‘Catch a dub’: Fatima Payman tries to make ‘skibidi’ happen in the Senate

Mid-afternoon is a strange place in the Senate, one where Pauline Hanson’s rants about vaccines abut Greens pleas for the release of an anti-whaling activist from a Danish jail. Sandwiched in between on Wednesday were perhaps the most new words ever added to Hansard in a two-minute speech, care of independent senator Fatima Payman’s appeal to generations Z and Alpha.

“To the sigmas of Australia,” began the 29-year-old, “I say that this goofy ahh government have been capping”. Lying, in other words.

“Just put the fries in the bag lil’ bro,” she chided Labor, telling the party to do its job. If the government’s youth social media ban were enacted, Payman continued, “You can forgor [sic] all about watching Duke Dennis or catching a dub with the bros on fort.”

That meme-laden language refers to watching a streamer who gets far more views than Australian TV programs or playing Fortnite, one of the world’s most popular games.

“I would be taking an L if I did not mention the opps, who want to cut WA’s “gyatts” and services tax. The decision voters will be making in a few months’ time is between a mid government, a dogwater opposition or minor parties and independents that will mog both of them.”

At least the gist of these insults, delivered with enough chutzpah they almost sounded natural, can be guessed.

As Bill Shorten, the minister for zingers, prepares to depart the building, Payman was anointing herself his successor. Whereas Shorten was often quoting The Simpsons, Payman’s language came from the internet, which yielded about a dozen new words and phrases for Hansard but posed some of its own problems.

Will the emoji in her speech be rendered as such in Hansard, or as the rather less elegant words she spoke: “skull emoji”?

Did she use “gyatt” correctly, given the term can be used to express excitement but is mostly applied to a woman’s curvaceous behind?

And how much does Payman really want to be associated with “sigma”, a term used by men who consider themselves isolated “alphas”?

For a generation used to the irony and absurdism of the internet, it won’t matter. The cringe of a senator saying “skibidi” in parliament is meme enough.

The handful of watching senators certainly had no answers, though Liberal Andrew Bragg, 40, gamely claimed to have understood every word. The Greens’ Nick McKim, 59, bravely called it a “skibidi speech”, echoing Payman’s own use of the nonsense word. Labor’s Raff Ciccone, 40, appeared baffled.

Nationals senator Ross Cadell, 55, interjected to say, “I’m not sure any of that should be recorded.”

But like everything else on the internet, it already had been.

With Jewel Topsfield

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