Should Very Important People be offended if they are thus addressed by their juniors? Not necessarily, says Sue Butler, one of the editors of the Macquarie Dictionary. "What it's saying is that 'You are, in the business hierarchy, way above me, but as people and individuals we are still equals.' " But if the person saying it is courteous and helpful, "I don't think it matters." "Mate" has a multitude of meanings. There is the fulsome "maaate" of the used-car salesman hoping for a buck; the sharp "mate!" of an exasperated Shane Warne being asked about his taking slimming tablets; the Machiavellian "mate" of the NSW Labor Right man carrying the metaphoric knife behind his back. Former Labor Party leader Bill Hayden once said that in the NSW Right, the word mate "is like the Mafia presenting you with a bunch of flowers".

The word has had some of its best outings in irreverent circumstances. In 1981 at a Melbourne theatre performance, King Lear, disgusted with the nature of man, cried out: "Let copulation thrive" only to be answered from the back stalls by a shout of "Too bloody right, mate!" But, much as it might pain the Prime Minister to hear it, it's not even our word. "Mate" comes from the Middle Low German for "companion". It began life in Australia as the word itinerant bush workers used to name their partners, with whom they shared the hardships and the profits of work such as shearing or goldmining. Ms Butler says it became imbued with sentiment when "mates" went off to war and later struggled through the Depression by sharing resources.

Don Watson, formerly a speechwriter for Paul Keating and more recently the author of Death Sentence: the Decay of Public Language, says cynically that "mate" probably started being used as a term of address because shearers were always drunk and had trouble remembering each other's names. Mr Watson said he would not have objected to Parliament House security guards calling him "mate" as long as it was intended civilly. "But I think it's really offensive for someone I don't like to call me 'mate'. If John Howard called me 'mate', I would find that threatening and offensive … (He) and his mates may as well be Turks in 1915 on the other side of the trenches."

Working as he did in a Labor prime minister's office — "I have been in the bowels of mateship" — Mr Watson heard the word often. But he's given it away in disgust now: "When I heard a feminist friend calling her daughter 'mate,' I thought, 'It's the end of another tradition'. I'm sorry, but women can't be mates … It's best kept close to sheep and pubs." There was one brief shining moment where women were admitted to the sacred bond. In Redgum's 1980 song Long Run John Schumann sang: Uranium demo the other day

One of my mates got dragged away

As they slammed the door I heard her say

It'll be all right in the long run

Yesterday it was security guards who won back the right to use the term, and the media hunt for a pontificating complainant was derailed. The head of the Department of Parliamentary Services, Hilary Penfold, said that as far as she knew, no MP had complained. They wouldn't dare, would they, mate?

- With DAVID WROE