As we conclude Australia Month, following the annual bruising period of attacks on the once iconic national day, our thoughts have turned, naturally, to Australians of the Year. And to those that weren’t, but maybe should have been.
Whoever picks these people, they are generally those who are deemed to be non-offensive, or are positively treasured woke spokespersons. Or, increasingly, they might be worthy medicos (like this year’s) of whom no one has ever heard. Does this matter? I think so.
Who would the deplorables choose? And what would their criteria be?
Well, an outsider would be drawn to other outsiders, to largely forgotten heroes, to those who pushed back against the progressive tide, who were a thorn in the side of the elites, to the unconventional, to people who actually achieved something for we-the-people, and perhaps to those who unintentionally have served our interests, possibly without even knowing that they were doing this. The last group is perhaps the most interesting. They might well include our enemies and those who wish us ill, but through their own blundering or hubris have ended up on our side, furthering our interests.
Hence the following nominees.
Marcia Langton. For services to the ending of welcomes to country and acknowledgements of country.
Langton is an Indigenous professor at the University of Melbourne, aka the Parkville Asylum. She has been a research professor and is now what they call an Associate Provost:
The Associate Provost leads in specific areas of engagement, cultural collections, heritage issues and development of Indigenous teaching and research activities across the University.
https://about.unimelb.edu.au/leadership/senior-leadership/provost/prof-marcia-langton
The academy is now riddled with appointments like these. Stan Grant is another. More significantly, Langton was a core part of the yes vote side at the voice referendum, and inevitably is a close mate of Airbus Albo’s. Langton is located somewhere approaching a million miles from the concerns of everyday Australians, black (with a c) and white.
Langton’s signature achievement in 2023 was to suggest that the “welcome to country” might be a casualty of a “no” victory.
That single intervention might just have turned the tide. The commenters at The Australian went wild. In their thousands. The troops were very excited.
Following Saturday night's resounding rejection of the Voice, former Liberal Senator and conservative commenter Cory Bernardi aimed a tweet at Marcia Langton to remind her of a vow she made earlier this year.
'Does the success of today's vote mean Marcia Langton's promise of no more Welcome to Country will be honoured?' Bernardi wrote.
Whether or not Langton honours her undertaking, a little like all those American stooges who threaten to move to Canada at the election of the latest hated Republican, hardly matters. The thing is, she said it, and it unleashed a storm of reaction. She opened her mouth and put her hoof in it. She captured a moment. Indeed, she created one. She inadvertently showed just how much Australians have the supreme irrits with all of the confected Indigenous affairs guilt thrust on us by our betters. Over and over and over. Marcia, I am sure, launched a thousand front-bar conversations, and many of them would not have been kind or complimentary.
Marcia is a definite contender!
Julian Leeser. For services to the quality of the Opposition front bench, and to the non-passage of the voice referendum.
Julian Leeser, the former shadow Attorney General, is a seriously nice man with his heart and mind in the right place on many issues. He is also a former office bearer of the Samuel Griffith Society, Australia’s own Federalist Society style, originalist group of constitutional lawyers and their friends. Not a dumbo, either.
Julian had a problem with the Liberal Party’s leadership on a “no” vote at the voice referendum. He was an Uluru man.
But Leeser’s departure, which barely caused a ripple at the time, in the overall context of the race-baiting, leftist campaign of 2023, did have one profound effect. It brought Jacinta Price to the front bench, and to the very forefront of the no campaign’s magnificent efforts.
Jacinta Price, and her buddy Warren Mundine, rode the powerful, largely out-of-sight, anti-woke wave to the beach. Price played the yes people like a fiddle. Her leadership was sustained, coherent, measured, common sense and Indigenous-centric. Any half-decent, unbiased Australian of the Year committee member should have had Price at or near the top of the list. It was never to be. Her sheer pride in our country shone like a beacon, and still does in the dying, contested days of Australia month.
Leeser played an unintentional blinder. Julian who?
Mitchell Johnson. For services to independent journalism, standing up to The Warners and for exposing more of the woke, corporate state.
This Aussie cricket summer, it seems that you had to leave the country to avoid air time for Australia’s retiring opening batsman. The only surprise is that he wasn’t himself named Australian of the Year. Just for being Davey Warner.
For readers not fully up-to-speed with Australian cricket matters, Warner was the ringleader five years ago in a cheating scandal in South Africa, where he organised the use of sandpaper to rub on the ball and so gain an advantage over the other side. He copped a ban for that, but since his re-emergence he has been feted by all and sundry. We are a forgiving lot. On top of that, he has hardly scored a run in three years and has, mostly, been a gift wicket for opposing teams. Hence struggling to hold his place in the team.
