Fair shake of that sauteed tomato preserve in a bottle
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The Prime Minister’s bizarre “fair shake of the sauce bottle” certainly got the pundits … um, punditing. But it wasn’t some sudden eruption in the Prime Minister’s phraseology. He used the phrase as long ago as last June when he told the good folk of the Northern Territory that said sauce bottle would be fairly shaken when it came to dollops of road funding. And he also suggested that rapid but equitable agitation of the condiment container was a quintessential Australian value in an Australia Day address back in January. It does, however, appear to be a Ruddian innovation. I’m not aware of anyone else who has ever demanded that the sauce bottle shaking be subjected to natural justice and procedural fairness requirements. One also wonders on what basis the fairness of a shaking of a sauce bottle could be measured. I thank the honourable member for his question, and it goes to the critical issue of allocative efficiency. Fairness could be measured in three ways: firstly, an accurate accounting of the number of shakes per individual recipient of the sauce; second … sorry, I’ll stop. The language and communication skills of our politicians don’t receive sufficient attention from the political media in Australia, given they are fundamental to political success. When it does get attention, it’s usually piss-taking — Rudd’s forced efforts to appear ocker, Alexander Downer sounding like a refugee from Brideshead Revisited, Bjelke-Petersen and Pauline Hanson’s inspired inarticulacy. Class in an important and ignored issue here, class in the Australian sense of going to the right private schools and sandstone universities. In Malcolm Turnbull and Joe Hockey the Liberal Party now has two much more traditional leaders — top Sydney private schools, Sydney University (the only Australian uni that really counts), and in Turnbull’s case Oxford — than John Howard and the MPs who helped him in to government in 1996, who were much more small business battler than St John’s College. Like Keating before him, who left a Catholic high school at 15, Howard rose to power through hard work and talent, without the benefit of the connections and gloss provided by membership of the Establishment. The contrast with Gough Whitlam and Malcolm Fraser — and, to an extent, Bob Hawke, who like Turnbull was a Rhodes Scholar — could not have been greater. But whereas Keating gloried in his working class vernacular, drawing on fifties and sixties popular culture as a base for an entire lexicon of derision, Howard, troubled by a hearing and speech impediment, flattened himself into a perfect echo of middle Australia. Rudd, like Howard, was a public school kid, and from somewhere a bit less cosmopolitan than suburban Sydney. But he’s an amalgam of more complex influences. Keating and Howard lived politics and their respective parties nearly all their careers. Rudd has risen through the public service — and a specialised enclave of it — and lived overseas for extended periods. So in that hard drive there are terabytes of policy complexity and Sinology and political calculation and, probably deep down in a forgotten sub-directory, a sort of Chips Rafferty vernacular in which no crow is left unstoned, no sav goes unsucked and the lessons of Smiley Gets A Gun are never forgotten. This is, after all, a grown man who publicly admits to doing deals over “brekkers” and loves going back to Brissy. Rudd may resort to such colloquialisms as part of a deliberate strategy but their oddly-garbled nature suggests they are being fished out of the prime ministerial memory banks at random, attached to other half-phrases implanted during a Nambour childhood spent wondering how the hell he could get out of the place. Being Rudd, of course, it couldn’t just be said once. This the master of repetition at work, and he shook that sauce bottle three times in the one interview, including a sensational twice in the same answer, vernacular bookends to his answer about the number of women — sorry, sheilas — in his ministry. Paul Keating had a habit, Mr Speaker, had a habit, had a habit, of repeating things, repeating things Mr Speaker, at the Dispatch Box, as a way of reinforcing his verbal supremacy. Rudd just repeats things no matter where he is. That’s why “not out of the woods” has been on high rotation for the last week, was uttered three times in the Speers interview by Rudd and another four times throughout the day. Out it came several times in interviews yesterday as well. We have been stuck in those woods since the national account figures last Wednesday, with the Prime Minister uttering it ten times that day alone. The phrase may have been borrowed from Barack Obama, who told Americans on 14 April that they weren’t out of the woods, although the OECD Secretary-General had said that the OECD wasn’t out of the woods back at the end of 2007, which appears to have been a very premature “not out of the woods” call. A day after Obama, the IMF’s Dominique Strauss-Kahn declared that the global economy was not out of the — evidently very crowded — woods yet either. Obama was using it again more recently about swine flu, too, in which context Rudd used it yesterday as well. But no-one has used it with such mind-numbingly frequency as the Prime Minister. Even Wayne Swan, usually enthusiastic in his use of the Key Phrase Of The Week, has been left behind. He appears to have attempted to get his own rival line going, about the rocky road we’re on, without much success. You can’t imagine Malcolm Turnbull sticking to such cloying catchphrases with any assiduity; he’d get too bored, and forget to use them in the course of actually responding to a question rather than seeing questions as a simple launchpad for his own messaging. Turnbull appears to regard the public as adults with whom he can have a civilised conversation. Rudd appears to regard them as little better than children. Which means the polls don’t say much for Australian voters. |
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46 Comments
I cringe every time I hear the ‘cash splash’ phrase from Turnball and Hockey
It is key for working families to be out of the woods and onto a level playing field before shaking the sauce bottle, in order for equitable outcomes to be operationalised going forward.
