HAYLEY SORENSEN

ways I know it is to look a bloke in the eye, look your sister or you mum in the eyes, and tell them the truth and be happy to get some truth back, so that’s elite honesty.”

Leaving aside the fact truthfulness isn’t a uniquely Australian trait, that sure sounds a lot like regular honesty, without the adjective.

ELITE HONESTY follows the equally confounding “players’ pact”, which among other things had cricketers pledge to keep on “smiling, dreaming and fighting”, inspiration for which Cricket Australia seems to have drawn from a Kmart throw cushion.

Thank goodness for Andrew Symonds for stopping cricket from entirely disappearing up its own arse.

“It’s a bit corny, isn’t it? That’s not the Australian cricket way in my opinion,” he said of the pact.

“They could have come up with something a lot better than that.”

As a journalist, I devote my life to battling against the nonsensical guff spewed out by important people. Few things give me greater satisfaction than striking out redundant words in a person’s title or condensing a lengthy self-important soliloquy into a few neat paragraphs. Meaningless hokum such as “ELITE HONESTY” makes us all dumber.

We’ve come to expect to be served up such guff by politi-

“It’s some of the most soulless, focusgrouped gobbledygook I’ve ever heard. If our bowlers could find spin that strong, we wouldn’t be in this mess.”

cians and corporate types. We don’t need it from cricketers, too. Langer and company would be well served to check out the handy online tool developed by the good people at the plain English Campaign — a group with the worthy goal of stamping out “gobbledygook, jargon and misleading” language.

Drivel Defence will translate buzzword laden text back to concise, easy to digest copy.

My suggestion for a slogan to replace “ELITE HONESTY”?

“Don’t cheat”.