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Edition 1FRI 09 OCT 1998, Page 016

Hunting an elusive species
By JOHN HAWKINS
Source: MATP
John Hawkins goes in search of the little Aussie battler
*
THEY'RE everywhere, and nowhere. They're the Snark, Forrest Gump and Macavity the
Mystery Cat rolled into one. Flick on the radio or telly, and they're there, but not there.
Yesterday, I heard a talking head drone: "It'll be interesting to see how the Asian
meltdown plays out with the battlers." And today, a radio ham sighed: "We need to be
concerned with the effects of global warming on the battler."
Just who is this third-person "battler" so often referred to, yet spotted about as often as a
snow leopard?
The battler has heroic beginnings, it seems, spawned from that Defining Moment at
Gallipoli when all those Homeric Aussie males went clambering up the perpendicular
bluffs to certain death at the hands of Turks. And let's not forget the Aussie women, who
start out in the national mythos as long-suffering, determined drovers' wives capable of
staring down any dinkum, fair or otherwise. Dignified battlers, indeed.
But many years on, and after all the noble soldiering has been done, "battler" has more
moneyed connotations and loses its honeyed mythological edge. In the 50s, battlers were
seen as souls left on the margin of the great Australian dream time of the Menzies era.
They were the nameless, undefined electorate who could never quite creep into a
comfortable tax bracket, fatalistic survivors of an economic crap-shoot for whom luck
never quite rolls sevens their way.
As buzz words go, "battler" has undergone more transformations in recent years than
Bill Clinton's definition of truth. Modern battlers, whoever they are, seem somehow less
dignified, yet more anonymous than ever. When they are mentioned, and they are
mentioned often, they are patronised in absentia, their very absence their regarded worth.
The battler is alien to people of other industrialised nations, as is the Aussie character for
that matter. The globalised vision of the Aussie battler remains to this day the
Hollywooden, "noif"-wielding Paul Hogan. Ask an Englishman about battlers and he'll
finger you the way to Yorkshire. Ask an American, and she'll respond, "Oh, wow, like
that word is really not coo-wool. You must mean the street people." And to judge by
Aussie TV ads (never a good idea), battlers would seem to be sorry blokes with hungry
eyes who eschew sheila-made lunches for Four 'n' Twenty pies. Undignified, for sure,
but battlers?
Whatever the Aussie battler is, there would seem to be more of them now than ever
before, and the army is growing, if the constant references to them are any indication.
Inevitably, when dealt such perplexity, I look to academe for answers.
Recently, I read a scholarly paper presented at a conference of economists in Sydney.
The author, Ann Harding, professor of applied economics and social policy at the
University of Canberra, told her peers that job security was a thing of the past and that

the divide between haves and have-nots in Australia was growing exponentially. "The
rising tide of economic growth no longer lifts all boats -some, stuck in the mud, are
instead swamped," she said.
But do these indigenous mud men and boat women qualify as battlers? Harding doesn't
say.
In desperation, I even watched the Great Debate between John Howard and Kim
Beazley, certain one of them would mention battlers. I listened as Howard said a goods
and services tax would end the tax-bracket creep now preventing so many eager Aussie
workers from clocking on an extra 20 hours a week to salvage a standard of living for
families they'll never see. But neither leader mentioned battlers.
Next I gave polling a go. Polls are simple, expedient measures of what folks think of
stuff, and you don't even have to justify the results anymore, now that polling has been
elevated to the scientific status of meteorology and astrology. I fronted up to the first
bloke who crossed my path and asked him to define a "battler". But the mate sneered:
"Go on, get a dog up ya." This image depressed me.
I turned inward, to the Internet, after that. I hunted and pecked in "a-u-s-s-i-e b-a-t-t-l-er", and the search engine coughed up www.aussieoutback.com.au and a site called
Aussie Animals. In short, nothing acceptable emerged, so I logged off and prayed for email. I think it might be pleasant to meet a battler.
Many Aussies may be battlers and not even know it, others may know but feel obliged to
go about disguised. There's just no telling.
Now the election is over, no doubt battlers will emerge in fresh debates on the GST,
republicanism and other bush-beat politics. A reprobate Beazley will taunt Howard as the
latter holds up a parliamentary finger and says: "Australians must now march forward up
that fiscal hill to long-term prosperity." And somewhere an invisible battler will crack:
"Crikey, mate, talk about hard yakka." And his mate will respond: "Yeah, and
perpendicular bluffs."
John Hawkins is a freelance writer
Illus: CARTOON
Column: Observer
Section: FEATURES
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