Aussie Life

Aussie Language

5 March 2022 9:00 am

We are used to words being banned – but now it seems the word police are coming for the word…

Aussie Life

26 February 2022 9:00 am

A journalist friend has been writing an advice column rather like The Speccie’s ‘Dear Mary’. He was calling it ‘Ask…

Aussie Language

26 February 2022 9:00 am

A small award should be presented to the Australian’s Alice Workman for her new coinage. She has given us a…

Aussie Life

19 February 2022 9:00 am

If a week is a long time in politics, two months is a geological epoch, during which not just goalposts…

Aussie Language

19 February 2022 9:00 am

Writing in the Daily Telegraph James Morrow referred to something called a preference cascade which he said was a term…

Aussie Life

12 February 2022 9:00 am

You’ve possibly heard of a ghastly woman called Patrisse Cullors. Her chief claim to fame is that she founded that…

Aussie Language

12 February 2022 9:00 am

I have coined a potentially useful new expression: comatose bias. We are told that one of the great problems in…

Aussie Life

5 February 2022 9:00 am

The elevation of Dylan Alcott to Australian of the Year is a great win for the disability sector, but threatens…

Aussie Language

5 February 2022 9:00 am

As we approach a federal election, for the next few weeks I’ll look at  some ‘election lingo’. ballot: Why do…

Aussie Life

29 January 2022 9:00 am

Even in Australian publications of a conspicuously conservative disposition, it has been some time since any respected pundit has suggested,…

Aussie Language

29 January 2022 9:00 am

Here’s a delightful expression I have just encountered: ‘offence archaeology’. This is the practice of going through the social media…

Aussie Life

22 January 2022 9:00 am

I live by the sea and like walking along the coastline including scrambling over the rock ledges in Noosa National…

Aussie Language

22 January 2022 9:00 am

A letter writer to the Australian has pointed out that Anthony Albanese appears to have coined a brand-new oxymoron to…

Aussie Life

15 January 2022 9:00 am

I am writing this in Old South Wales, in the visitor suite of my mother’s assisted living facility. When I…

Aussie Language

15 January 2022 9:00 am

In his column in the Weekend Australian just before Christmas demographer Bernard Salt expressed his fear that the Australian language…

Kiwi life

8 January 2022 9:00 am

Of the making of many books, the Bible says, ‘there is no end’. It’s starting to feel a bit like…

Aussie Life

18 December 2021 9:00 am

One of the reasons I still buy newspapers is that what no longer seems to be true of vocabulary and…

Aussie Language

18 December 2021 9:00 am

This appears to be a case of ‘What were they thinking?’ The good folk at the Macquarie Dictionary have announced…

Aussie Life

11 December 2021 9:00 am

The slur issued by Greens Senator Lidia Thorpe in the Chamber last week towards Hollie Hughes reaffirmed one thing, that…

Aussie Language

11 December 2021 9:00 am

Nick Cater has coined what I think is a brilliant new expression the ‘laptop class’. This is his vivid and…

Aussie Life

4 December 2021 9:00 am

I have reached an age where I have started to forget where I have put things, but so far they…

Aussie Language

4 December 2021 9:00 am

In a recent piece in the Australian newspaper paper Terry McCrann (the doyen of economics writers — he of the…

Aussie Life

27 November 2021 9:00 am

Koalas & babies When Covid first hit the news nearly two years ago the Save the Children Fund ran an…

Aussie Language

27 November 2021 9:00 am

The hot political word of the moment has to be faction. In Victoria the anti-corruption body, IBAC, is currently investigating…

Aussie Life

20 November 2021 9:00 am

You know the royals are in trouble when a prominent member of Australians for Constitutional Monarchy writes an article suggesting…