From a nation that gave us riot police, rude waiters, baguettes and non-negotiable submarine contracts we have a new word, ‘shrinkflation’.

It’s embarrassing for a country that markets itself on its commitment to love and screwing around, but France has looked down its unzipped metaphorical trousers and admitted they have a problem with shrinkage. They’re introducing ’shrinkflation legislation’ – le grand flaccid, as I’m calling it – to combat that depressingly existential customer moment when supermarket product portions are subtly reduced in size but sold at close to the same prices in the hope hapless shoppers (les stupides) won’t notice or just won’t be bothered complaining (les lazy bastards). Americans call this capitalism, but unfortunately, the French are all socialists, which explains why their movies, like the political views of their rioting student protesters, are in black and white and don’t make sense without preferred pronouns.

While disappointing for starstruck lovers (les horizontals), this war on shrinkflation makes sense. It combines the two great French loves – food and intrusive government regulation – so stores must now display signs announcing where shrinkage has occurred whether it be in the cheese and condiments or in a greatly reduced Wheaties box, or most eerily, the much maligned but not necessarily in a racist way, low-fat yoghurt section.

You may have experienced shrinkflation yourself. Apparently, it’s like using an Ozempic pen, but without the South Yarra cache or heroin-chic needle marks. Perhaps, it was while handling a suddenly dwarf-like Mars or Snickers bar in aisle 5 at Woolworths, or if you’re just an average bikie purchasing reduced-sized packet paracetamols for your home meth lab to put food on the table for your kids and your mafia boss without having to ride to the ACT where they have introduced VAD laws to help instigate some government-driven shrinkflation of their own on confused pensioners and teenagers.

The French are an infinitely fascinating people, so I’ve purchased a croissant and researched this. But rather than our universities where the in-person courses are shrinking but the pre-taped video lectures, HECs and academic salaries keep going up, I went online. This was just before the Albanese government tried to shrink-wrap Elon Musk’s free speech principles.

According to Google, shrinkage means ‘a reduction in the size of something or the process of becoming smaller’. This sounds career ending – especially if you are a Paris-based male escort trying to go grocery shopping and make ends meet. Yet, while le grand flaccid appears to be a peculiarly European problem possibly caused by a Mediterranean diet, cigarette smoking and Brexit, Australia has shrinkflation problems of its own. Maybe les Aussies are the ones needing aisle signage directing us to the 4 inches or less checkout.

In Victoria, we used to have a Commonwealth Games until we didn’t have a Commonwealth Games, because we used to have money but now the Allan née Andrews government says, like we all just finished swimming in a freezing Port Phillip Bay, that our fiscal arrangements (or testicles) have shrunk.

We paid 600 million not to hold the Games and apparently all I got was this games mascot tee-shirt and a pastel-coloured child storage multiplex somewhere outside of Bendigo for careerists who didn’t have a big enough home deposit but now really prefer to move back to the city. The Allan-Andrews conglomerate has announced we are also not getting a second safe injecting room in the middle of the Melbourne CBD because someone – probably a small city business owner filing for bankruptcy – has convinced them it isn’t safe after all.

Sporting shrinkflation is proving addictive; it’s like what you have instead of Viagra when you’ve spent everyone else’s money. Especially for sports ministers – the funnest of all ministerial jobs, unless you used to get bullied as a child for your inability to kick a football and this is why you went into politics. In Queensland, eminently bulldozable Gabba is no longer being bulldozed – just renovated. It’s being shrinkflationed by the state government and they’re going to reupholster the couch in the old 1982 Commonwealth Games arena instead while looking down the back of it for coins. It’s the Crocodile Dundee, ‘that’s not a knife, this is a knife’ moment, but in reverse. It seems the only thing not shrinking is the number of Chinese swimmers accused of doping at the 2020 (2021) Tokyo Olympics and the number of credulous, overpaid sporting officials and television networks happy to say ‘Nothing to see here’, because they’ve already booked their Paris 2024 flights.

Maybe we’re looking for shrinkflation in all the wrong places. It’s easy to get upset when our groceries shrink and promised sporting events never happen. The real shrinkflation is in our political expectations with important issues reduced to 250-character social media trawling and someone at Mamamia or Linda Burney ranting about their feelings. Maybe we’re just used to being smaller. I see ScoMo’s trying to make it all big again with a new book about personal faith and politics, but Tony Abbott was the last one to try that and all he ended up with were disappointed glances as he walked around Bondi in his budgie smugglers.

Thinking shrinkflation is only about sport, food portions and politics is a mistake. At the Melbourne Comedy Festival, comedian Arj Barker tried to shrinkflation his audience by two by asking a breast-feeding mother and baby to leave because they were noisy and distracting him from telling some old FM-radio joke about the man with the shrinkflationing penis. But he had clearly shrinkflationed his own reading of the entitlement zeitgeist as serious (sic) current affairs programs like The Project put ‘mum and bub’ (as they are now officially called by all infantilised talking heads) on-air to pile-on his allegedly self-evident misogyny towards, mums, babies, comedy, just about everything really.

As with all good shrinkage gags and suspended FM-radio hosts called Kyle, this didn’t end well. The on-air baby wouldn’t shut up and an exasperated host had to ask for her to be handed over to an out-of-shot dad, so they could continue the interview without being distracted. Ironic, really. Or as the French would say, ‘le stuff up.’