How much does accent matter to Aussie voters?
I’m not talking about ‘foreign sounding’ accents, but rather the handful of class denoters that exist in Strine.
If you listen to the PMs of the last few decades, Whitlam, Fraser and Rudd all sound like they have a plum in their mouths. Whereas Hawke, Keating and Howard’s speech sounds like something you’d hear at a typical suburban BBQ.
So clearly, in isolation, accent is not enough to deter or sway voters in large numbers. You can sound like an effete urbanite, or a suburban scrapper, and it’s unlikely that anyone but a snob (or reverse snob) would care.
In fact, you can even be a “class traitor” and get away with it. After all, Whitlam spent many years representing the urban fringes, all the while sounding like a Double Bay resident. And after Rudd’s hardscrabble upbringing, he usually manages to sound like he’s accepting another cucumber sandwich from Lady Haversham.
But let’s add another dimension to our observations: that of authenticity.
For example, accent was hardly the downfall of the ultimate political bogan, Mark Latham. Although he lost for a myriad of reasons, I doubt that anybody begrudged Latham his westie accent — we knew it was part and parcel of his persona.
You can have any (Strine) accent at all, but if it’s a put-on, then it’s a turn-off. It can be excruciating to watch when Rudd tries on his laid back, knockabout bloke, how-ya-goin’ persona. Despite all his attempts at folksy “out the back door” remarks, and the knowledge that his upbringing truly was tough, we suspect Rudd would be far more comfortable giving a toast at a state banquet for the Chinese foreign minister than he is swapping hard-luck stories with pensioners in a doctor’s waiting room.
And herein lies a lesson for that other struggling Opposition Leader, Turnbull. Leading the Coalition, Turnbull is yet to come close to the kind of poll ratings that Latham achieved throughout most of his time as Labor leader.
I believe a big contributing factor to Turnbull’s problems connecting with voters is that his TV persona seems like a bit of a try on. If you listen only to the words (read an interview transcript if you’re particularly sad, like me) then much of what Turnbull has to say is quite sensible. But if you listen only to the tone, it’s often whiny and a bit petulant, like he’s got a chip on both shoulders. Unfortunately, the hard done by, mom-and-dad shop owner tone is a bit hard to take from a guy who likes to paddle around Rose Bay in a sea kayak in his leisure time.
Despite what we like to believe, we’re often swayed more by tone than words. And Turnbull’s tone rarely matches with what we presume (sic) to be his authentic persona. Despite the fact that Turnbull grew up at a relative (though not absolute) disadvantage to his nearest neighbours, we know that his upbringing was into the old school tie network of the urban elite. So when he affects to sound like a p.o’d subcontractor, the cognitive dissonance costs him believability.
It’s a shame really, as there’s nothing in the Turnbull package that ought, in itself, to be a voter turn-off. The self-made squillionaire after the rented flat, single parent years; the conspicuous success along with a stable family life, and the progressive/liberal values (we know they’re still buried in there somewhere, Malcolm!). Heck even Turnbull’s arrogance only rates 7.5 on the Keating scale. But if he ever hopes to present a credible alternative, Turnbull needs to start by presenting an authentic face to the voters — accent be darned.
Yair mate, I reckon I’d drop by to tell yez orl that Oi’ve just got me nine unnerd bucks from Mister Rudd, so Oi’m gunna spend it on goin’ back down to Melbin inna cuppla month’s toime to see me mum. Oi always useta ‘ave argaments with ‘er becuz she always voted for the farkin’ Liberals, but then bloody Marn Ferson blew in from Sydney to be ‘er local member and I gave up arguin’ becuz I couldn’t see how I could avoid endin’ up agreein’ with ‘er.
Malcolm’s problem isn’t his accent. It’s that he’s moved so far to the Right of the Liberal Party under the tutelage of Nick Minchin, that Australians think he’s a bullshit artist. We don’t really mind if politicians lie – that’s what politicians do all the time – but we can’t stand it when they bullshit, whatever their accent.
You’ll notice that Alexander Downer was never Prime Minister. Hwhy hwasn’t he?
I think you’re generally right, Merc, but I’ve seen quite a few ALP supporters (on blogs like this one) get into La Gillardine for her common accent. As an educated bogan in good standing it pisses me off mightily. I’d be interested to hear what teh feminists (LP Sub Branch) have to say on that seeming inequity.
