But Leeser’s departure, which barely caused a ripple at the time, did have one profound effect.

It brought Jacinta Price to the front bench, and to the very heart 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 attack Australia month.

Leeser played an unintentional blinder.

MITCHELL JOHNSON
For services to independent journalism, standing up to The Warners and for exposing more of the woke, corporate State. [Editor’s Note: MJ doesn’t belong on this list. He really is one of the good guys.]

DURING this Aussie summer of cricket, 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 woke 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 and wall-to-wall interviews;
• Tedious, look-at-me celebrations on the field following rare successes with the bat;
• Warner taking over the role of selectors, nominating his own replacement;
• Warner somehow losing his baggy green, 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 SCG 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.

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 and 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 future.

THE mad Chris 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 climate 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 his boss the next election to a rejuvenated Liberal Party, now led by a sane, courageous man.

In so doing, he has inadvertently helped 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 Australian of the Year (Politicom’s Choice) should be someone who has striven to ensure Australia Day remains massively supported and celebrated.

For the many who have no idea who the hell Bradf Banducci is – no, he isn’t an Italian celebrity chef or the new host of My Kitchen Rules – he is the CEO of Woolworths.

This is a supermarket now the subject of more inquiries than the late George Pell was a decade or so ago.

Brad wasn’t actually born here. For some this would be a minus, for others, who believe we’re all racists, being born elsewhere might be considered a fighting chance of not being racist.

Bradford was born in South Africa. [Editor’s Note: 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.

We can’t blame Banducci for all this, but we can blame him for the attack by Woolworths on Australian values.

His actions led Peter Dutton to call on Australians to boycott Woolworths. Many did, or at least wrapped themselves in flags and similar accoutrements while grocery shopping.

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 propaganda movement.

He has reminded us all to buy Aussie merch and to strike a counter-blow to the multi-culti virtue signallers who despise us and believe we’re stupid.

Thankfully, Brad has remembered to get Woolies to fly Indigenous flags and put up posters about Chinese New Year.

What a guy! What an Australian. [Editor’s Note: Again, drop the last point please.]

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.

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 – and without meaning to.

That they would be mightily pissed off with their “achievements” only adds to the pleasure.

AND THE WINNER IS…

Julian Leeser is Politicom’s model Australian of the Year.

No one saw it coming when he shuffled off the political stage. He made way for a star. And we have few stars in politics.

Leeser believed he was standing on principle and might be well thought of for it.

He was wrong – but for other reasons, we think very, very well of him. Can anyone be great without meaning to be? Leeser proves you can.

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 in the comments section. PC