''MATE, this is Straya, this is Straya … let's stick with 'mate'," protested one talkback caller to 2GB's Chris Smith. A cabbie rang in to say his customers loved it when he called them "sweetheart" and "love". On Twitter someone blamed the hippies - "Mate and love banned on the hippie north coast," tweeted @traindriverrev.

The revelation yesterday that the Northern NSW Local Health District had sent out a memo to health workers in the area advising a more judicious use of terms of endearment such as "mate", "darling" and "love" has unleashed a stonking great storm of patriotic protest across the airwaves, through cyberspace and around the nation's water-coolers.

No longer endearing ... Magda Zsubanski as Lynne in Fast Forward.

They might as well have clubbed a koala, or shoved a surf-lifesaving nipper off her surfboard; it was un-Australian, that's what it was.

John Howard wanted to enshrine mateship in his preamble to the constitution. Perhaps he should have pushed a bit harder, and taken steps to get the words "mate", "darling" and "luv" in there too - as in, "how are ya today, luv?" - because those of us who throw our "mates" and our "darlins" around are feeling a bit assailed. If a nurse in Lismore can't inquire after a patient in a kindly manner, what's the country coming to?