Gillard has copped a lot of flack for her accent from all sides. I think women politicians do get monitored more closely and women do that as well, sadly. Latham’s accent used to put me off as I felt he just whacked it on a bit thick. All part of his working class suburban boy schtick which I found very wearing after a while. I always felt there was a lot of misogyny bound up in his performance. He was so determinedly blokey, to the exclusion of everyone else. Rudd’s voice always reminds a bit of a newsreaders or radio announcers. It has that polished, worked on feel to it. Obviously that hasn’t done him any harm. I wonder if he’s hd any elocution lessons?
I’ve seen quite a few ALP supporters (on blogs like this one) get into La Gillardine for her common accent. As an educated bogan in good standing it pisses me off mightily. I’d be interested to hear what teh feminists (LP Sub Branch) have to say on that seeming inequity.
I think, like Paul Keating – whose accent also makes me cringe – she started out with a quite unpretentious semi-Broad Australian twang but is now bunging it on a bit, and therefore is starting to get on my nerves as PK did. also, what Mercurius said about the whiny petulant Turnbull tone.
Please take the above with a grain of salt because accent is so subjective. I’m just happy to hear less of the miserable Howard drone on my car radio these days.
What Helen said, only more so as I first met Julia Gillard when we were both about 20 and she spoke with the unpretentious semi-Broad Australian twang of a university student from a non-privileged but not too badly off background.
Another protagonist from the same period was Candy Broad (then known as Candy Strahan) whose cultivated tones of her student days in the 1980s gave way to an affectedly flat proley intonation when she became a State government minister.
The whole question of authenticity in terms of one’s physical presence and persona in the world is bound up in this. Isn’t life an ongoing process of self-fashioning? What are the analogies here, and how arbitrary are they? If someone is being trashed on all sides for, say, being a porker, do we call them ‘inauthentic’ for losing a few kilos? No we do not; we applaud them. Ditto if someone’s sartorial sense improves. But if they have plastic surgery that can actually be discerned, we trash them, which is the height of absurdity when you think about it.
People spend a huge amount of time scrabbling around looking for logical justifications for their prejudices in the self-improvement department, but it tends to fall apart when, as Mercurius rightly does here, we invoke the concept of authenticity and ask what it actually is, and voice and accent are probably the most mercurial (sorry, but that really is what I mean) and unstable markers of personal ‘authenticity’.
Gillard is a good case in point. She was born in Wales and brought up by her (presumably) Welsh-accented parents in Adelaide, which has its own very distinctive accent markers. There might even be an overlay of trying to sound more workin’-cluss in keeping with her politics. My suspicion is that her accent, like SA Premier Mike Rann’s, is the product of a not entirely successful ‘correction’ process — I’d like very much to know what she sounded like as a child. I only found out recently, for instance, that my dad’s nickname was ‘Scotty’ till he was five because he had his mother’s Scottish accent, which she sent him to an elocution teacher to ‘correct’, and he’s spent the rest of his life overcorrecting the correction and sounding broadly ocker, except when making the occasional public speech, when he shocks the socks off everyone who’s never seen him do it before.
Sorry, Paul at #7 and Helen at #6, comments crossed.
Another interesting ecample is Peter Costello, who I recall speaking at 1979 AUS Annual Council and Special Council a good octave higher and somewhat quicker than during his parliamentary career, and in the excitedly earnest manner of an evangelical Protestant preacher (which he was some of the time at that time). There is a Doctoral thesis to be written about the effects of conversion to Anglicanism and the Liberal Party on one’s vocal delivery.
Chapter 1: David Flint.
I think Gillard has a particular type of Victorian ALP intonation, she shares it with Brumby and Rob Hulls. It’s a very flat way of speaking (painfully affected in its very unaffectedness), doesn’t sound anything like Hawkie or Keating–Mar’n Ferguson sounds a bit the same, but that’s pure coincidence IMHO, as he’s originally NSW Labor Left yeomanry.
Not only is it different from Hawke’s accent, but it’s different from how the likes of John Cain or Clyde Holding or Simon Crean’s recently departed father speak. Where did it come from? Why do elite private school graduates and the daughters of Wesh migrants have it? I think it’s a seventies uni ALP club style of delivery. My proof? Well, a certain Monash graduate who went over to the tories has a touch of it in his voice…
‘Wesh’ being how I affectionately label the Welsh.
