Death Sentence: The Decay of Public Language
The war on management-speak, from a former PM's speechwriter.
If Canberra has a native language, it is the fog of management-speak Don Watson takes an axe to here. Death Sentence is the former prime-ministerial speechwriter's brilliant, blackly funny assault on the words that go to committee to die — the going forwards, the key learnings, the stakeholder engagements — and no city on earth will recognise it faster than the capital. For the public servant drowning in it, the plain-English crusader who has had enough, or the relative whose emails read like a strategic framework, it is a gift that lands with a delighted, wincing laugh. Short, sharp and endlessly quotable, it belongs on every Canberra desk — ideally propped where the next person who says "let's touch base offline" can see it.
- Don Watson's brilliant assault on bureaucratic language
- Skewers the jargon of government, business and committees
- Sharp, funny and painfully recognisable in a lanyard town
- A knowing gift for anyone who "reaches out" and "circles back"