Strewth: A Shire thing for Morrison and mining line

Scott Morrison has called on the lingo of his adopted homeland of Sutherland Shire.

If you need an education on Shire expressions, we suggest you visit Westfield Miranda ... or Miranda Fair as the locals prefer. Picture: File

A Shire thing

Before things got wild with fists and blood and One Nation a few nights back, things in Parliament House were merely perplexing. Particularly when Scott Morrison, as he addressed the Minerals Council dinner in the Great Hall, called on the lingo of his adopted homeland of Sutherland Shire. Quoth the Prime Minister: “There’s a Shire expression. For those of you who don’t know what I’m talking about, it’s that wonderful southern part of Sydney. We have our own language and if we like something, this is what we say; ‘How good is mining?’ That’s what we say.” Strewth’s first response was, “Huh?” We grew up in the Shire and our father was a coalmining engineer. Dad was certainly enthusiastic about his profession and given to citing examples of the unparalleled qualities of Team Coal, but “How good is mining?” never passed his lips. Nor anyone else’s within our earshot during our decades south of Tom Uglys Bridge.

Those boys from the Shire sure are close. Picture: AAP

Mine struggle

We may have been sheltered, so we cast our net a little wider among the Shire diaspora. Writer Elle Hardy, who understands the economy of language, was to the point: “Never heard of it!” BBC China correspondent Stephen McDonell also scratched his head: “I recall ‘Nasho for a pasho’ (entering the Royal National Park with one’s girlfriend) or a ‘tugun’ (administering a bite on the buttocks of a fellow football team member) but, no, I can’t say I’ve ever heard the expression to which the PM has referred.” With the trail growing disconcertingly cooler, we turned to 60 Minutes producer Bryce Corbett: “Yeah, nah. I think it was the Cronulla riots that gave rise to the quintessential Shire idiom ‘you flew here, we grew here’. Unlike our esteemed PM — who was born and raised in Bronte — I had the unique pleasure of growing up in the Shire, where people were heard to utter ‘How good is mining?’ about as often as they were heard to exclaim ‘How good is income tax?’ or ‘How edifying is it to see a politician trying to be something he’s not?’ ” Gloomy but not yet defeated, we turned to The Daily Telegraph cartoonist Warren Brown. Surely he could help? Alas … “This doesn’t ring any bells for me,” he told Strewth. “Mining? The only mining I knew of in the Shire was sandmining at Kurnell, which brings to mind the old ‘Far Kurnell’ thing. Maybe it’s the way we spoke, as in ‘Good mining’, to which the response is ‘Snot mining — s’arftannune, ya dope’. Or something like that. Scott Morrison from the Shire? He’s a blow-in from across the Captain Cook bridge — from the B side.” So perhaps that’s what it is — a slightly misremembered saying actually from ScoMo’s native corner of Sydney’s eastern beachside suburbs. Should a local lexicon ever be produced — a Bronte-saurus, if you will — it can be recorded there, Shire-free.

Put a ring on it

Bill Shorten’s been doing some work on the border security front: “Under a Labor government we’ll have a ring of steel around this country.” Imagine for a moment that’s not a metaphor. Australia’s coastline is 25,760km, and the cheapest steel beam (at Scott Metal) is $41 per metre. That means the steel ring — which won’t do much, given our bargain beam is a slender thing — will hit the nation’s coffers to the tune of $1,056,160,000. Which makes even Paladin’s Manus Island security contract look like a steal.

Canberra bubble

Apology of the year (so far) from deputy Nationals leader Bridget McKenzie, after getting snapped next to the National Obesity Summit sign, cheeks and belly puffed out: “The issue of obesity is a matter I take very seriously and would never triavisie (sic) it or to add in any way to stigmatisation. I sincerely apologise for this very unfortunate photo taken as I demonstrated how my stomach felt after scrambled eggs reacted with yoghurt I had just eaten.”

Cameron rabble

As Labor prepares for a bleak future in which Doug Cameron and his festival of truculently rolled Rs have retired from the Senate, Anthony Albanese has had a practice run at filling the void. “This government is dysfunctional, is divided and is incompetent and they are incapable of governing the nation,” he declared. But the ultimate test was: “This is a government that are just a rabble.” That R needs work, Albo.

Year of the lion

As we ponder the publication later this year of Malcolm Turnbull’s memoir (“I love stories, and love telling them”), we hope he could partially outsource the ending, as CS Lewis did in 1952 when he wrote to a group of kids about Narnia: “What do you think would be a good thing to end the whole series with? Of course Aslan will come into them all.”

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