Can I be next if Julia doesn’t want the job?
They have all been through Mind Control 1 and 2 but the public are starting to catch on.
So next week they’ll be off to Mind Control 3 which is more Striney.
The PM is doing post grad now which involves talking slower and saying less which is why we are all starting to crack whips if only fairly, suck savs and sauce bottles and starve lizards.
Pretty soon I know we are going to have to “turn it up” but I am more inclined to “turn it off” before I get a headache.
If I hear another automaton tell me “we’ve always said”, I am going to vote Family First!
Make no mistake this is just an illusion from a globalist elite..after the next election Rudd will be off to the UN and Gillard will be PM unless the “others” can “stop their little red wagon”. Oops! Now they have me doing it!
I find it amazing the esteem USyd is held in. In the last 10 years I’ve received a degree each from UTS and Sydney, and the comparison between the 2 is embarrassing.
Sydney was a stodgy place to study, with some pretty seriously clapped out class rooms, and dreadful organisation. The Colleges are chock full of rich country boys wearing polo shirts and playing rugby; generally boorish and alcoholic and to be avoided at all cost.
UTS however, was a genuinely modern institution, with all of the brightests and most focussed lecturers I’ve ever had, and a focus on how to get useful employment when you’re finished. Sydney seemed mired in the rote-learning school of thought; UTS prized modern teaching methods such as online tutorials and experiments. We even operated a robot remotely for an assessment!
In short, I don’t think Sydney deserves it’s reputation and I don’t give a bugger what uni the pollies went to. Does anyone?
I would like to hear more colloquialisms in Australian public speech. We are so American-ised it’s sickening. Hugh Lunn’s book “Lost for Words: Australia’s Lost Language in Words and Stories” is fantastic. It covers lost lingo that was so Australian. I’d like to see it in schools because kids speak American not Australian nowadays. Fair suck of the sav.
It’s strange that this story is circulating without reference to its content. Rudd was responding to criticism that there were less women in cabinet. His response was self-damning. He choose to speak like a ‘bloke’ in dismissing the criticism that his government was too blokey. Makes me wonder with the ALP right, is blokeocracy a word?
My Grandmother and Mother both say “Fair shake of the sauce bottle” pretty regularly. I’ve always assumed it’s a common expression.
They usually say it when they feel they have been cheated out of something… as in: “Oh, come on, fair shake of the sauce bottle, mate”.
They also frequently say “Fair suck of the saveloy”.
Are you there Bernard? If so, what is the reference to St. John’s College about? I think Malcolm Turnbull’s Oxford college was Brasenose (as it was John Gorton’s). For your interest, two friends who were a year or two ahead of Tony Blair at St. John’s College, Oxford give me entirely different accounts of that chameleon/second-rate actor Blair. One that he was a nobody there, and the other, who was secretary of an exclusive dining club trying to find out which freshmen to invite to become members and how to get the potential stars to join, that the answer to that question depended on getting “their leader’s (to wit, Tony Blair’s) approval.
