While other media outlets suck up to the rich and powerful under the guise of doing a “list”, this year Crikey wants to recognise a higher honour: being a shitstirrer.
We’ve assembled our inaugural 2024 Shitstirrers Index for the 10 biggest nuisances to powerful people, drawn from more than 1,000 nominations from our readers (let’s just say the term resonated).
The hallmark of a true shitstirrer is that you know one when you see one. But given we were inundated with names, the council considered a few questions to help separate the good from the truly great shitstirrers.
We thought about the biggest shitstorms this year and who was behind them. We weighed up who punched (up) above their weight, plus whose handiwork left a lasting impact. And front of mind: who had fun (and showed flair) doing it? You can read more about our rationale here.
Earlier this week, we revealed those ranked 10-8 and 7-5.
Today, congratulations to those who ranked 4-2.
4. Fatima Payman
Senator Fatima Payman earns distinction on our Shitstirrers Index in at least one key way: unlike our other political renegades, when her shitstirring began, Payman was a member of the government. She had a lot to lose.
As one of the only members of any major party to talk directly and clearly about the horrors visited on Gaza by Israel, an act she backed up by crossing the floor to vote in favour of a motion declaring “the need for the Senate to recognise the State of Palestine”, Payman was pissing off her own colleagues.
To illustrate what an act of “punching up” that stance represents, the young first-term senator then stood firm as those colleagues were explicitly aided by every major publication in the country in anonymously discrediting and humiliating her.
“If calling out genocide, racism and hypocrisy makes me a shitstirrer, then I’ll wear the badge with pride,” Payman told Crikey. “And I promise to stir even harder next year.”
3. Taylor Auerbach
Thai masseuses, cocaine, photographs of crass and furtive text messages, courtroom drama, furious backgrounding, a $25 million mansion and a bizarre press conference — these were the props and plot points used by journalist-turned-journalism-subject Taylor Auerbach as he spectacularly forced his way into the spotlight during the Bruce Lehrmann defamation trial.
Just days before a judgment was due for what had already been the biggest media case of the year, the little-known Auerbach launched a last-minute legal intervention to share sordid allegations of working as a producer on Seven’s Spotlight program as it interviewed Lehrmann about claims that he had raped Brittany Higgins.
The word “explosive” gets thrown around a lot these days, but how else could you describe Auerbach’s behaviour? The blast radius from Auerbach started with Lehrmann, but soon grew to incinerate broadcast veteran Mark Llewellyn, Steve Jackson, Seven as a company and even Auerbach himself after he was laid off by his new home at Sky News Australia.
Is Auerbach a good guy? It would be remiss of us not to allude to some odious reporting about his conduct. Was he doing it for the right reasons? Probably not. But these are not disqualifying qualities for a shitstirrer. During the Lehrmann defamation trial, Justice Michael Lee put it best when he surmised that even if Auerbach wasn’t “some noble, public-interested man coming along to get something off his chest, and to assist His Majesty’s justices”, that doesn’t mean he can’t be a “truth-teller”. It only matters that he took down people bigger than him.
Even if he ultimately had limited impact on the Lehrmann trial, Auerbach’s penchant for the dramatic puts him in the pantheon for shitstirrers. In the middle of the Lehrmann circus, Auerbach was the spinning trapeze artist, somehow defying all odds to hang on and steal the show. (Auerbach declined to accept this honour, saying that he would only recognise it if he was crowned the year’s biggest shitstirrer.)
2. Lidia Thorpe
There are few people in Australian politics so unafraid of being a thorn in the side of the establishment as Lidia Thorpe. The former Greens senator has made full use of her right to speak her mind since going independent.
In October, she made international headlines by shouting “You are not my king” at Charles III when the monarch visited Parliament. The move was controversial — those who objected included many of her Senate colleagues, who censured her in a symbolic expression of disapproval — but being universally liked is obviously not the job of a true shitstirrer. It also shouldn’t have come as a surprise to anyone who watched Thorpe call Charles’ predecessor, Elizabeth, a coloniser as the senator was sworn into Parliament in 2022.
In 2024, a year when the issue of First Nations disadvantage notably vanished from front pages following Labor’s failure to convince Australians to vote for the Voice to Parliament, Thorpe, a prominent critic of the Voice, has managed to not just make Australia pay attention to her people’s plight, but the rest of the world as well.
“I will forever take the piss out of the colony,” Thorpe told Crikey. “And I encourage all those living on stolen land to also question this outdated, racist, unlawful and unjust occupation with a foreign coloniser king.”
Tune in tomorrow when we will reveal Crikey’s Shitstirrer of the Year.
