Contents
The Tent Embassy—staying or going?
Grammar tip: Caught by the dangling participle
Computer tip: Multi-tasking with Word
The Tent Embassy—staying or going?
Australia Day 2012 was marked by a yelping mob demonstration at the Lobby Restaurant in Canberra and a dash for safety by the prime minister and the leader of the opposition. Now, calls are loud that the Tent Embassy has served its day. The retired premier of New South Wales, Mr Bob Carr, for example, let go both barrels:
I agree with Tony Abbott and think his remarks entirely sensible. The tent embassy in Canberra says nothing to anyone and should have been quietly packed up years ago. The ‘activists’ who run it would be better off investing time in youth programs in indigenous communities. Every government in Australia is aware of its responsibilities to Aboriginal Australians. The debate is how you narrow the gap not whether you should and the debate is as serious within the Aboriginal community as between it and the white.
It is true that Walter Burley Griffin never imagined a tent embassy protest and never considered that fringe dwellers would make an anarchic and disreputable political point in the middle of his modern city.
The place where the embassy is located, the parliamentary triangle, is a symbolic showcase. Inside its confines are found the qualities and features of our national life that we recognise as important. The High Court embodies justice; the National Gallery, beauty. The National Library is a repository of our knowledge about our lives and our history. Parliament, at the apex of the triangle, gives a place for democratic practice.
As well as being buildings that house important civic functions these structures are also sculptures. They provide a visual representation of what this nation is and what it aspires to be—not the complete or uncontested representation, not the truth, of course, but important nevertheless. We place these structures so prominently in the parliamentary triangle because we believe the values and practices they embody to be fundamental to our own good government.
The embassy is the same—and different.
It is the same because it serves an important symbolic purpose, much like the court or gallery. By a process of ramshackle and organic design, the embassy has evolved to a point where it articulates another important truth of contemporary Australian society. The truth on display here is the nation’s treatment of Indigenous Australians. This is an open wound that nice, decent people do not see and which governments, to our discredit, have still not properly dressed.
Larissa Behrendt, Professor of Law and Indigenous Studies at the University of Technology, Sydney, once explained that we can measure the effectiveness and fairness of our laws and institutions by assessing the impact on Indigenous people. In this sense, the embassy warns us that chronic unfairness still exists and tells us that our policy and institutions must be improved.
A previous chairman of the planning authority in Canberra, an air marshal (retired), once described the embassy as an eyesore and a blight that should be removed. Admittedly, the embassy is different from the official, ordered structures of state, and for this reason we can understand why an air marshal might find it disconcerting.
Yet it is this very difference that gives the embassy its authenticity and power. Unlike other structures in the parliamentary triangle, the embassy owes its voice to no government, no minister and no committee of bureaucrats. The embassy exists as a reverse occupation, which challenges our established practices of justice and democracy and beauty.
Because it sits cheek by jowl with official and sanctioned institutions, this ragged collection of tents portrays an indigenous experience that is real, not merely abstracted: our fellow Australians actually do live in eyesores and camps, and because of this their health and their lives are at risk.
If the embassy is sanitised and pasteurised, then a legitimate voice of contrast and protest will have been made silent. By insisting that the embassy presence in the parliamentary triangle be made whiter and more inert, we rob the nation of a reminder that our government and we as a people must do better. An authentic voice would be silenced and in its place there would be only political silence and political convenience. It is not difficult to see who would be the beneficiaries.
A well-functioning democracy needs to preserve difference, even if difference seems to the majority or the government of the day to be objectionable or offensive. A healthy democracy requires not just a toleration of alternative views, but the endorsement of such views as being legitimately heard.
It is true that the tent embassy sends a message of chaotic and dishevelled defiance. Its existence is an indigenous rejection of the not particularly good works of the ruling class.
That most of us implicitly condone a protest of this kind is to our national credit. And is why the day the embassy is lost is the day when all Australians lose. This might be a foreign notion to Bob Carr, but is one that nonetheless he needs to spend time considering.
Chas Savage
Style tip: A phrase to avoid
We still puzzle over ‘moving forward’, a term used extensively in Julia Gillard’s 2010 election campaign. It seems wilfully ambiguous and the use of it and its variants—‘going forward’, ‘moving along’, ‘looking forward’—are becoming commonplace.
It seems to be evolving from a catchphrase into something people unconsciously tack onto sentences. Writing on the same subject, Mark Seacombe at the UK’s Observer noted,
It is sometimes deployed as an add-on—a kind of burp—at the end of a sentence; sometimes, as with ‘like’ or ‘you know’, it seems to serve as punctuation.