Also, why do you say only Sydney University counts in Australia for prestige? Quite often Melbourne has been above it on those lists that international journals and other recorders of opinion make. Its age, numbers of staff an alumni and graduates of distinction would not differ much from those of Sydney I would suppose, but maybe you have facts to dispute those suppositions. Looking at the likelihood of private school boys going directly to Oxford or Cambridge in the past, bypassing the home university, I guess Adelaide might be well ahead (or behind if that is one of your criteria), in the case of Melbourne I can think immediately of two PMs, one Chief Justice, one very distinguished senior public servant/diplomat and it’s not worth going on because I don’t have similar knowledge of NSW/Sydney. So…… what are your criteria and reasons?
I still remember Max Gillies impersonating Paul Keating: “There is more to leadership, there is more to leadership, there is more to leadership than saying things three times.”
Herod, Hockey was a Johnsman at Sydney.
And I say Sydney is the only one that counts because I’m an alumnus of the place myself and I was engaging in some petty stirring.
Bernard, as this extract from Senate Estimates Hansard shows Senator Rod Kemp ( then a Liberal) used the phrase “fair shake of the sauce bottle” in June 1995.
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ENVIRONMENT, RECREATION, COMMUNICATIONS AND THE ARTS LEGISLATION COMMITTEE : 23/06/1995 : DEPARTMENT OF THE ENVIRONMENT, SPORT AND TERRITORIES : Program 1 — Environment [Senate Estimates]
CHAIR — I invite questions on environment. Senator KEMP — Mr Chairman, just so that all of us feel that we have had a fair shake of the sauce bottle, my colleague also has a quite a number of environmental questions and I understand that the minister has to go at
Date: 23/06/1995 - Collection: Committees - ID: committees/estimate/ecomw950623a_ser.out/0010 - Source: SENATE
Not sure what you are up to Bernard with this article. For the most part thought you were having a lend of us, but as you progressed through the institutions of learning, then concluded with…”Turnbull appears to regard the public as adults with whom he can have a civilised conversation. Rudd appears to regard them as little better than children. Which means the polls don’t say much for Australian voters.” what? How about the voters who put Rudd there in 2007 and nothing much has changed since. Either Rudd has stood on your toes recently and you don’t like it or you just aren’t the brightest light on the Xmas tree. Perhaps you should have listened to the Tony Jones panel discussion that aired on Radio National last evening between 6 and 7. Three rather brighter bulbs gave a run down on the Rudd traits, personality, quirks, moods etc was very enlightening, more so than that rather dull effort of yours today.
If he wants to use catch phrases, then so what? I suspect not many agree with your smart arse crack, Rudd appears to regard them as little better than children. Smacks as a dose of sour grapes .
Perfectly good reasons Bernard…
“Rudd appears to regard them as little better than children. Which means the polls don’t say much for Australian voters.”
I think most rational and disinterested people kind of understood that from Day 1. When Rudd and Co couldn’t get the self-satisfied, smug “pulled the wool over your eyes Australia” grins off their mugs.
I was surprised that Bernard Keane wasn’t aware of the meaning of the term “Fair suck of the sauce
bottle” in the Australian vernacular. “Sauce” is one Australian term for alcohol. In other words, don’t drink more than your fair share when sharing a bottle of alcohol with a group. More broadly, give others a fair go. This is what Kevin Rudd was really driving at.
I was also disappointed that that none of the 10 comments to date since then
remarked upon this. Coreena makes a fair comment when saying we speak American these days,
not Australian.
Our slang is colourful and vital: This includes the (mostly) Irish, English and other slang from
the early days of the colonies, a few (too few) Aboriginal terms and contributions from later settlers.
If Bernard had known this, he wouldn’t have written the article he did. Just as well he does a
good job otherwise.
Read Hugh Lunn’s book if you can find it. I wish I still had a copy.
Regards,
Sole Subscriber Len Neary
Bernard - Mr Turnbull doesn’t talk to me. He talks at me and says ’ I am right so listen or else’.
