By David Hardaker Monday 20 October 2014

YouTube: Pumping Up with Hans and Franz featuring Arnold Schwarzenegger (Saturday Night Live)

At its worst, the Finance Minister's characterisation of Bill Shorten as an "economic girlie man" underlines the well-traversed malaise at the heart of the Government, writes David Hardaker.

It's been a week or so of linguistic clangers in Australia, from the Prime Minister's "shirtfront" threat against Vladimir Putin to the "in-joke" references to "Mussies" and "Abos" by man-of-words Barry Spurr, the (suspended) Poetry Professor at the University of Sydney.

But against this stiff competition, perhaps the most regrettable of all came courtesy of Mathias Cormann.

Memo to Senator Cormann: next time, leave the jokes to the comedians. The term "girlie-man" might have left us laughing when it was used in a US comedy sketch last century but today it's, well, a little out of step with the times.

English may be the Belgian-born politician's second language, but Senator Cormann has previously shown a more than adequate vocabulary, especially when it comes to words like "debt, "deficit" and "disaster", often used all in one phrase.

So why did the Senator choose to use the insult "girlie" to slap Labor leader Bill Shorten around the head for opposing the Government's budget?

His first excuse - that the term "girlie-man" has acquired a new meaning and no longer links being weak and/or stupid with being female - doesn't hold up. I'm afraid the idea that somehow "girlie" doesn't refer to the idea of a girl is a subtle linguistic shift that a lot of people won't get.

Don’t Be Economic Girlie Men!

His second excuse - that he was humorously playing on his German accent by adopting the insult first popularised by Saturday Night Live's Austrian bodybuilder characters Hans and Franz and later adopted by Arnold Schwarzenegger - is too late and too inadequate.

Schwarzenegger's "girly man" attacks on his political opponents went down badly with many then, so it's hard to see why anyone would think they would improve with age. And the all-testosterone Terminator turned Governator at least had the defence of self-deprecation: call it a playful boorishness. Stripped of this context, Senator Cormann's comments are simply boorish. And it shows that the humourless should never attempt to break out of their box.

Labor's Penny Wong has already pointed out the obvious hurt conveyed by the comment: "What are we telling our sons and our daughters about being a girl? You're saying it is somehow less competent, weak," she told Sky News yesterday.

Meanwhile, Education Minister Christopher Pyne, who can always be relied on to address the politics above all, said simply, "I don't think it is the most important issue floating past us today."

So it appears this is a debate that will end as they always do. Critics of Senator Cormann will be told it is "political correctness gone mad". Move on.

Yet this time, maybe we shouldn't.

While at best it was a simply ham-fisted attempt at humour, at its worst, the Finance Minister's comment (and the lack of a slap down from the Prime Minister) underlines again the well-traversed malaise at the heart of the present Government.

Photo: Memo to Senator Cormann: next time, leave the jokes to the comedians. (AAP: Alan Porritt, file photo)

Despite years of research, sometimes by leading corporate entities, the nation's leadership does not believe that women as a species should wield real power in public life. Apologists, of course, will always point to the influential role of the PM's chief-of-staff, Peta Credlin, but when it comes to the Cabinet, actions speak the loudest: there is, famously, only one woman at the table.

Smart businesses in Australia recognise an obvious truth: that if you cut out half the gene pool in your hiring and promotion policies, then your business suffers. This is the commonest of common sense. And you don't need to be a feminist to realise it: upright and breathing will do.

So why do people who use the rhetoric of the free market then not apply that when it comes to talent? Rather, they practice a form of protectionism based on sex (amongst other things). The proof is that you use "girl" to denigrate someone - and then say you didn't really mean it that way.

So forget the girlie-men. What about the "boyie-men" who have their hands on the levers of government power? Is there not a reasonable expectation that the boy-men who purport to lead us might grow up a bit? Might they not by now recognise the simple truth that ability is not handed out according to your sex (or race or income level, for that matter)?

And this brings us to the final point about Mathias Cormann. If none of the above applies to him, as he has asserted, and he really is a straight-down-the-line, equal-opportunity-for-all kind of guy, then why would he use words like "girlie-man" that are so capable of causing offence and thus risk alienating half the voting population?

Only a fool of a politician would do that.

David Hardaker is a television producer and a Walkley award winning journalist. He is a former ABC Middle East correspondent and has lived and worked in Egypt. View his full profile here.

Senator Cormann and the party of boy-men - The Drum (Australian Broadcasting Corporation)