When the Seven News Network asked me to explain the story behind the Aussie expression ‘no worries’ I did some digging. It first turns up in print in 1965 in the satirical magazine Oz published by Richard Walsh, Richard Neville and Martin Sharp. However, it appears to have been part of the spoken language long before that. Here’s my suggestion – it’s a variation on the earlier phrase ‘no sweat’. This started as American Army slang in 1951, during the Korean war. Aussie diggers served beside the Yanks and brought the expression back home. Here it was adapted into the more laid-back Aussie version ‘no worries’. And it seems to me to capture something of the Australian national character – a relaxed, easy-going, tackle-anything approach. Which often involves improvising with whatever comes to hand. In the first world war, a British general who had served with Aussie troops famously said, ‘If the world blew apart tonight, two Aussies would have it back together again by tomorrow morning with a bit of baling wire.’

A Speccie reader has asked me to look at the history and meaning of ‘genocide’ – given that it’s tossed around so glibly these days. Israel is accused of ‘genocide’ for defending itself; and Australia is slandered with ‘genocide’ in its treatment of Aboriginal people – both historically and (according to some activists) even today. First the history. The word ‘genocide’ was coined in 1944 by Polish-Jewish lawyer Raphael Lemkin in his book Axis Rule in Occupied Europe. In explaining what he saw as Germany’s plans for dominance he coined ‘genocide’ from the Latin genus (literally type or kind of living thing, and used by Lemkin to mean ‘race’). Combined with the suffix ‘-cide’ it literally means ‘killing a race of people’. The ‘Final Solution to the Jewish Question’ was the official Nazi codename for the murder of all Jews. Genocide was affirmed as a crime under international law in 1946, under Resolution 96 of the United Nations. But this was never the intention of British settlement in Australia. The instructions given to Arthur Phillip were to establish good relations with the local natives. From day one all the residents of the new colony (both Aboriginal and settlers) were classified as ‘British subjects’ and given equal rights under British law. As for Israel – in its conflict with Gaza its military action has clearly been defensive. So, activists are seriously misusing ‘genocide’ today – in a shameful way. Their abuse of the word means that when real genocide happens somewhere in the world, the word will have been weakened and lost its power.