In a few short weeks this summer, we have had:
· Endless media sycophants prostrating themselves before Warner in the lead up to his personally selected and Cricket Australia-endorsed farewell appearance in Sydney;
· Daily headlines;
· Wall-to-wall interviews;
· Tedious, look-at-me celebrations on the field following successes with the bat;
· Warner taking over the role of selectors, nominating his replacement opening batsman;
· Warner somehow losing his cricket caps, leading to a national search, demeaning prime ministerial involvement, unidentified (and non-existent) thieves called “scum bags”;
· The caps mysteriously re-appearing in the team luggage at their hotel, without the remotest explanation by anyone – only sheepish silence;
· The whole Warner family being paraded around the Sydney Cricket Ground at his final game;
· Warner having a fresh go at the cricket establishment for the ban on him assuming leadership positions after the nationally embarrassing cheating episode in South Africa;
· Warner arriving for a Big Bash (silly but endlessly popular white ball night cricket played in pyjamas with loud music and dancing girls) match in a helicopter, from attending his brother’s wedding.
Does the man do anything not for show? It is, indeed, all about him.
Well, a cricket journalist and former star cricketer, Mitchell Johnson, had the temerity to write some less than complimentary words about the Warner fuss. He questioned Warner’s right to a fairytale farewell.
Suddenly the full wrath of the establishment descended upon Johnson, in truly Orwellian big brother corporatism. He was un-personed, in the twinkling of an eye, including being cancelled from a public speaking engagement. According to some CA flunky:
Mitchell is one of Australia’s most celebrated bowlers, but we felt on this occasion it was in everyone’s best interests that he was not the guest speaker at the CA functions.
What a lot of PR tosh.
The chief selector, a thoroughly mediocre former cricketer and man called George Bailey, then got involved in a slanging match with Johnson, questioning his mental health. This was a low, cheap shot, unworthy of a nationally prominent figure with important responsibilities. The much reviled, former coach Justin Langer, without seeing the irony, made the following intervention:
Former Australia coach Justin Langer had earlier called out Mitchell Johnson for breaking an “unwritten rule” among former players and said he “hated” the column the fast bowler penned on veteran opener Warner.
Labelling Johnson, who questioned Warner’s place in the Test team and whether he deserved a final farewell in Sydney, as “stubborn”, Langer said former players should never air grievances in public.
Langer, writing in the same paper where Johnson’s column appeared, was scathing of the contents of Johnson’s column.
“In simple terms, I hate it when men from the rare club of playing cricket for Australia air any of their grievances publicly,” he wrote in The West Australian before the first Pakistan Test.
“I believe in a simple ethos of ‘praise in public, criticise in private’.
Really? A new one on me. Justin is breaking his own “rule”, of course. And it is only his rule, I would think. Grievance? No, it isn’t a “grievance”. It is a perfectly reasonable critique of a selection policy by a paid, professional journalist.
Mitchell Johnson is one of only a few journalists left, in sport or politics or anywhere else, who isn’t bought, who uses his own mind, who refused to succumb to corporate groupthink, who questions narratives, who says what we think. We needed a few during Covid. We need some right about now.
He should be bottled.
Chris Bowen. For services to the fossil fuel sector and our collective economic futures.
The mad Bowen is a stand-out among the Airbus Government, and, believe me, the competition is rich. Can this lunatic be for real? He must be a plant, a Manchurian candidate. He is just too bad to be a genuine Labor guy. He is carpet-bombing the country – and the seas around which we are girt – with wind farms and solar farms, and even his own woke, greenie supporters are protesting about their back yards being desecrated by useless, harmful pieces of net zero infrastructure.
Governments have been bleating on about climate crises for decades. It has taken wild-eyed Chris, he of the truly astonishing Dubai welcome to country, to actually do something serious about that which he and his fellow climateer travellers have been bellowing all these years. And in an instant, he has turned the whole country, or at least a rapidly growing majority, against net zero. That took some doing. And his efforts might well just lose the Airbusman the next election to a rejuvenated Liberal Party, now led by a sane, courageous man, and in so doing help to save the Australian economy from the destruction Labor has engineered.
Bowen deserves massive recognition for this achievement. We are truly in his debt.
Bradford Banducci. For services to the retention of Australia Day.
It is only appropriate that a nominee of the Australian of the Year (People’s Choice) should be someone who has striven to ensure that Australia Day remains massively supported and celebrated.