I was once given a bit of stick by a client in London for unconsciously picking up a bit of cockney.
.
Of course, he was an actaul ex-working class East Ender who spoke like a Law Lord because he had a job at the BBC.
Oh, interesting.
I haven’t noticed its Victoria-specificity but one thing that does seem to me to be an ingrained ALP affectation — Beazley in particular used to do it all the time, Keating only slightly less so, and Gillard does it very noticeably — is to lengthen the vowels in the definite and indefinite articles when making a speech (but who knows why), so that the words pronounced uh and thuh round the barbie (‘Pour me uh glass of thuh red’) become ay and thee in front of the mic: ‘We made ay promise that thee Kevinbucks would arrive before winter sets in.’
Liam will be able to confirm or deny whether this is an ALP thing.
Yes, they do seems to do that PC. Is it a way of adding emphasis, of being assertive?
Public speaking is a funny thing, it’s one of the most self-conscious forms of communication there is. I tend to lapse into an accent or exaggerated caricature when I get up in front of other people because they strike me as being modes that an audience will relate to and understand.
(I’m not a public speaker, mind, but I participate a bit in Melbourne’s performance poetry scene.)
I suspect ‘serious’ types of public address – oratory, addressing crowds, opening and closing functions, presenting policy to the public, attempting to sell it to them – also comes with particular modes that suit particular political characters. What will it be? The strong patrician (Whitlam, Turnbull), the tough Aussie (Latham), the down-to-earth and colloquial (Howard), or the Guy Who Must Be Really Smart Because We Can’t Understand What The Hell He Says (Rudd).
It’s not just the accent its the attitude. Turnbull, for example, comes across as the sort of up himself arsehole you really hate when you hear him speak up at some meeting or other. Almost indefinable nuance. Rudd on the other hand has the ability to sound sincere; must have taken him years to learn that trick.
Huggy
It’s definitely a State-by-State thing. As Nickws—dude who are you? I’m sure we know each other—says, the sons of Jack Ferguson have a different NSW accent. There are quite a few other NSW politicians who have a high-throated nasal intonation: Anthony Albanese, Reba Meagher, Paul Lynch, Carmel Tebbutt, Jennie George. (Put a DJ behind any three of them and give ‘em microphones, and you’d have a decent Beastie Boys cover band. Fight For Your Right, etc.). Billy Hughes had a nasal tone too. Jack Lang was supposed to have had a very unpleasant speaking voice.
There’s the more traditional politician-voice that’s the deep, slow-talking, deliberately authoritiative with a broader accent, of a Bob Carr or a John Faulkner, that’s not exclusively ALP at all. Bob Brown does it for the Greens, I think Andrew Peacock would be the Liberals’ best example. Tanya Plibersek’s a good female example, as was Amanda Vanstone; I don’t think Gillard’s trying to emulate that, her style would be quite different and slower if she were.
I haven’t heard that article-lengthening so much in NSW, PC; I hate it, though.
And then of course it’s important what politicians wish to do, and how they wish to influence their listeners: do they present themselves as a communicator of someone else’s message? As a chiding parent laying down the law? As someone out to argue and convince others? As a confident dispenser of wisdom or knowledge? As a voice of the people?
There are problems with each of these modes, though again, it partly depends on how well the mode suits the character of the speaker. For me one of the more annoying things a politician can do is speak as a ‘voice of the people’. “We agree…”, “we are”, “we resolve”, “we will” is a dangerous political phrase when applied to Australia in general.
My accent doesn’t match my writing.
I’ve heard and seen Lang speak on archival film. Its a sort of rough gravelly voice from my recollection. But, boy, could he hold a crowd.
For the past thirty odd years most of the right of the NSW ALP have had a weird kind of inflection in their voices. I couldn’t reproduce it on the page if I tried because its all in the inflection. Maybe somebody else could try?
Good points all round. Yes I left out any reference to Gillard, as I knew there’d be others here who could make the valid point about how much extra opprobrium her accent attracts.
