Now, with Sen Faulkner being Cabinet Secretary and Julia as Deputy PM and with Rudd as PM I see we will have have a government that will make very few mistakes! Main problem might be it does not move quick enough on some issues.

As to the mistakes, with tough smart cookies like Wong and Roxon in Cabinet as well as the above, well we should celebrate the Lovely Labor Ladies! I certainly do!

I take it “statement” is meant to read with upward inflection?

It’s becoming more obvious to me that a lot of Aussie-isms reflect an uncertainty, or at least unwillingness to sound definitive.

“Yeah, nah…”, the whole upward inflection thing, the tendency to apologise to someone who’s just bumped into you, or to a sales attendant whose help you need and whose job it is to give it. So much deference in the language, so out of place with what we seem to actually feel about ourselves. That is to say, I don’t think this reflects an actual cultural cringe or sense of inadequacy, but maybe it came from there originally? Y’know?

I’m somewhat reluctantly coming to the conclusion that Australia has a more class-conscious society than England, in part because people are so busily pretending that class doesn’t exist. Over here, class is explicitly invoked through language and education (less often money, a surprising discovery for me). In Australia, the signal to noise ratio is much more confusing on that score, so people cast around looking for other markers.

I also think PC is dead right about people changing their accents and appearance to fit in. Hawkie refused to do it at Oxford, whereas I’m not so brave – my working-class country Qld twang is well on the way to being supplanted by Oxbridge. I like to be understood first time, I suspect – so ‘dunny’ is replaced with ‘loo’, ‘ranga’ with ‘ginger’, ‘fair dinkum’ with ‘come off it’ and so on. Oh, and never upwardly inflecting a statement…

Sorry for the late reply, unwell for most of yesterday. Ranga was a term that was utilised to great effect during the show Summer Heights High. Yes, a ranga is a redhead. I’m perplexed by your comment, Paul. I don’t harbour negative feelings towards you personally; I don’t know you personally.

Yep, Julia came from an Adelaide school playground every bit as much as she came from Wales.

Beneath all the literate stuff, you “moderators” are as prejudiced as ANY Hansonist you disdainfully run down, at larva prod.
They at least have the excuse of ignorance, but I’d LOVE to know the basis for your prejudices and biases. As for the rest of the pathological blokehaters, I can only guess…

Pathological blokehaters… whatevs.

Dear Mr Walter – if you can’t realise that your grandstanding and chest puffing on this thread is part of the problem, I am not surprised that you can’t understand my motivations. Instead of the endless bleating and abuse, an alternative would have been to apologise for being off topic in the opinion of the moderators, and for your patronising appellation for Ali Moore. The fact that you are unable to do this suggests you fail to understand both the art of conversation and that of good manners. It’s not all about you, darling. You’re at somebody else’s place, and if you want to have a nice civilised conversation, well and good – that’s what we’re all here for. If you can’t bring yourself to have a tiny bit of humility and make any concessions, then I’m afraid you know where the door is.

There’s always a big contrast between people who’ll happily accept a polite rebuke (as in the “hit it” boys from earlier on in the thread) and those who react with hostility and bluster and do so again and again despite being asked politely to respect our space. The latter are bores and boors, I’d suggest.