For the many who have no idea who the hell Bradford Banducci is – no, he isn’t an Italian celebrity chef or the new host of My Kitchen Rules – he is the CEO of Woolworths, a company now the subject of more inquiries than the late George Pell was a decade or so ago. Bradford wasn’t actually born here. For some this would be a minus, for others, who think we are all racists for even speaking of Australia Day, being born OS might be considered as giving one a fighting change of not being a racist. Bradford was born in South Africa. Perhaps delete the last point.
Bradford spent time as a Director at Boston Consulting. Like McKinsey and similar firms dedicated to corporatising and hence ruining the world, Boston Consulting tells other companies how to manage. As an industry, management consulting is a blight on the culture. Like HR. In fact, the rise of HR and of management consulting largely overlap, and coincide with the beginning of the end of customer service, despite what the Harvard Business School might say. A good place to “consult” on these firms is The Banality of Evil: MBA Edition, but there are a rising number of books unpacking the evil that consultants do.
Last month, legendary management consultant and McKinsey alumnus Tom Peters said he was “angry, disgusted and sickened” by McKinsey’s role in the opioid crisis that has killed roughly half a million people by overdose in the past 21 years. McKinsey may well be chastened by this strong criticism from an august former employee, but it’s the $600 million settlement that McKinsey has promised to pay to settle claims against it for its role in the crisis that will have the bigger impact.
https://ethicsunwrapped.utexas.edu/the-banality-of-evil-mba-edition
This is merely scratching the surface. We can’t blame Banducci for all this, but we can blame him for the attack by Woolworths on Australian values, on his watch. His actions led Peter Dutton to call on Australians to boycott Woolworths. I hope many did, or at least wrapped themselves in flags and similar accoutrements while doing the grocery shopping this past week or so.
But Banducci has done us all a favour. Just like the elites need someone to hate, so do the deplorables. And he will do, now that Alan Joyce has slithered off the national stage. But Banducci has done much more than merely giving us all a whipping boy. He has ignited a counter-debate against the usual annual statue vandals and post-colonial agit-proppers. He has reminded us all to buy some Aussie merch and to strike a counter-blow to the multi-culti virtue signallers who hate us and who think we are stupid.
Brad collects $7.71m a year in salary. Plenty to thwart the cost-of-living crisis that his company is doing so much to drive, what with all the price-gouging, lies, collusion and crony-capitalism.
Woolworths CEO Brad Banducci was “caught out in a lie” when he attempted to “spin the story” on axing Australia Day merch, according to Sky News Digital Editor Jack Houghton. Woolworths has come under fire and faced boycott calls after the company made the decision to axe selling Australia Day merch due to poor sales. Mr Houghton said in an attempt to “damage control his terrible leadership,” Mr Banducci wrote a letter to his staff, where he explained why the supermarket giant celebrates other holidays. “The problem that Brad has is one of his own making – he has a position of immense privilege and responsibility, and he underestimated how much pride the public has for its nation,” he said. “This fool is now being called on to resign and it’s a crisis entirely of his own making.”
Thankfully, Brad has remembered to get Woolies to fly Indigenous flags and put up posters about Chinese New Year.
What a guy!
The sheer beauty of Banduccis and Langtons and Bowens is that they are so bad at what they do, so alienating, so prone to lie and just make stuff up in prosecuting their anti-Australian causes, that they almost appear to be batting for the other side. For our side. This makes them worthy of our eternal gratitude. If not for them and their jumpings of various sharks, our causes would be far harder to advance. They are as gold. They are like no-balls in the cricket big bash. They are a free hit. We should give them a gong each, or at least consider them worthy of receiving one.
Others, like Mitchell Johnson, are almost innocently, naively honest. They say it out loud. They flip the bird at the establishment. And if that is the price of their honesty, well, it is a price they are willing to pay.
Then there is the Leeser model. No one saw that coming when he shuffled off the political stage. He made way for a star. And we don’t have many of these. Leeser thought he was standing on a principle and might be thought well of for it. No, we think very, very well of him, for other reasons. Can you be great without meaning to be? Julian proves you can.
Whatever one concludes, there is room for contemplation of our unsung heroes.
Not the usual kind that are unsung because no one has ever heard of them. No, at least some of these unsung heroes did truly spectacular things in service of the people they often despise, or ignore, or simply don’t know exist. Without meaning to. That they would be mightily pissed off with their “achievements” only adds to the pleasure.
No doubt, there are many other unintentional Aussies of the Year, not mentioned here. Ironic heroes. Blunderers serving the interest of their enemies. Ghastly types who end up doing good for the many as a result of their own incompetence.
Alternative suggestions of the genre are very welcome.
Paul Collits
30 January 2024
Just remember Professor Peter's famous Principle - "In a hierarchical institution employees are promoted to the level of their incompetence."
No need for awards, every loser is a winner.
What a collection of tossers.