Aussie August: Is your man a budgie smuggler?

Aussie August with guest blogger, Australian poet, Michael Fitzgerald-Clarke. Read more about him on his blog here...

Budgie Smugglers

Although kept as pets all over the world, wild budgerigars, or budgies, are native to Australia. Some species are very rare, and prized by unscrupulous types who will pay big bucks to have them smuggled out of the country. Typically, they are smuggled out on planes, in suitcases, often in cloth bags, where, often, they will squirm, and struggle to see the light of day.

And so it is that the male, err, equipment, struggles to see the light of day in skimpy male swim briefs, that used to be widely known Down Under as “Speedos” (after the company who made them), but which are now known by all Aussies as “budgie smugglers”.

Australia has more beaches than any other country in the world, including the iconic Bondi Beach in Sydney. It’s so iconic that even Paris Hilton recently strode the sands, entourage a step and a half behind her.

Sun, sand, and surf, that’s the traditional Australian way. Sadly, politicians exposing themselves also seems to be the Australian way. The former Leader of the Opposition in New South Wales, Peter Debnam, tried to lift his sagging popularity by donning a pair of budgie smugglers, and taking a dip in the Sydney surf.

The only thing that really took a dip was his popularity. The then Deputy Premier John Watkins accused him of offending common decency. Debnam lost the 2007 state election.

They breed them tougher in Victoria. It’s colder. But, without surmising on the effect the cold had on the Leader of the state Opposition Ted Baillieu’s, err, equipment, he too donned a pair and entered the cold, choppy sea to announce a coastal policy. The main newspaper was flooded with letters and e-mails about what the paper described as “a wardrobe malfunction”. Needless to say, Baillieu lost the 2007 Victorian state election.

Cut to 2009. Sydney’s Queenscliff beach. Local boy, and Leader of the Opposition on the Australian Federal political scene, Tony Abbott, again showing that a Leader of the Opposition can, well, show.

Perhaps it’s because Julia Gillard, the first Australian female Prime Minister, doesn’t have chest hair, who knows, but at the moment her governing Australian Labor Party’s poll numbers are 27 per cent, the lowest since polls were invented, and Tony Abbott, at 61 per cent, looks like he will win the next Federal election by a huge landslide.

Just goes to show. If you persist in flaunting it – and all the above mentioned budgie smuggled politicians are from the conservative, American readers please read Republican, side of politics – you not only end up “getting the chicks”, you end up “getting the guys”, too.