Fair Shake of the Sauce Bottle, Mate

Antiquated Australian slang, recently deployed by the country’s prime minister.

Australian Prime Minister Kevin Rudd’s repeated use of the phrase “fair shake of the sauce bottle, mate” has been interpreted by some as a (misguided) attempt to rebut accusations of being “out of touch” with voters, Agence France-Presse reported:

The bookish and bespectacled prime minister used the phrase three times in a short interview with Sky News on Tuesday, each time accompanied by a self-conscious grin.

“We’ve appointed the first woman as governor-general of the Commonwealth of Australia – fair shake of the sauce bottle, mate,” Rudd smirked, when grilled about whether his government had done enough to promote women.

Opposition front-bencher Tony Abbott said Rudd was “desperate” to shake off his nerdy image and connect with the Australian people — but was using language that was at least 30 years out of date.

Reporting for The Advertiser, Mark Kenny, observed: “The deliberate use ofbush slang had political watchers suggesting the poll-conscious PM may have been responding to focus group research calling for a more a common touch in his communication style.”

Agence France-Presse noted that this incident was not the Prime Minister’s first foray in to colloquialism. In March 2009, Rudd used an expletive todenote the kind of “political storm” the government was facing over its response to the financial crisis. And, in June 2008, he euphemisticallydescribed vomiting as “driving the porcelain bus.”

More recently, Rudd angered Australian disability groups when he said: “you’d have to be a Blind Freddy not to conclude that there have been historical problems,” when discussing division within Australia’s construction union. Graeme Innes, the National Disability Discrimination Commissioner, who is blind, stated:

“I think it is a term that is an unfortunate one to use because it demeans blind people’s capacity to think, not just their capacity to see. I find it quite an insulting term and I find it personally insulting.”