DEB_HOST_MULTIARCH is not a supported variable name

[Lonni J Friedman]

Hopefully you fine Ubuntu fans can help me with a miserable problem
I'm seeing on every 11.10 box I've got.  Any time I invoke psql (the
postgresql command line client) it spews the following warning:
DEB_HOST_MULTIARCH is not a supported variable name at
/usr/bin/dpkg-architecture line 214.

it works fine after that, but the warning is filling up logs
everywhere, as we use psql a lot for automated database queries inside
of shell scripts.  After googling, I found the following bug:
https://bugs.launchpad.net/ubuntu/+source/postgresql-common/+bug/862550

however, that bug claims this is fixed in the latest update, which is
not what I'm seeing.  I've already run 'apt-get install
postgresql-client-common' and it reports that I already have the
latest version.

Anyone else run into this and found a solution?