Jargon surplus
I READ with interest the opinion article from Kylie Warne, pictured, (GA 20/12) in her capacity as the Barwon Regional Partnership chair.
Kylie is also president of the Geelong Chamber of Commerce.
Now I have to be honest and say that this entity, the Barwon Regional Partnership, rather took me by surprise in as much as I can’t really remember having heard of it before.
Checking with my good friend Mr Google I find it was established in August 2016 and includes the shires of Colac Otway, Surf Coast, the Borough of Queenscliffe and the City of Greater Geelong.
This presumably makes it completely different from G21 which represents the afore mentioned plus Golden Plains. G21 on its website says G21 provides a platform for the councils to engage with business, industry, state and federal government and other agencies on issues of mutual benefit to the region.
It goes on to say that this innovative structure helps to strengthen collaboration across the region to plan major projects in a strategic and effective fashion.
According to Ms Warne the Barwon Regional Partnership is working to increase collaboration between communities, industry, businesses and government to address the most important challenges and opportunities to each unique region.
Sounds to the untrained mind, of which I obviously have, as these two organisations may have quite a lot in common really.
Remember we also have the Committee for Geelong and the Chamber of Commerce and also fitting in somewhere, but I’m not quite sure where, is the Geelong Authority.
I am fascinated by the language all these august bodies use. Their statements of intent sound and look as though they’ve been cut and pasted from some generic template that all government and quasi bodies around the word use.
It’s a bit like the jargon that banks, telcos and all financial institutions use to merely confuse and compound.
At a time when various bodies are trying to get companies to talk in plain English, the generic bureaucracy speak is still set in its own time warp relying on meaningless phrases and motherhood sentiments.
For instance I’m still struggling with what I’m supposed to make of a statement like this from Kylie: “The shortlist of priorities presented to the sub-committee are part of a wider matrix that articulates the region’s short, medium and longer-term actions, across funding, policy and service delivery areas.”
It may well be that I’m the dumbest person on the planet but that sounds awfully like the stuff we regularly get from the Committee for Geelong and G21 and nearly every quasi government organisation.
In her article Kylie mentions five priorities on the Partnership’s wishlist.
Being the dumbest person on the planet my eyes glazed over and my brain disengaged after trying to tease out anything meaningful from the first wish.
What do you make of: “Support an entrepreneurial ecosystem pilot project to grow industry and jobs and support scale-ups, innovation and research and to provide evidence based feedback for policy consideration and funding program. Our partnership wants our region to be home to scaled-up enterprises, which in turn attract entrepreneurial businesses and decentralised service sectors to Barwon.” Wow, to put it in the American context I read the opening statement as, the flag, motherhood and apple pie. The other parts of the wishlist are nothing new either calling for raising educational aspirations and improved educational engagement and allocating priority investment to revitalise the Geelong city centre. So while I appreciate the work that all these bodies do, it does seem that they are merely banging the same old drum and doing so with massive duplication of things they have all been banging on about for years. I’m quite prepared to admit that I’ve probably missed some key elements and subtle nuances across these organisations. However, in my defence, if they could only talk in a language I can understand I might be able to differentiate between their functions and objectives. This would no doubt make them happy and a lot of people like me stop thinking ‘same old, same old.’ Just a thought.