Give me ‘fair suck of the sauce bottle’ anyday. I love it - reminds me of all the old blokes who made this country out of nothing.
Like most Queenslanders the PM has got the quote wrong or have modified it to fit in with polite northspeak, the correct saying has always been:
“Fair suck of the sav” (Sav being short for saveloy)
SB
Krudd is so robotic in his responses, no matter what the question, that it is approaching clinical aphasia. I’ve lost count of the number of times that he has gone into playback mode but fluffed yer akshal english words and used strange homophones, unknown in any language - at least on this particular planet - but NO-ONE notices!
Is this simply because one expects pollies to lie & dissemble” Are the journos. asleep, zoned out, drunk - the Press Club is a zone of its own - or is it that they know he isn’t going to answer so are doing Sudokos?
I heard some language professor on the ABC suggesting that Rudd has mangled two cliches into one, and has conjoined “fair shake of the dice” with “fair suck of the sauce bottle.”
since one is a reference to gambling, and the other to drinking (rather than condiments), I like to imagine that Rudd has created his own PC version, rather than it being a malaprop.
You can take the boy out of Queensland but you cant etc> Its called quaint Queensland parlance. Peter Beattie, Rob Schwarten and a few other cow-cockyies were full of it and the language too that so readily springs to the PM’s lips. The State’s Hansard is a tome of Aussie slang.
Argy-bargy, hanky panky, sauce for the goose, rough as guts, jobbed in the head, city-slickers and even wimp, bluey, reddie and bludger (a few varieties there - card-carrying, dole and lazy), yes out of the woods, neck of the woods and fair crack of the whip! Beattie even made promises ‘over his dead body’!
Flip through Queensland’s Hansard it’s full of Ruddisms.
http://parlinfo.parliament.qld.gov.au/IsysSpkSimp.htm
Bernard, I know I am stating the obvious here but nevertheless it needs to be said.
What is “mind-numbing frequency” to you, and most of your readers, is to millions of people, a fleeting phrase that they only half took in the few times they heard it when the the telly was on in the other room. They only half heard it because the kids were squabbling and they were preoccupied with all the tedious things they had to get done that evening.
The last thing these millions of people want is to sit down with Malcolm for a “civilised conversation” - a slightly scary and rather time-wasting prospect. A vague idea that the smart but innocuous Kevin was was going to do his best to keep disasters at bay is a much more satisfying notion.
An election-winning notion.
Geez David Sanderson, thanks for picking up a point I made six months ago.
Geez Bernard, how could I forget that you have already said, at some time or other, absolutely everything that was worth saying?
I made clear in my comment that I was not saying anything new but when you are complaining of “mind-numbing boredom” and are urgently desirous of a “civilised conversation” with Malcolm it is worth pointing out that there are millions of people with votes who would not be feeling the same way.
I’ll agree with you about Turnbull Bernard, if he never again says “cash splash”, “Labor debt and deficit” or “cash in the bank”.
For mine, I think he knows a thing or two about repetition.
Stone the crows, not one of ya mentioned “having a lend of”, as in Rudd was having a lend of media types - and youse too by the sound of it. Don’t tell me ya fell for it too! Nor did any of youse remember Bazza Mackenzie … the comics, not the bloke that played ‘im … or A. Lauder’s Strine dictionary. Fair crack of the whip! Back in the old days, all the toffs at uni spoke strine & Baz (includin MalT. Betcha!) Ya shoulda heard em carryin on in it at Earls Court & Oxford pubs when … [Further reporting of said carryings on censored to protected Gen X &Y sensibilities].
Youse av orl been ad, n Kev’s killing imself. So are we who remember!
You’ve been sucking that sav again, haven’t you OzPol? Fair dinkum mate, you’re the dizzy limit.
Cash “at” the bank, Grog. And why “at”? No idea.
I stand corrected, Bernard!
Maybe it’s a class thing. The upper class have cash ‘at’ the bank, implying it is sitting there waiting to be ordered around. The working class have cash ‘in’ the bank, implying that it is locked away so they won’t be tempted to touch it.