And I plead guilty to adopting accents when I travel. Mostly because I get tired of repeating myself if I speak Strine. I got talking to a waiter in a Manhattan restaurant last Thanksgiving, and after about 15 minutes he told me I sound as though I’d lived in Australia for a while. He was correct, I suppose.
It’s not limited to Victoria, Nickws and Liam. Meredith Burgmann, top gel at Abbotsleigh, adopted the same tone when she deigned to descend to the ALP. I think John Brumby, Anna Bligh and Barry O’Farrell have a similar accent, classless and placeless.
I doubt whether Malcolm Fraser could be elected today. By contrast, the broadest and roughest accent in the Parliament today is not Gillard’s but Wilson Tuckey’s – Aussie as, but never the tone of a Prime Minister.
Julie Bishop’s cut-glass intonations are a tight lid on a persona that dare not show itself. The flat drawls of Lindsay Tanner and Anthony Albanese seem to be part of their tether to the ground. I agree with those posters who identify that the voice, not the accent, defines people.
I’m not sure you’re right about Burgmann, Andrew E. To me she’s always had the voice of a career academic (which is her background), rather than that of a politician aiming for working-class cred.
I’m sure the Victorian Labor accent I hear in Kneejerk Jack Brumby & co is entirely a nineteen seventies thing, hence my mention of Frank Crean not having it (but Simon has it bad). However, most of the Cain ministers who came of age politically before the Whitlam intervention just didn’t sound like that—with the exception of Joan Kirner and one or two others.
I heard the melliferous tones of Bob Debus on the wireless this morning and instantly thought, ‘This man could never win pre-selection in the Victorian Left’.
But the Victorian plebeian sound is cross-factional, shared by forty- and fifty-somethings from both wings & their myriad of factions. Perhaps it was developed by the proto-Right kids back in the day as a way of sweet-talking the old trade union crowd who were rolled by Gough and Mick Young? (Then why doesn’t Gareth-Gareth or Robert Ray speak like Julia?)
(Anyway, I also heard Bill Shorten on the radio, and he was closer in style to Debus than either the premier or deputy PM. I think this vocal intonation ends with their generation of pols.)
Tim T @ 20,
A lot of historians use ‘we’ in their writing, but in that instance its to stop themselves looking like egomaniacs and also a gentle reference to the community of scholars.
With pollies I guess its just because they are trying not to look like egomaniacs as well,but undoubtedly there’d be many more egomaniac politicians than there would be historians. They are probably also referring implicitly to their particular political party.
I think it’s about being genuine as much as being authentic that cuts it with me. I can act being authentic (wearing the Acubra in the Bush) but body language et al tends to give it away (e.g. looking uncomfortable slapping someone on the back and being all “matey”).
In other words, we’re pretty good at identifying someone who’s “fair dinkum” (or not) and that’s Turnbull’s problem. He clearly running policy arguments that he’s not comfortable with – and it shows in his body language, tone of voice, etc. The same could be said of Rudd’s “they should burn in hell” statement from the other day. Latham overplayed his ocker persona and people turned off. Whereas the likes of Hawke, Whitlam and (dare I say it), even Keating and Howard played a fairly straight bat – their public face reflected who they really were.
Oh, and as for Julia, I just think she sounds nasally – like she’s blocking her nose off when she’s talking or that she’s got a constant cold.
“… running policy arguments that he’s not comfortable with …” – I get the same feeling about Penny Wong, but perhaps it’s wishful thinking.
Does anyone have a comment about her way of speaking? (I have a tin ear about accents.)
I am reminded of that nice Mr Menzies. He spoke well. I suppose that accent is politic at the most immediate, discernable level. There are two options: blend or stand out. Both can work. We lower class, working class types have less linguistic facility, and so our vain attempts at linguistic accommodation leave us stranded like shags on rocks, and who knows we might start a new modality worthy of imitation.
On the subject of authenticity, today I noticed that the Griffith University Co-op Bookshop has Barack Obama’s Dreams Of My Father on special – on the Fiction shelves!
Penny Wong is beginning to use phrases reminiscent of Phillip Ruddock, if her appearance on ABC 2 this morning is any indication ‘ I am of the view” – or something similar – a gold-plated Ruddockism. When she first came to office I was delighted with her as one of a bunch of many capable Labor women Ministers. But after 18 months she’s truly starting to grate – not something I would yet say about Gillard and the rest of the sisterhood. But maybe its the portfolio.
