By Richard Glover
DO YOU want to perform better at work? Or at least look as if you are performing better at work? Why not consider changing your name?
This week the Customs department changed its name to the Customs and Border Protection Service. According to the Opposition, the name change will cost about $10 million. Presumably the Government believes it is worth it, since Australia will be so much better protected once Customs has its new uniforms.
Why do people have this magical belief in the power of names? Why do we always spend so much money changing the names of our departments and our companies?
Is Victoria more sustainable since the old Department of Natural Resources and Environment became the Department of Sustainability and Environment? Exactly how many trees died in the process of changing the stationery in order to claim the state is "sustainable"?
In NSW, the police force became the police service and then went back to being the police force. The experience of being held in a headlock by a burly sergeant was, I assume, fairly similar under all three regimes.
Australians have endured a lot of this stuff. The old PMG became Telecom and then Telecom became Telstra. Thank goodness, despite this maelstrom of change, they managed to keep the service so unchangingly awful. TAA, meanwhile, turned into Australian Airlines before becoming Qantas domestic - the constant paint jobs doing much, no doubt, to ensure the planes held together.
It's the same brilliant thinking that caused the State Government to change my brown Metro Ten bus ticket to a brown TravelTen, the name change freeing them from the need to improve the actual bus.
If changing your name is such a great idea, maybe we should all try it. Imagine your name is Brian Smith. I don't mean to be rude but it's not the sort of name that's going to grab anyone's attention.
First you need to remove the gap between the two words. You could become BrianSmith, a man so busy and go-ahead he hasn't even time to put a space between his names. If you want to be really go-ahead, you'll need to employ an image consultant who'll take five months, charge you $3 million and conclude that you need to italicise your second name. Arise BrianSmith, a man who is moving forward so quickly his surname must lean forward in order to cut down the wind-drag.
But wait, there's more. I notice you have failed to include the word Australia, which can only indicate a failure of patriotic spirit. Or that you've employed an image consultant whose eye is off the ball. Everyone has "Australia" in their name.
Groups that used to have sensible names such as the Rooster and Hen Board are all called things like EggsAustralia. Or, if they can afford the image consultant, EggsAustralia.
You'll need to immediately rush yourself down to the Register of Birth, Deaths and Marriages (or NamesAustralia, as we now call it) and register your new handle BrianSmithAustralia. Remember to have it printed on all your new stationery.
Does any of this matter, save for the waste of paper and the work given to sign-painters? Yes, because it allows people to create the illusion of change while doing nothing. And it matters because there's a whiff of propaganda about so many of the new names. "Border protection" is not a name; it's a phrase from a political speech. In an age of terrorism, people like the idea of protected borders so the Government whacks it into the department's very name. It's as if you can achieve an outcome by just changing a name.
Here and overseas, official names are increasingly like advertising slogans. Names such as: America's Department of Homeland Security (official subtitle: "Preserving Our Freedoms"). Or Britain's "Secretary for Innovation". Or the "Fair Pay Commission" of John Howard.
Just by telephoning their number, you feel like you are being forced to agree with a point of view - that Howard's industrial system led to fair pay; or that "border protection" is a useful way of thinking about Australia's relationship to the world.
It's an attempt to colonise our thinking; to force us to parrot a view that is not necessarily our own. It's exactly the notion satirised by George Orwell when he created the Ministry of Truth and the Ministry of Love in 1984.
Well, I don't need to be conscripted to the cause. I'll judge for myself whether Victoria is sustainable; whether Customs is protective; and whether NSW police are forceful.
I have an urge to rebel; to refuse to be ordered about in this way.
Maybe we could just forget the past 30 or 40 years - and all that dumped stationery, reworked livery and furious sign-painting. We could enjoy just one glorious day of civil disobedience.
I'd like to pick up my PMG telephone and ask to be put through to TAA. I'd book a flight to Melbourne, using money withdrawn from my account at the Bank of NSW. Switching off the lights at home, I could pretend the power was still supplied by the Sydney County Council and not the breathlessly busy EnergyAustralia.
I'd need a fair bit of good luck getting through the airport, though. Those beagles are going to be a lot fiercer once they get those new uniforms.