A recent report from the ABC stated;

"The new Federal Minister for Human Services, Kim Carr, says it's time to end the bureaucratic language used to describe people who use the Department of Human Services. He says terms such as 'client' and 'customer' should be replaced by 'citizen'. It's part of his push to bring the 'human' back into the Human Services department."

I think the Minister should be applauded for the initiative and supported in his efforts.

The insidious capture of our language by 'corporate speak' has been a bug bear of mine for a very long while. One of our few champions in this country has been Don Watson, a former speech writer for Paul Keating. Here is a little snippet from Fora TV.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RsVTDz6sunA&feature=youtube_gdata_player

Could this be the first instance of us reclaiming our language back in any meaningful way?

I think no and firmly.
Citizen?
Shudder to think what foolishness comes next.
csteele not an attack on you,but Kim, this type of thought turns people away.
I could have come straight from the greens.
Far from reclaiming it drives us further in to miss use of existing terms when dealing with governments.

Come on mate!

They brought in weasel words like "client" & "customer" to try to stop the general tax payer referring to them as "recipient" & "bludger", how much more do we have to glorify the non productive sector, before the bleeding heart element are happy.

Do we have another word for the bludging bludgers, who are not citizens, but will have to wait another couple of years before they become eligible?

Agreed Hasbeen !
To call people who come to Centrelink for something they are entitled
to "client" is just plain silly.
Clients are people who GIVE money to businesses not receive it.
Likewise customer is not appropriate.
The public is what they are and that will include non citizens also.

Dear Belly,

While I do think ‘citizen’ is far preferable to ‘customer’ or ‘client’ I do agree it is a little clumsy and even a little pretentious. It sort of reminds me of the good old unionist term ‘comrade’. Did you have something preferable in mind? I’m with Bazz that ‘member of the public’ says it as it is, and even a plain Mr or Ms for the individual.

I am firmly convinced that words within an organisation can produce mindsets that are often undesirable. Until recently I had been giving advice to a small government organisation that had adopted the word ‘investors’ for the much larger sister body from where they received a good portion of their funding. I couldn’t stand it. This was tax payer money, our money, that was being distributed yet they felt they were almost entirely beholden to those whom it was syphoned through. I made a bit of a song and dance about it and they were thereafter careful not to use the term in my presence but I’m sure it has strong currency still.

I certainly am not keen on "corporate speak."
I suspect those who insist on using the so
called "buzz words," think it gives them some
kind of an edge. However, what's the point if
no one really understand what on earth they're
talking about.

Some of my dislikes are - 1) value-added. 2) benchmarking.
3) best practice. 4) downsizing. 5) rightsizing.
6)paradigm shift. 7) leveraging. 8) multi-tasking.
9) think outside the box. Just to name a few.