Idiom: Origin of the phrase "a bit how ya going" to mean questionable or 'not quite right'

In Australia, where I live, it is not uncommon for people to describe something as "a bit 'how ya goin''" to mean that it's a little bit dodgy, or not quite right. An example is

"Hey don't you have a new coworker?"

"Yeah, they're a bit 'how ya goin'"

which would mean that the new coworker is maybe a bit weird or not a good fit in the office. I've also heard it to refer to other-than-humans:

"How's the uni course?"

"It's a bit 'how ya goin'"

which would mean that the course isn't going well, but implying that there's a problem with the course itself. I would expect a follow-up closer to "the timetable doesn't fit and the lecturers are terrible" rather than "the course is great but I haven't studied enough".

I had thought it might be connected to/descended from the English phrase "how's your father", but I haven't found any evidence of that and the 'how ya goin' version doesn't have any lewd connotations, as far as I know.

Does anybody know where this phrase comes from, and why it's used in this context? Urban dictionary lists it as Australian slang, but I would love to know if it exists anywhere else. It's a hard one to google, as "origin of phrase 'how are you going'" doesn't yield great results, for obvious reasons.

Solution 1:

The phrase refers to the social class of the speaker, as in 'How ya goin' is originally something a lower or working class person would say in post WW I Australia. So it means dodgy or unsure of the reliability. However it has become nonsensical because the phrase 'how's it going?' has run around the world like a bushfire since the 1970's. The main theory behind this is that it was used often in Australian surfing culture in the 1960-70's and picked by Californian surfers, by the 1980-90's it was heard in Hollywood movies and from there it 'How's it goin' has become popular slang just about everywhere.