I’m sure she’s worked out that if she speaks really slowly and flatly and uses lots of words, we’ll all stop listening to the crap she’s actually saying. I agree Paul Burns. She’s an utter pain.
Phillip Adams (not that I listen to Phillip Adams) last night described Penny as ‘ceramic’, which is quite good. One of the weirdest accents is Eric Abetz (trying to channel Billy McMahon?) but as it appears to be authentic (though his brother, a WA MP, doesn’t speak like that) it merely makes him ridiculous, rather than a faker.
I think GoTroppo at 28 is closest to the mark about Turnbull. He is always “in court” and whether he’s arguing for the defensible or the indefensible he never sounds sincere. One almost expects him to finish interviews with “I rest my case, m”lud!” Making a good case for whatsoever point of view, no matter how effective in a courtroom situation, just doesn’t work in media interviews. Rudd has learned how to say the right thing at the right time in the right way. He’s a trained diplomat, for god’s sake. I imagine that when he’s not hungry, tired and dealing with an inefficient hostie, he thinks more than twice before he opens his mouth. I think his odd foray into Aussie-speak is seen as quaint rather than insincere. For plain speaking, sincerity and good communication you can’t go past Lindsay Tanner. Or am I just biassed? I can’t even place his accent. And yes, it was refreshing to listen to Bob Debus last night whose courteous straightforwardness made Tony Jones look like a cheap ambulance chasing journo. Accent doesn’t really make a difference in Australia, does it? Or how could Julia possibly have got where she is? I must admit I find Leigh Sales infuriating and so I do hold her accent against her, and that is my bias!
My Federal Member is Martin Ferguson, and the funny thing about his public speaking is – it isn’t. It’s more public mumbling. With an Australian accent.
My heart goes out to you, TimT (although my member is Chris bloody Pyne, whose voice reminds me of fingernails on a blackboard).
Paul @ 32 – when I listen to Penny Wong speak I always think she and Rudd (not Ruddock) must have learnt their speaking mannerisms in the same place.
And only four of them can actually say ‘Australia’.Listen to them,it’s always (Hanson) ‘Straylar.
More to the point: Rudd, Howard and Keating are all state school kids from not too well off backgrounds. Beazley, Crean, Downer et al coming from 2nd or 3rd gen political families, don’t quite cut it. I’m not praising this egalitarian rule, for one Whitlam is worth several Rudds in terms of social democratic reform.
But it is curious that the middle class mass that decides elections seems either less reliant on class cues than in the past, or that party politics is now so tough nut that a kind of self made state schools scrapper has a decided advantage.
Agree with Troppo that Julia Gillard just sounds nasal, and that’s the only irritating thing about her voice. (Interestingly, there’s an ABC Classic FM presenter named Julia with almost the same problem.)
Read something a while back about Gillard’s voice being “surprisingly soft” in person. Not surprising at all to me; she doesn’t project, and probably pushes her voice into her nose. She needs lessons in projection, either singing or elocution — the nasality will disappear and she’ll be audible across a footy field!
I prefer my pollies ocker like Hawkie – remember when he used to do circle work in his ute on the grass on top of Parliament House?
But it doesn’t matter – so long as you’re a friend of the working class…..though I draw the line at Christopher Pyne’s private school falsetto.
A mate of mine who used to work in the Everley workshops reckoned Hawke’s ocka accent was faked. away from the workers and the hoi-polloi he was apparently very well spoken. He said Hawke had led his guard drop once in front of him at a union meeting when he was ACTU President. Presume the story’s true.
Rudd boarded at Marist Brothers college as well as going to public schools – you may not hear that from him though!
Not sure how much there is in the idea of a public school scrapper, but some of the private school initiation rituals in Rudd’s school years may have been pretty fearsome and contributed pretty effectively to a scrapper mentality.
As a public speaker Rudd is one of the worst – toneless voice, all technique in his speeches, no meaning – and his technique is usually an elaborate form of a filibuster, or obscurantism.
Wonder what he sounds like to the Chinese?
Listening to private school kids on the train, I’m struck by their accents. I wonder where on earth they got them. Around the 1970s there seems to have been a compression of accents, with “regular” becoming more popular, “broad” shrinking, and a lot of upper-middle-class people trying to make their accent broader and more proletarian.
