Fair dinkum, Albo, you’ve mangled the language

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If ever the theory of evolution had an antithesis, it must be found in political language. Where evolution selects for genes that make a species stronger and better adapted to its environment, pollie-speak deliberately weakens etymological DNA in an attempt to change the political environment.

The prime minister rolled out not one but three language “evolutions” this week. Equity, resilience and social cohesion have been pounded in the mortar of current concerns to create a balm that Anthony Albanese’s consulting linguisticians hope will smooth a cracked and hoary budget.

The three terms had already been through the political wringer ahead of this week. I keep a compact version of the Longer Oxford English Dictionary (more or less a family heirloom) on hand as a doorstop, occasional terrine press and bulwark against misleading bastardisations of the English language. Equity, according to its minuscule type, once meant “the quality of being equal or fair, fairness, impartiality; evenhanded dealing”. Those meanings have been superseded.

Equity is now used as a distinguisher from equality. Equality refers to everyone having the same opportunities to get ahead. Equity, by contrast, now means that everyone should have the same starting point. Somehow the glorious diversity of humanity, in which people are blessed with different talents and abilities, is to be levelled. Luck and misfortune, the accident of birth that places some children into loving families and others into desperate circumstances, are to be overridden.

The foresight of previous generations in creating stability and building wealth is a sin, which must be punished through expropriation. Since the........

© Brisbane Times