Talking turkey

How Tony Abbott got a little lost in gobbledygook.

It started as ominous rumbling and emissions out of the Liberals’ energy-themed partyroom meeting yesterday, like toxic gas puffing out of a volcano’s vent before the eruption. Then Tony Abbott got under way: “I’m not going to release my own comments to the partyroom, because they were along the lines of my remarks to media on the way into the parliament, but the rampant hostile briefing of journalists while the meeting was under way does require a response,” he tweeted, attaching a statement that included this: “Unfortunately, most explanations of how the NEG might theoretically get prices down sound like merchant bankers’ gobbledigook.” There wasn’t much of a question mark over who he meant, but there was over spelling. “Gobbledygook” is preferred, but Abbott favoured an “i” at the end of the penultimate syllable. There were even some hardcore heretics out there dabbling with an “e”. For what it’s worth, the word was coined in 1944 by Texan Democrat Maury Maverick. As the Online Etymology Dictionary explains: “Maverick said he made up the word in imitation of turkey noise. Another word for it, coined about the same time, was bafflegab.”

Victory lap

One person having a nice time yesterday was Bill Shorten, who reflected to his troops on the recent suite of by-elections: “He has learned nothing from these elections except that he believes the people got it wrong.” He was of course talking about Malcolm Turnbull. In the meantime, here’s a snap of Anthony Albanese listening carefully to his leader.

Anthony Albanese in his happy place as Bill Shorten speaks at Parliament House in Canberra. Picture Kym Smith

Bowing out

As the latest batch of politicians temporarily mothballed by section 44 of the Constitution returned to parliament, there was sad symmetry as one of section 44’s earliest victims — Jim McKiernan, the Irish-born former Labor senator — made the ultimate exit after a bout of cancer. As the Irish Echo explains of his tussle with dual citizenship, it might have caused a hiccup then, but it seemed pretty smooth compared to how it plays out these days: “He said in 1999: ‘Regrettably in the late 80s I had to, on advice, relinquish my Irish citizenship. It was something I didn’t particularly enjoy … but it was something I had to do in order to hang on to my job.’ ” He was Labor’s returning officer during both Bob Hawke/Paul Keating leadership challenges.

Great barrier grief

We knew the number 4 was not popular among Chinese, but regrettably did not know why. Luckily we have The Medical Journal of Australia to illuminate us: “The numbers 4, 14 and 24 are associated with death for Cantonese-speaking Chinese people, as the words for these numbers sound like the words for ‘death’, ‘must die’ and ‘easy to die’, respectively. A previous study … investigating psychological stress engendered by fear of the number 4 found more cardiac deaths in Chinese and Japanese people, compared with white Americans, on the 4th day of the month.” We’re not sure where that leaves the triple death figure that is the $444 million the government gave the Great Barrier Reef Foundation.

Flush of genius

The other day, we dredged up that old Strewth item about Shorten going to Yass and walking past a ute labelled “Poo Carters — We’re #1 for your #2s”. This septic-themed trip down memory lane was purely for the purpose of revisiting a terrible pun, one that originally arrived in the form of our lament Shorten hadn’t stopped next to the ute, channelled the Beatles and sang, “Yass turd day, all my troubles seem so far away”. Strewth reader Stewart Stirling has chimed in: “Your item on the Poo Carters reminded me of a similarly themed company name. Some time in the 1990s we were driving up from London to Scotland. The usual horror that was the M6 motorway was relieved temporarily by us being stuck behind a truck carrying portable toilets. The name of that company: WC in Fields.”

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