What’s gone wrong with the great Aussie sausage sizzle?

Joe Hildebrand looks at a literal hotbed of controversy on The Blame Game. Not the federal election, but the sausage sizzle.

This Saturday, at thousands of public places around the country, a contest will take place that will go to the very heart of who we are as a nation. It will be bitter, it will be divisive, and it will almost certainly get ugly.

I speak, of course, of the sausage sizzle, once our most unifying national institution but now a literal hotbed of controversy and confusion.

The sausage sizzle used to be simple: You got some sausages, you sizzled them, and you stuck them on a bit of white bread.The only possible augmentation of this process was the addition of some tomato sauce, which would be dispensed from a six-litreplastic vat with a pump-action nozzle on the top.

(For cultural reasons whose origins are unclear, this latter action would take place on a portable card table singularly unsuited to the rigours of sauce-pumping but that is a matter too complex to delve into here.)

The sausage sizzle became more complicated with the introduction of a bread roll and mustard. Picture: Jenifer Jagielski

Then, somewhere in the ancient mists of time, something changed. Perhaps a naïve first-time volunteer just happened to throw some onions on the hotplate. Maybe a soccer dad called Dave – probably from the inner city – once asked if there was any mustard.

Soon sausage sizzles were offering the option of brown bread and then, suddenly, there was no bread at all. Instead, there were only rolls, which made the process of ordering at least 150 per cent less efficient, as proven below:

“I’ll have a sausage roll, thanks.”

“Sorry, we don’t have any sausage rolls.”

“Sorry, not a ‘sausage roll’, just a roll with a sausage in it.”

“Oh, so you want a sausage sandwich?”

“Ah, yes. Just a sausage in bread would be great.”

“I’m sorry, we don’t have any bread. Only rolls.”

And it didn’t end there. Soon there were bacon and egg rolls, and sometimes even the bacon and egg roll had the option of onion, which is at least a handy way of identifying a Satanist.

Little wonder our young people are confused. Even I nearly choked on my almond macchiato.

Watch Joe choke on The Blame Game — Fridays 8.30pm on Sky News or stream anytime on Flash

Originally published as What’s gone wrong with the great Aussie sausage sizzle?