But with the growth of private education – which happily seems to have stalled and may go into reverse thanks to the GFC – it seems that posh has made a comeback. It’s another sad sign of the dramatic increase in inequality.
It’s another reason not to send your kids to private school – you have to spend the rest of your life listening to your kids talking like Christopher Pyne!
Agree with Troppo that Julia Gillard just sounds nasal, and that’s the only irritating thing about her voice.
No, she also has that highly irritating way of pronouncing the “i”s: “Plooease”, “Polooce station”. No, I’m not singling out Julia in this; again, Paul Keating, I’m looking at you (as well as a few people in my workplace!)
Hele, Paul, Fine
Back in the late 70s someone who’d talked to Bob Hawke in a relaxed, private setting, told me that his public persona [head of the ACTU] definitely involved buging on the Strine accent, cranking up the ocker accent several notches. What a bonzer liddle performer that bloke was!
On the other side, doesn’t Viscount Turnbull retain traces of a very upper class aspiration in his accent? Or am I imagining this?
*bunging on*
Ambi,
He truly was. Nobody else could’ve got away with turning the ALP into Another Liberal Party.
I don’t think Hawkie’s strine was about accent as much as it was attitude. He always had a formal speech-giving voice that wasn’t far from his (public) off-the-cuff one, it’s just the tempo and usage changed between the two. I don’t think his accent varied much, nor was it very faux cloth cappish.
Russell Crowe with a thinner growl, perhaps?
Paul: I think I might have taken you to task once before about attributing such a huge shift in politics to one man. C’mon, guy, you’re meant to be the historian here!
In that comment, I wasn’t.
You should just blame Thomas Carlyle and the great man in history syndrome. Hawke certainly is familiar with that genre, if his memoirs are anything to go by.
True, but, after several attempts I have to say I find Carlyle unreadable. And I usually have no trouble reading the classic historians.
Our electrocution, fashion, and hair people have been attending young Julia Gillard for nearly two years now. We are delighted with her progress and natural talent for keeping up appearances. She reminds one of a young Margaret Thatcher. Ah, those were the days.
Our electrocution people are dying to get their hands on poor old Quentin Broice’s nawt so noice vowels, while our Hair and Make-Up people think it is time to kidnap Juanita Phillips from whoever is trying to make her like a geisha over at the ABC!
Young Julia has that slightly off way with the vowels ‘a’ and ‘i’; partly because she is/was a Naff Taff, but mostly it is an Idelaide afflection, of the Non-U classes. Listen to Julie Bishop closely also.
“electrocution”?
Our elements of style people have given up on Greenslime and turned to much more rewarding work such as training monkeys to type Hamlet. So far though, they’ve only mananged the first act of The Comedy of Errors.
And the last sentence of the previous comment.
If you don’t keep up with what’s current, you could wind up shockingly out of date. I like my politicians to be properly grounded.
Electrocution for those who commit etiquette crimes? Bravo, say I!
Anyone’s who’s tangled with contemporary hairstyling techniques and implements knows that the electrocution peeps are the hair peeps.
My informant said merely that Hawke bunged on a stronger Strine in ALL public appearances, than he used in private conversation. Not “cloth cap”: dinkum bloody ocker.
Maaaaaate!
He helped restrain the wilder union elements from window-smashing and a General Strike after the dismissal of 11th Nov 1975: a service to parliamentary democracy, and avoidance of civil disorder.
Don’t forget ‘Cocky’ Calwell. His accent, compared to Menzies’ patrician tones, was a millstone for him.
The point is, I think we can all agree that Christopher Pyne sounds like a big sissy.
Yes Ginja, but is he authentic?
Paul Burns
Sorry, I rushed into print at 47 without having read yours at 43. A close agreement between our independent, contemporary informants. So, Mr History: is that conclusive on the Hawkie-accent-fakery question? May we rest our case, m’Lud?
Oh no, oh dear: Mr Turnbull QC, Merchant Banker has a deposition to depose. We could be here for some time, m’Lud.
TimT, Rudd hated his couple of mid-matriculation years in Brisbane.
He was a bright kid, widowed nurse mother. He chose to go back to Nambour High
Huge state school. I went there. A big regional school is a model of public education:
a melting pot, community support, teachers happy to be posted there, no white flight.