The middle class can go with either idiom depending on how aspirational they are.
That’s my theory. It may be all bullshit but I’m running with it.
The Australiase (C J Dennis)
A Marching Song
Air - Onward Christian Soldiers
Fellers of Australier,
Blokes an’ coves an’ coots,
Shift yer — - carcases,
Move yer — - boots.
Gird yer — - loins up,
Get yer — - gun,
Set the — - enermy
An’ watch the blighters run.
http://www.middlemiss.org/lit/authors/denniscj/backblockother/australaise.html
The Integrated Adjective (John O’Grady)
“Howya bloody been, ya drongo, haven’t seen ya fer a week,
And yer mate was lookin’ for ya when ya come in from the creek.
‘E was lookin’ up at Ryan’s, and around at bloody Joe’s,
And even at the Royal, where ‘e bloody NEVER goes”.
And the other bloke says “Seen ‘im? Owed ‘im half a bloody quid.
Forgot to give it back to him, but now I bloody did -
Could’ve used the thing me bloody self. Been off the bloody booze,
Up at Tumba-bloody-rumba shootin’ kanga-bloody-roos.”
http://www.poemhunter.com/poem/tumba-bloody-rumba/ (Note: this site incorrectly attributes the poem to John O’Brien)
And for those who missed the Bazza comics (& other Gens Blue & Boomer lingo); from comments under this post from Sara Britten’s Gondwanaland blog “Boofheads, utes and de factos: essential Aussie vocabulary” http://www.thoughtleader.co.za/sarahbritten/2008/09/18/boofheads-utes-and-de-factos-essential-aussie-vocabulary/
In the 1960s [Barry Humphries] collaborated in a marvellously crude comic strip (and a movie) called The Adventures of Bazza MacKenzie.
Bazza was an Australian innocent abroad in London and suffered from a huge thirst leading him to frequently declare that he was “as dry as a dead dingo’s donger,”…
After huge quantities of Fosters he would end up having “a technicolour yawn,” or “speaking into the big white telephone.”
The beer consumption also had him “pointing Percy at the porcelain,” “splashing the boots,” or “shaking hands with the wife’s best friend.”
In one strip a waiter at a restaurant asks him how he would like his steak. He replies: “Mate, just knock off its horns, wipe its a#se and slap it on the plate.”
Okay everybody. Do we all have to come out with colloquialisms in order to prove how Oz we are?
Thanks to David Sanderson I now know I’m lower class. However, that’s not my point. To me it’s all to do with the way you sit with yourself. I swear like a fiend and for better or for worse it seems to fit me. With Kevin Rudd it’s quite obvious he aims to please as many of the voting public as possible. That’s why he sounds so condescending. I venture to suggest he sounds that way to everyone of any class. All of which reveals a man who is not at all sure of himself.
I think David Sanderson’s explanation of Turnbull’s zany cash ‘at’ the bank is a bullseye. It’s a given for people born with the proverbial silver spoon such as Turnbull - you just turn up to collect it. The rest of us put it IN for safekeeping until the inevitable. Language analysis of the two leaders is proving incredibly insightful. Rudd and Turnbull led vastly different childhoods despite the latter’s vehement denial. If Brisbane in 1999 was a culture shock then I’ve no doubt living in Nambour and Eumundi thirty years ago would equate to the wild-west. I’d say Rudd’s still settling into the new millenium.
Not at all Venise. You may be aspirational middle class and “swear like a fiend” only in order to keep up appearances.
And I like the way you “sit with yourself” - that’s always been very classy.
David! Oh shucks. Ta ever so!
Have a good one.
Cheers
Venise
And as we were quietly discussing humorous colloquialisms…. who butts in? DAH DAH! Howard’s veteran hypocrite Treasurer from Higgins! The ABC-still-enamoured with the long-gone luminary reports the guy’s spinning head over the PM’s quirky language . Never heard it before, my Aunt. He’s off on his campaign for re-endorsement and a stab at the Liberal leadership. Like Howard he’ll keep rising from the grave until the Higgins electorate buries him. Can’t they find another Liberal to save their party?
http://www.abc.net.au/news/stories/2009/06/12/2596645.htm?section=justin
I have never heard the sauce bottle saying before, perhaps it is a Queensland colloquialism.
