No way, mate!
Officials at Australia's Parliament House yesterday overturned a day-old ban on guards and attendants using the word "mate" to address lawmakers and visitors after the new rule sparked outrage among prime ministers past and present.
`Rampant pomposity'
The U-turn came after Australian Prime Minister John Howard said it was "absurd" to require security guards at the country's Parliament House to stop addressing visitors and lawmakers as "mate."
One of Howard's predecessors called the ban "rampant pomposity."
On Thursday, guards and attendants at the building in Canberra were told to stop using the common Australian expression of endearment following a complaint from a senior civil servant, media reports said.
Impractical, absurd
"These things are all a matter of context, and that's why it's impractical and absurd to try and ban something," Howard, who in the past has used the term to describe US President George W. Bush, told the Australian Broadcasting Corp radio.
"There are circumstances where a more formal address is appropriate," he said.
"But in the same conversation you might start off calling somebody you've just met `sir' or `madam,' but as you become more familiar with your conversation and your exchange, you might end up saying `mate,'" he added.
Hilary Penfold, who is the secretary for the Department of Parliamentary Services, said that the ban was intended to ensure that staff do not offend visitors.
Term of endearment
But Howard said that it was not necessary, adding that even he often uses the term of endearment with people he barely knows.
"People will ring me up and I might start off saying `yes sir' as a matter of courtesy, which I normally do, and then we lapse into it, we might say `mate,'" Howard said.
Former Labor Party prime minister Bob Hawke was enraged by the ban.
"It's pomposity gone mad," Hawke told ABC radio.
Hawke, who is a former union leader famous for his down to earth approach and for holding a beer drinking record while studying at Oxford University, said that in the past the term had been useful to him at official functions.
Reasonable respect
"It gets you out of all sorts of embarrassing situations," he said.
"It's got a nice neutrality about it. I mean, it doesn't imply any intimacy, it shows a reasonable level of respect." I think it's one of our great words," Hawke added.
By yesterday afternoon, staff had been issued fresh written instructions.
In the future, they were cautioned to "be aware when a degree of informality may be acceptable and when a more formal approach is required and not use colloquialisms where these might not be understood or appreciated."
Airlines in Australia, Hong Kong, India, Malaysia and Singapore yesterday canceled flights to and from the Indonesian island of Bali, after a nearby volcano catapulted an ash tower into the sky. Australia’s Jetstar, Qantas and Virgin Australia all grounded flights after Mount Lewotobi Laki-Laki on Flores island spewed a 9km tower a day earlier. Malaysia Airlines, AirAsia, India’s IndiGo and Singapore’s Scoot also listed flights as canceled. “Volcanic ash poses a significant threat to safe operations of the aircraft in the vicinity of volcanic clouds,” AirAsia said as it announced several cancelations. Multiple eruptions from the 1,703m twin-peaked volcano in
A plane bringing Israeli soccer supporters home from Amsterdam landed at Israel’s Ben Gurion airport on Friday after a night of violence that Israeli and Dutch officials condemned as “anti-Semitic.” Dutch police said 62 arrests were made in connection with the violence, which erupted after a UEFA Europa League soccer tie between Amsterdam club Ajax and Maccabi Tel Aviv. Israeli flag carrier El Al said it was sending six planes to the Netherlands to bring the fans home, after the first flight carrying evacuees landed on Friday afternoon, the Israeli Airports Authority said. Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu also ordered
Former US House of Representatives speaker Nancy Pelosi said if US President Joe Biden had ended his re-election bid sooner, the Democratic Party could have held a competitive nominating process to choose his replacement. “Had the president gotten out sooner, there may have been other candidates in the race,” Pelosi said in an interview on Thursday published by the New York Times the next day. “The anticipation was that, if the president were to step aside, that there would be an open primary,” she said. Pelosi said she thought the Democratic candidate, US Vice President Kamala Harris, “would have done
Farmer Liu Bingyong used to make a tidy profit selling milk but is now leaking cash — hit by a dairy sector crisis that embodies several of China’s economic woes. Milk is not a traditional mainstay of Chinese diets, but the Chinese government has long pushed people to drink more, citing its health benefits. The country has expanded its dairy production capacity and imported vast numbers of cattle in recent years as Beijing pursues food self-sufficiency. However, chronically low consumption has left the market sloshing with unwanted milk — driving down prices and pushing farmers to the brink — while
RSS