Curse of Dialect
Australian English's idiom "she'll be right" reveals many positives about who we are as a people, and where we are failing.
If there’s one colloquial idiom that best encapsulates the Australian character it is she’ll be right. The “she” here could be anything, it’s not a person. The phrase means that whatever has occurred it is not a problem. No matter how big the problem, or how others may perceive an inconvenience, Australians will generally find it to be not much of a bother.
The phrase is indicative of Australians as a casual people – although our close Kiwi cousins take being casual to relaxed new heights (or lows). If something goes wrong, well, there’s a solution somewhere, there’s little point getting upset, we’ll figure it out eventually. Or, we just learn to live with the problem.
This extends beyond problems to the functioning of everyday items. If something works well enough then it’s fine. And fine is good. One of the little problems I have here in Sweden is that when I say “it’s fine” (which I do a lot, as I personally would never say she’ll be right) Swedes think I’m being critical.1 They think what I am saying is that something is just basic and not of a good standard. But “it’s fine” means that I am completely comfortable with what is happening. I have no need, or no desire, to ask for, or expect, anything else.
As a national ethos this compounds up into Australians being a people who shun drama. In fact, another phrase you might hear from Australians in place of she’ll be right is no dramas. The society as a whole has a social immune system that works to make sure conflict either never occurs, or is expelled quickly. Aside from the occasional fragile male ego, we’re never going to sue anyone. We’d much rather take responsibility for others’ mistakes than go through the hassle of any formal processes.
This tendency to admit fault when we aren’t at fault is a tool we use to prevent any tension. The unwritten social etiquette of Australia is that your obligation is to make sure every human interaction run as smoothly as possible. Even if it is to your detriment. Never make a fuss, never demand things of others, be comfortable with what you have, and always strive to give the social power to the person you are speaking with (and be genuine about it, not like the English who do this as a form of passive aggression).
This leads to other interesting tendencies. One of the paradoxes of Australia is that we have an accent that is truly grating – like a rusty nail being hammered into your ear drum – and this disguises an almost comical desperation to be helpful. We want to assist you, random stranger, but everything we say sounds like a verbal assault. This is compounded by our favourite word being one Americans tend to find offensive (and, confusingly, it could be an insult or a term of endearment, depending on the tone2). Listening to us fucking sucks, but we’re actually doing everything we can to make your life easier.
All these traits are greatly positive and a big part of why Australia tends to work very well as a country. It’s also why political parties that have tried to import American-style hysterics into the country are faring so badly at the moment. Currently, there’s an insatiable lust for drama in the U.S, and Australians find this instinctively repellent.
However, there is a significant downside to what we can call she’ll be right-ism. This is that Australians are so completely comfortable with basic functionality that we don’t strive for excellence. The great heights of human endeavour are out of our reach because to pursue them requires being uncomfortable with what currently exists. Human excellence means having a vision for something better and to dive into creating it with passion and intensity. This seems both pretentious and completely unnecessary to Australians.
If there’s no reason to ever make a fuss, then there’s no reason to ever make anything exceptional. And as a result, we rarely do. This is reflected in our ranking on the Index of Economic Complexity, where our economic profile looks more like a Central Asian petro-state than the highly developed country we are.3 We have become so fabulously wealthy by just digging stuff up and putting it on ships that we’ve felt little need to do anything else.
This is Australia’s own unique “resource curse”, and prevents us from establishing other, more advanced, industries. It simply isn’t in our nature to innovate. So while Australia had a massive developmental head start on South Korea, there’s no way companies like a Samsung, LG or SK Hynik could ever originate in Australia. In Australia, if it works, it’s fine. And if it’s broke, well, you just stick some tape on it and it goes as good as new.
Yet this is a major strategic problem for Australia. Eventually the global energy market will shift en masse, our second and third largest exports – coal and natural gas – will fall off a cliff and we will have nothing in place to generate the kind of wealth they currently provide us.4 Given our casual nature we’ve developed no serious contingency. We may know this day is coming, but she’ll be right, something else will pop up. No need to be concerned.
Maybe Australians have the dispositional capabilities to adjust to economic decline? A little less of the things we want may not bother us too much. We’ll find a way to work with whatever we can muster up. We might even secretly love a test of our resilience. Being keen to prove just how undramatic we can be.
However, it’s likely that it has been our wealth and our peace that has bred our she’ll be right-ism. We think most things aren’t a great fuss because we’ve never truly had any significant problems. We think we can easily adjust to most situations because the adjustments we’ve made previously haven’t been so great. We’ve had the enormous luxury of being casual. And were this luxury to disappear, our national character might go with it.
This would be a great shame. The positive attributes of Australia’s national character outweigh the negatives. Our accommodating nature is important to who we are, and something we should be proud of. Our aversion to drama makes the country a very pleasant place to live. Yet being comfortable with mediocrity and thinking that anyone who strives for excellence is a wanker does us no favours. It limits our capabilities and prevents us from converting our natural advantages into exceptional human endeavours.
So contrary to our collective inclinations there’s room for improvement. The problem is national characters are hard to direct because they’re not conscious. They exist within customs and habits, and are not transmitted through any active instruction. But change comes through necessity, and this necessity is approaching. However, rather than a wholesale creative destruction of who we are as a people, a more subtle form of innovation is necessary.
I currently divide my time between Australia and Sweden
“Mate” also could be positive or negative depending on the tone. There’s a great meme that highlights our tendency to flip the meaning of words.
The caveat here is that Australia’s numbers are skewed by the sheer volume of “dumb” things we export. We do do some “smart” stuff, this just doesn’t generate a lot of income.
There’s a massive debate in Australia about the future of energy generation, and a heavy push from certain quarters to maintain the coal and gas industries. But the thing about exports is that it’s not up to us whether we export. If no-one is buying then you can’t keep loading up ships with coal and gas and expect the money to magically appear.
I smiled at the accuracy of your "In Australia, if it works, it’s fine. And if it’s broke, well, you just stick some tape on it and it goes as good as new."