Bring back execution lessons for primary school kids, I say.
Heard the NSW Minister for Education, Verity Firth, recently and winced each time she said the word “education”. She is an attractive looking well dressed young women but the image was trashed when she spoke.
Julia Gillard’s voice & delivery seem to me to have undergone some much needed improvement since she first stepped into the limelight.
Why don’t politician’s and ABC radio announcers undertake some training in voice technique? Leigh Sales has a shocker of an accent, Tony Jones has an unpleasant voice and Christopher Pyne’s falsetto grates on everyone’s nerves. Help is available. On ABC Classic FM, Presenters Julia Lester, Julian Day, Julie Howard and many others have weird and wonderful accents and pronunciations. Voices can be trained and pronunciation corrected.
Given all the evidence and observation advanced here so far about how Aussie accents affect political success as compared to actual history, I think we can reasonably assume that the electorate has done and will continue to make their decisions on the basis of what people actually do as opposed to what they sound like as they’re announcing what they’ll do.
And yep, Bob Hawke out of the public eye sounds more like an Oxford Rhodes Scholar than he does like Dave Hughes. This in no way detracts from him being a true collegiate leader of probably the most effective Australian Government ever.
Hear hear, Nabs.
It will be very noice indeed when Gillard is PM, and all the ineffectual children of privilege are fussing about mightily about their place in the world. “Listen to haow she torks!”
Yes, I’d vote for the gel if only she spoke better. She has everything else a female politician needs to get my vote…the looks, the clothes. Shame about the accent. Oh well, back to voting for Marn and Albo.
/sarc
Oh well, back to voting for Marn and Albo.
Pressing political question of the day: does Albo look better in a ballgown than Verity Firth?
Ambigulous at 61: okay, you’ve empirically proven that Hawkie speaks/spoke differently in private (well, perhaps). But I just don’t think strine has as much to do with major variations in accent as it does with usage and tempo—remember how impressionists always did Hawke by stressing his non-verbal noises and the forceful tenor of his voice, not his pronunciation.
I think the difference between the on-stage Hawke and the private one is perhaps theatricality (or: he’s an actor, not a faker). Anyway, I think this discussion about the man’s voice is all tangled up in the mythos of Australia’s first truly national union movement leader falling from grace and ending up in the lodge, not that I’m being provocative or anything.
Which leads to Nabakov @ 68: Dave Hughes? The guy originally from the southwest of Victoria who talks as weirdly slowly as a Queenslander? He’s more Beattie than Hawkie!
I think we saw/heard the real Hawke whenever he (very articulately and fluently) lost his temper with TV journalists, usually for behaving like morons.
TimT @ 71 — no, but then if Albo added lippy and earrings, it would be a close-run thing.
Anyway, Verity wins because she has the better singing voice which, as we now know, is the most important talent of all.
Ginja at 45 I often ask myself the same question. It does seem to be about the company we keep. As a Pom once married to a South African, after nearly half a century living down-under, I am surprised that my own adult children have pleasantly unaffected, though clearly Australian accents. Mind you on the odd trip back to Blighty I get teased by friends asking why I am talking with an Australian accent! I, who aeons ago had to be taught to “speak proper” when as a scholarship girl I attended the local grammar school.
Glad to see that Tosca finds Leigh Sales grating, though I ask myself if it’s not so much her voice, but her lack of objectivity and snide facial mannerisms which make her so singularly unattractive in spite of her great physical beauty.
I was interested to listen to the sons of Keith Miller on Australian Story last Monday. What has happened to their accents? They were all educated privately. Their dad was such a posh dude and their mother a wealthy and educated American. None of that was evident in their voices. Apparently the second part of the Keith Miller story explains a lot…
Changing one’s speech patterns and accent is harder than you think! It’s not as simple as plastic surgery! After those compulsory elocution lessons of my early teens I was never again accepted by neighbourhood kids and somewhat estranged from siblings for decades until the levelling effects of life in Australia finally re-united us all.
Apart from people being complete slobs to look at or listen to it seems to me that Aussies are more interested in what people do and actually say rather than how they look and sound. Are they “honest” – “genuine” – “authentic” – whatever. This helps understand why Malcolm Turnbull doesn’t rate with the electorate, I think. He has to be the ultimate hollow man! Where is the committed Republican? What happened to the new blood he was going to transfuse into the Libs? Contrast him with the other Malcolm – the patrician PM who has been forgiven the bastardry of ll-ll-75 because he is seen to be principled and humane, even if he does talk with a plummy accent!
