Outside the realm of high art, language is intended to convey meaning.  Ideally, it should do so accurately.  Some writers and speakers betray these ideals, and use language as a sham to mask an intellectual void;  or worse, as a stalking horse for quite different ideas they dare not acknowledge.

The world is awash with examples of the first sort – empty rhetoric dressed up in the finery of Rococo elegance, or vacuous new-Age gush, or the yawning post-modern fashion of abstraction piled on abstraction – all devoid of real content.  These are the empty calories, the fast food of modern discourse.  They are the staple of cheap magazines, talk-back radio and art criticism. 

More interesting is the second sort:  speech which serves to disguise the thing described.  Depending on circumstances, it may be called tact, or diplomacy or doublespeak or lying.  The proper description depends on the speaker’s purpose.

Tact sets out to avoid giving offence.  It suppresses or disguises an unhappy truth to spare the feelings of another.  It is a down-payment on future favour.  It is falsehood in the service of kindness.  When tact is lifted from the personal to the national scale, it is called diplomacy.

Euphemism does not directly suppress the truth, but disguises it by substituting gentle words for harsher ones.  Its success is limited in the long-term because the euphemism is readily identified with the underlying idea and takes on the colour of that idea.  This process is readily seen in the progression of euphemisms regarding universal bodily functions, for example:  water closet – WC – lavatory – toilet – loo – the Ladies/Gents room – restroom etc.

The intention of euphemism is benign, if somewhat fey.  Its excesses of delicacy inspired Dr Bowdler to strip Shakespeare of any questionable content.  Bowdler’s Shakespeare was published in 1818 – before the Victorian age, let it be noted – and was probably influenced by the attitudes which spawned Mrs Grundy.  In Morton’s play Speed the Plough (1798), Mrs Grundy was the neighbour whose narrow and rigid views about propriety were a tyranny for her neighbours.

Tact is kind;  diplomacy is useful;  euphemism is harmless and sometimes entertaining.  By contrast, doublespeak is dishonest and dangerous. 

In his closing address at Nuremberg, US prosecutor Robert Jackson said:

"Nor is the lie direct the only means of falsehood. They [the Defendants] all speak with a Nazi double talk with which to deceive the unwary. In the Nazi dictionary of sardonic euphemisms "final solution" of the Jewish problem was a phrase which meant extermination "special treatment" of prisoners of war meant killing; "protective custody" meant concentration camp; "duty labor" meant slave labor; and an order to "take a firm attitude" or "take positive measures" meant to act with unrestrained savagery."

The war in Vietnam produced such doublespeak expressions as:

Collateral damage (killing innocent civilians)

Removal with extreme prejudice (assassination)

Energetic disassembly (nuclear explosion)

Limited duration protective reaction air strikes (bombing villages in Vietnam)

Incontinent ordnance (bombs which hit schools and hospitals by mistake)

Active defence (invasion).

When Jimmy Carter’s attempt to rescue American hostages in Iran ended a catastrophic strategic blunder,  he described it as “an incomplete success”.  When Soviet tanks invaded Prague in 1968, the manoeuvre was described as “fraternal internationalist assistance to the Czechoslovak people”.

Doublespeak uses language to smuggle uncomfortable ideas into comfortable minds.   The Nazi regime were masters at it.  The Howard Government is an enthusiastic apprentice. 

The victims of protective reaction air strikes, or incontinent ordnance, or active defence, or fraternal internationalist assistance often flee for safety.  A small number of them arrive in Australia asking for help.  They commit no offence under Australian or international law by arriving here, without invitation and without papers, in order to seek protection.  Nonetheless the Australian Government refers to them as “illegals”.  This piece of doublespeak is not just for tabloid consumption: it is official.  When the Human Rights and Equal Opportunity Commission held an inquiry into children in detention in Australia, the Department of Immigration and Multicultural and Indigenous Affairs made a submission.  That submission was stored on the Department’s web site.  The full web address of the submission showed that it was held in a sub-directory called “illegals”. 

Like all doublespeak, “illegals” is used for a purpose:  these people are immediately locked up without trial.  No doubt it seems less offensive to lock up “illegals” than to lock up innocent, traumatised human beings.

They are also disparaged as "queue jumpers": a neat device which falsely suggests 2 things.  First that there is a queue, and second that it is in some way appropriate to stand in line when your life is at risk.

When the “illegals/queue jumpers” arrive, they are "detained" in  “Immigration Reception and Processing Centres”.  This description is false in every detail.  They are locked up without trial, for an indefinite period - typically months or years - in desert camps which are as remote from civilisation as it is possible to be.  They are held behind razor wire, they are addressed not by name but by number, and they slowly sink into hopelessness and despair.

When the new prison for asylum seekers at Port Augusta is completed it will have, in addition to the usual layers of razor wire, an electrified fence.  But in the doublespeak of the Department of Immigration, these are officially called “energised fences”.  Wait for the energised cattle prods.

When a “detainee” (doublespeak for prisoner) is removed from a detention centre for deportation, the process is generally done in the dead of night and may involve forcibly tranquillising the person; it is generally done by a squad of ACM guards in costumes reminiscent of Darth Vader.  This alarming procedure is sanitized as “an extraction”.

In the desert camps, dormitories are regularly checked during the night:  at 8.00 p.m., midnight and 4.00 a.m., by shining a torch in the face of each detainee and demanding to see their identification.  This is a “security check”.  It also fits within one of the standard definitions of torture.

If detainees are driven to the desperate extreme of suicide or self-harm, Minister Ruddock disparages this as “inappropriate behaviour” designed to “manipulate the Government”.  By that doublespeak, the victim becomes the offender.

On the last sitting day in June, the Parliament passed the Migration Legislation Amendment (Procedural Fairness) Bill 2002.  The title is one of the most audacious pieces of doublespeak ever to blight the pages of Hansard.  The measures affect the grounds on which courts may  review decisions of the Refugee Review Tribunal.   The Tribunal does not afford a right of legal representation, its members are short-term appointees, its decision-making processes are often unfathomable except by reference to government policy.  Its proceedings are frequently not fair, nor are they calculated to be.  The requirements of natural justice have been driven out by repeated amendment.    The Migration Act now practically guarantees procedural unfairness in decisions which have life and death consequences.  The Procedural Fairness Bill reduces to vanishing point the scope for judicial review of Tribunal decisions.

The truth of our treatment of refugees is deeply shocking.  Innocent people are locked up in dreadful conditions and for an indefinite period;  they are deprived of sleep and isolated from the outside world;  they are forcibly removed as circumstances require.  They live behind razor wire and (soon) electric fences.  Their powerful will to live is gradually eroded until - all hope lost - they are driven to self-harm.  The truth is uncomfortable for the major political parties: they conceal it in doublespeak in the hope that it will be alright.

See how we have emulated pre-war Germany, in both action and language. 

In Nazi Germany (before the concentration camps became death camps) “undesirables” were “placed in protective custody” or “resettled”.  In Australia “illegals” are held in “Immigration Reception and Processing Centres” behind “energised fences”, receiving regular “security checks” and occasional “extractions”.  Their “inappropriate behaviours” are not allowed to “manipulate public policy”.

In 1946, George Orwell wrote Politics and Language, in which he exposed the deceits and devices of doublespeak.  He might have thought that it would lose its power once its workings were revealed.  But he would be disappointed.  Language is as powerful now as in 1933: it can hide shocking truth, it can deceive a nation, it can hand electoral victory to the morally bankrupt.