Fair crack of the whip and fair suck of the sav(eloy) are the ones I know of.
Why does it matter anyway … I’m sure that Rudd is intelligent enough to drop using them when talking to representatives from other countries. Just as most of us make adjustments depending on who we are speaking with.
Shaking sauce bottles or shit storm in a billycan?
Rudd seems to have appropriated “2 shakes of a lamb’s tail” and turned it into something. The sight of sauce going all over your plate when sauce has blocked the neck of the bottle, because you haven’t given the bottle a good shake beforehand, is a very funny sight. It’s used in TV ads because it’s something we’ve all seen or done.
Chris Johnson: You break my heart. I am one of those hapless souls who happens to live in the electorate of Higgins. No dictionary would convey the words and the hatred I have for the halitosis-laden, ambition-driven-as long as he doesn’t have to work at it-cretinous, divisive, unimaginative, gutless, hate-filled, lying, seedy, over-hyped, up himself as far as Pluto is removed from the earth. By now I think you will understand my frigid hatred for the member for Higgins.
I would go down on my knees to see the bast-rd shot, dismembered, etc. But the electorate is full of little old ladies with carefully curled hair and semi-used brains.
By old I mean women from thirty to a hundred. Not too many men last to this age. I’m told these are his supporters. Why? I’m feeuked If I know. But I do know they admire him in principle. Not for the staggering lack of Costello’s achievements at the so called grass-roots level.
Rudd a public school boy-rubbish. After the death of his father he was given a free scholarship to attend Marist College Ashgrove in Brisbane to join his brother as a boarder. Ashgrove is a PRIVATE school with magnificent facilities (look at its webb-site Bernard !!!)old boys include John Eales,Matt Hayden and many figures from the Brisbane Catholic legal and business establishment.My Porche- driving neighbour,a partner in a national legal firm, was in Rudd”s class at Ashgrove and would be amused at Keane’s article. Also all 3 of Rudd”s children have attended prestigious private schools(quite cosmopolitan too, even if Keane like Paul Keating can’t get his head around anything in Brisbane being such)
Yet more proof that Oz politics is awash with bloody catholics.
http://www.fairshakeofthesaucebottlemate.com/
Looks like someone has worked out what Rudd really meant by shaking the sauce bottle - crude but fun!
Pleased you didn’t add that lame brain, idiot, spaced out ning nong Feilding among us God fearing Mickey Doos Venise…when you say awash as in most of, just how many are of the faith? Anyone have exact numbers. Bernard you will have easy access to that info, be interesting to see the breakdown of the different religious persuasions.
Bernard, I followed what you said right down to the (2nd)last sentence, and I must take exception and defend kids. I find kids to be articulate, smart and can smell bull shit a mile off. In fact, I’d much rather listen to kids debating something than politicians any day.
DavidI. Look up Catholic politicians in the Liberal/National Party Google them to get a hint of the Catholic presence. Do Australia-wide Federally and at State level, and just take it from there.
Without putting any time into it-and there was a time when I did-I can come up with a couple of names: Kevin Rudd (he says he has renounced Catholicism for whatever religion he practices now. There are many people who would believe him. I am not one of them. If it walks like a duck, etc. Peter Ryan, Tony Abbott, Brendan Nelson, Steven Conroy, Malcolm Turnbull. I know Steve Fielding is Family First, but I would be surprised if he wasn’t…I’m sorry, you will have to do the work, which would be long and arduous. Or you could make a list of all those Victorian MPs who opposed the abortion bill. Eighty percent of them would have been catholic. What about the infamous “Independant” Ha! senator Brian Harradine and the infamous deal he did with John Howard. Anyhow I’ll let you do the work.
Thanks Venise. Will do when I get home from the office, sup on a glass of merlot and have a Google…