Mateship, Little Johnny Style
by Maurice Fairfield

Some time ago John Howard attempted to have a dedication to "mateship" incorporated into the preamble to our constitution. Apparently wiser counsels prevailed and the proposal was dropped, but I still have the occasional nightmare about it. Here is a typical episode:

The scene is the stage of any variety theatre in the world ­ the old Tivoli in Melbourne for instance. A backcloth of a Melbourne Street scene with sly grog men, S.P. bookies, slouch hatted diggers, stumbling winos and other iconic figures from the fifties.

Enter a figure in a slouch hat, baggy flannel trousers and a blazer doing a neat soft-shoe. He carries a cane which he twirls in time with the hokey vaudeville accompaniment of the pit orchestra. He bears a suspicious resemblance to our egalitarian Prime Minister. After going through his paces for a couple of choruses he sings as follows:

Mateship, they call it mateship. Something that the others ain't got.
Mateship, mateship. If you've got it you've no worries, you've got the lot.
When your feeling lousy and it's all gone wrong,
Pucker up and whistle a cheerful little song
About mateship, mateship, you'll be feeling great again before too long,
That's mateship, mateship, good old Aussie mateship will help you along
M-a-t-e-s-h-i-p, mateship that's all.

Continues the soft-shoe and leads the audience in a slightly embarrassed sing-along for another chorus then approaches the footlights. The orchestra sinks to a quiet lilt as he addresses the audience.

"You know folks, people from other countries ask me about mateship and I don't really know how to explain it to them. I mean, like all dinky di Aussie jokers down the ages who front up for church every Sunday before we take the kids on a picnic at the beach and a game of cricket on the sand, I grew up with it, just as you did. We don't need to think about it, we just live it, and when we wipe the sweat off our foreheads and lift a well-deserved pot at the end of a hard days work, it's all around us. But just the other day, George Bush ­ you know the President of the United States of America, said to me - he said, 'John' ( he calls me John you know), he said, 'now look here, John what'n the hell is this here mateship your always talking about?' and I said 'George' (he lets me call him George you know...sometimes), I said 'George, if you've gotta ask you'll never know. But I'll try.'"

The stage lights sink and the warm glow of an amber spotlight lights up his face, oozing sincerity and perspiration. He drops to one knee and holds his slouch hat over his heart as the band segues into a slow, reverent Waltzing Matilda...

"...and I said, 'George, mateship is what you feel for the bloke who works alongside you and lends you a hand if you need it. Like when Peter Reith had to resign after a mixup over some telephone calls. I fixed him up with another job that payed a reasonable screw (and I don't use the word lightly.) When your brother's business goes belly up and he can't pay his workers what's due to them, well you pay 'em out of taxpayers' money ­ just a one off mind you, can't bail out everybody. I mean you can't encourage every lame duck with a hand out. You've got to know who your mates are; there'll always be people left behind by progress and if you haven't got a job you have to adapt (nobody can say I'm not adaptable), and if there are no jobs you just have to keep trying until one turns up. If you get tired of chasing what isn't there then you give up the dole. You might find that you didn't really need it after all. You can always send the wife out to earn a bob or two.'"

From this point the orchestra swells in concert with his increasingly sincere delivery.

"'No George, mateship is for blokes you went to school with, or the same sort of bloke, like the G-G. I put him in the way of a nice little earner and when I joined in with you and sent our lads to Iraq, I could rely on him not to do the Christian thing and tell me off. No, he said a blessing over them just as a good mate should. And when he put his foot in it over some fourteen-year-old dollies (who were asking for it and got it), I said he had my full support, until he got too hot to handle and I had to drop him in it. Well what are mates for? Mateship is when your average battler on a couple of hundred thou or so is doing it hard. Like his wife wants a Merc just like his and he hasn't had an overseas holiday for six months. Then you subsidise his private health insurance and lower his income tax. And then George, and then, and then, just to top it all off, you pour money into his kids' exclusive private school...that's mateship!'"

Orchestra returns to Mateship theme in slow time. He rises and struts off, waving his slouch hat and high-kicking in time to the beats of the drummer's cymbal.

Returns in a few moments to take numerous bows, grinning cheesily in the direction of the expensive front row seats.

More Fairfield in The Little Johnny Howard Songbook.

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