An example that came across our desk was from Mr Tom Mockridge, CEO at News Ltd International in the final sentence of an organisation-wide email:
We must all support Dominic who will be leading his staff to deliver, as always, a great paper for Monday and going forward.
Here we can take this awkward usage to mean ‘in the future’. It would have been clearer for the author to simply say that.
Erika Mudie
Competition!
Advertising copy should always be clear. This advertisement for a new apartment development in Kingston, ACT is not. We’d like to know what improvements you would make.
On offer for the winner is a single-user licence for the EthosCRS e-learning course From grammar to clear writing.
Grammar tip: Caught by the dangling participle
A participle is a verb form that shows continuing or completed action—words such as ‘frightened’ or ‘going’. In the following sentences, it is clear that the participle at the beginning of the sentence (determined/speaking) refers to the subject (Kim Clijsters/Li Na):
Determined to continue, Kim Clijsters ignored her ankle injury and went on to win the third and deciding set. Speaking afterwards, Li Na paid tribute to her opponent’s courage.
A common grammar error is to make sentences with ‘dangling participles’, where it is unclear what exactly the participle is modifying. Such sentences can be confusing or even absurd. For example:
Travelling north, the landscape was more desolate.
In giving evidence this morning, the committee asks that you do not mention the names of the people involved in the legal case.
Tired of the endless media attention, a newborn gorilla at Taronga Zoo was just the distraction the Premier needed.
Just a little rearranging will turn these sentences into clear writing:
Travelling north, we saw that the landscape was more desolate.
The committee asks that, in giving evidence this morning, you do not mention the names of the people involved in the legal case.
Tired of the endless media attention, the Premier thought a newborn gorilla at Taronga Zoo was just the distraction he needed.
In these sentences the subject is clear: ‘we’ (not the landscape) are travelling north; ‘you’ (not the committee) are the one giving the evidence; ‘the Premier’ (not the newborn gorilla) was the one tired of the media attention.
Dangling participles aren’t always a problem. Some have become so commonplace and familiar, especially in conversation, that everyone knows what they mean. For example:
Roughly speaking, they amount to the same thing.
Looking ahead, the future seems bright.
Some other common dangling participles that won’t cause problems when used in speech or clear writing are ‘owing to’, ‘assuming that’, ‘speaking of’ and ‘considering’.
Pauline McGuire
New year, new faces
New Year’s resolutions, fresh opportunities and all great hopes and dreams aside, the ever blossoming family at Ethos CRS is happy to announce a number of exciting new changes to the team for 2012.
Since joining us a year ago, Meg Dixon-Child has proved to be an invaluable contributor, mentor and talent rapidly outgrowing her role. So it is with great pleasure that we are able to announce her promotion to deputy chief executive officer.
Anne McCaig comes to Ethos CRS with a remarkable collection of experiences that extend beyond the borders of this country. Anne has worked extensively in the Solomon Islands and Pacific as well as spending a number of years working with the Victorian state government. Ethos CRS is pleased to have Anne on board as a trainer and representative in Melbourne.
Wendy Elliott has stepped down from her role to make way for Pauline McGuire. We are pleased to say that Wendy has not disappeared from our sights altogether; she will remain in the team contracting for us and continuing to share her indispensible knowledge base.
We also welcome Pauline McGuire to the job of Director, Editing Services. Pauline comes to Ethos CRS from Commonwealth Hansard, where she spent five years editing parliamentary debate and evidence to committee inquiries as well as in learning and development. Her career has largely been in book publishing, where she has been a publicist, copywriter and editor in the UK and Australia, working on everything from ‘how to’ books on paper aeroplanes through to celebrity biographies. Pauline will be taking on her own projects for Ethos CRS as well as overseeing our close-knit team of associate editors.
Niki Kerr has also joined the Ethos CRS team. Niki is an ANU graduate with majors in English literature and dramatic arts. She also studied Latin, the history of the English language and traditional grammar. Through studying, Niki's fascination with the spoken and written word grew—and she discovered the beauty of the correct use of grammar (which, she laments, was never introduced to her throughout the Australian Public School System’s compulsory schooling years).
Computer tip: Multi-tasking with Word
When you have lots of documents, folders and applications open, it can be hard to find the right Word document that you were working on. Ctrl+F6 (or Alt+F6) can be used to switch between multiple windows in the same program, making it easy to find the right document quickly.
Jess Thompson
