphemism for government spending and the taxation needed to maintain its mad expansion that produces no benefit for anyone. Government spending cannot be an investment, because those providing the funds are destined to make a continuing loss. Has our much vaunted ‘investment’ in free child-care produced anything but mental illness, zombie-like addiction to mobile telephones and a complete abandonment of the responsibilities and pleasures of parenting?

And here are a few more words and phrases you will find useful.  ‘Toxic’ means people and policies you find obnoxious; ‘biased’ describes anyone who disagrees with you; ‘stakeholders’ are voters who think they deserve more handouts than others; ‘a broad range of options’ means you do not have the faintest idea what you should do; say that you are ‘flexible’ if you will accept anything to keep you out of trouble; ‘we take our responsibilities very seriously’ means you could not care less about them; ‘let me be perfectly clear’ means ‘how can I confuse you so much that I do not mean anything’;  ‘relaxed’ means you don’t care what happens so long as it gets you elected and re-elected; if your party is a ‘broad church’ it stands for nothing; and ‘progressive’ means promoting the never-ending expansion of government power. At the same time, use words that have no meaning: in the world of economic mumbo-jumbo, I defy you to give any meaning to horizontal fiscal equalisation, quantitative easing or that gem invented by Angus Taylor, ‘fiscal guardrails’, for they all mean nothing. They may be devoid of meaning, but they perform a valuable role, to bamboozle the electorate as you go about your statesmanlike progress of expanding the mighty embrace of government.

Mind you, I am not advocating that you should avoid reform, vision, initiatives and investment or cease from extolling their manifold virtues.  You should feel free to reject all toxic proposals, consider as broad a range of options as you can concoct, be progressive as you deal with all demographics, and listen to all voices with flexibility, except the toxic and the biased. Good luck!