Patricia WA: Oi! Aussies don’t sound like slobs. I actually like the South African accent. Is there something wrong with me?
It seems South African accents are pretty popular among the Libs….athough I hasten to add that all the South African-Australians I know don’t live up to the reactionary stereotype at all (although Liberals always do, and South African Liberal voters should be deported).
Christopher Pyne should be deported, too.
I like every Pommy accent too – upper or working class (though I never would admit it face-to-face to a Pom).
Sorry, Ginja! Please re-read my comment. I did not mean to suggest that Aussies sound like (or look like slobs!) Must be my syntax, and I do so pride myself on my grammar! I may have forgotten how to talk proper, but I thought I could write reasonably clearly. So….. I think that Australians are more interested in what people actually say and do rather than caring whether they look or sound like slobs….
But yes, as long as it’s authentic who cares about accents. And who cares if the accent is authentic if what is said is not offensive!
If it interests you, as a child of ten I fell in love with an Aussie in a slouch hat. I was similarly romantically attracted to German p.o.ws doing farm work in our village. They were both equally kind to us kids, (as were Tommies and GIs) but they sounded so different and exotic. But with the Aussie I knew that he came from where I wanted to belong – where it didn’t matter how I talked and the street I came from. I knew that one day I would live in his country and know that I belonged!
What does all this have to do with Malcolm Turnbull? Well, maybe for me his snobby lawyer “I always win the argument” stance rings bells in my old English class cringing psyche!
Anyway if we can’t communicate clearly in writing, no wonder accent and affectation still have an impact even in Utopian Oz.
Patricia WA,
you were a remarkably acute 10 year old. But interesting that you noticed so much about the Aussie’s attitudes and thought of them as national characteristics he exemplified. Did you later seek out other corroborating examples?
You’re right, Ambigulous, one does a lot of retrospective thought bubbling in one’s rocking chair! At the same time if you remember your own childhood you’ll know that kids don’t have to be taught or have read a lot to have a pretty accurate understanding of what’s going on around them. I don’t know if it made me an acute ten year old or not, but even younger than that I knew the people in our street valued themselves and were valued by others very differently from those whose clothes were clean and voices differently pitched. Even in Infants school I yearned for the kind of Mum who would give me clean white socks every day. Thinking back to my falling for the Digger in the slouched hat perhaps I just loved the look and sound of him at the time and later pinned what I came to know about Down Under onto that image. Does this make my political judgement dodgy? I thought it was the stuff that revolutions were made of and explains why Malcolm Turnbull has to denounced as a class traitor! Poor bastard, as if he isn’t having a bad enough time! He looks awful these days!
I’m not really worried if we’re thought of as slobs anyway.
I was scratching my head about Keith Miller’s kids, too – until they mentioned Heroin (you’ll notice one of the brothers spoke in a middle-class accent, the non-user, I assume). If you’re on the streets or in prison, there’s a strong incentive to drop the middle-class accent – simply as a matter of self-preservation.
I’ve noticed a fairly common accent among heroin addicts (even though many come from middle-class homes). Heroin addicts often have hearing damage (that’s why they talk loudly on trains) and almost always have bad teeth, too (apparently you develop a sweet tooth on heroin).
P.S. I’ve noticed how haggard Turnbull’s been looking nowadays, too. For all the talk about him being “a force of nature,” I wouldn’t mind betting he resigns even before the next election.
Faakn’ ‘ell!
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Oi thjinks yerrunstandin ‘Stroinekulchamoi’? Is nuthindadoowiddaccentandeveryfinkdadoowithifyesarichmondsporterbro? Faakn’ ‘ell moi? Don’ loikeanyone’s been da Geelong fakn Grammar but I bloive every faakn thinga The Herald-Sun telmoicuzat’s nuthn dadoo widabaasdids’t cumnfram fakn Geelong Grammar izzit? It’s abow baddlers loik moi? Oi’m a baddler? Oi’ve been baddling da ged a triple fakn burger at Maccas fer a yeah?
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Go the Pois!!