I think we can all agree that 2023 continues the general historical trend of the century — it was predictably awful in unpredictable ways. But whose fault is this? As with every year you can have your say, by voting in Crikey‘s end-of-year awards for that most prestigious and coveted piece of recognition: Arsehat of the Year.
(FYI: if you’re new around these parts, it’s worth noting that Peter Dutton, like Scott Morrison and Tony Abbott before him, has been retired from contention for this award, given his unfair advantages over every other competitor. If you’re not sure what we mean, recall more or less anything he’s done, either this year or since you first heard of him.)
Ben Roberts-Smith
We’ve previously noted that arsehattery is a hugely versatile term. But Roberts-Smith might be one of the clearest cases of ticking possibly every single box of qualification. This year, his defamation case against the Nine papers, after years of damaging revelations came to a close.
Justice Anthony Besanko found the 2018 reports alleging that Roberts-Smith had committed a number of war crimes — published by The Age, The Sydney Morning Herald and The Canberra Times, which he then sued — were established to be substantially true. All this with the backing of some of Australia’s most powerful figures — primarily media baron Kerry Stokes. Put it this way: in the most litigant-friendly jurisdiction in the world, Ben Roberts-Smith brought about a situation in which he became undefamable.
As Crikey put it at the time: “Given the testimony the case had brought about and the incredible details publicised, even had he won it would have been the very definition of a Pyrrhic victory. As it happens, he lost, and lost and lost.”
Kerry Stokes
Defamation action is costly, both for the media defendants and the complainants. Luckily, media mogul Kerry Stokes is here to help out. Famously, his network paid Roberts-Smith’s legal fees and kept him employed in the company until just after the verdict.
When, in November, Nick McKenzie and Chris Masters won their Walkley award for the coverage that kicked off that case, it was Seven’s table alone that declined to join the standing ovation the pair received. Incidentally, that night Seven was up for “Scoop of the Year” for its “bombshell” interview with Bruce Lehrmann, an honour complicated by the revelation that they had been paying Lehrmann’s rent at an upmarket Northern Beaches house for an entire year.
Anthony Albanese
After a strong start to life in government, the prime minister has faltered this year. It all started during a muddled end to the month of April, where the hitherto gaffe-light PM put pretty much every possible step wrong. From then on he had periods where he resembled the Sam Kerr of own goals. This peaked with the campaign to enshrine an Indigenous Voice to Parliament in Australia’s constitution.
Whatever the merits of the proposal, and whatever the merits of the various opposition to it, Albanese pinned a good deal of political capital and goodwill on the campaign, and its heavy, unequivocal defeat is also his. No great marks, either, for his government’s ongoing approval of fossil fuel projects, the ongoing prosecution of whistleblowers like David McBride and Richard Boyle, or the horribly timed help extended to Qantas’ commercial prospects.
Jacinta Nampijinpa Price, Nyunggai Warren Mundine, Gary Johns, Michaelia Cash et al
Remembering, again, that Peter Dutton is ineligible for the award, this assortment of No spruikers gets a special collective mention. There was a principled case for voting No, and thanks to the coverage received by the people listed above, you’d barely know it existed. Instead, 50% or more of the coverage of the Voice campaign was given over to the gleefully spread misinformation of their campaign, the proud reheated appeal to ignorance (“if you don’t know, vote No”) and stoking of grievance, not to mention some old-fashioned unleavened racist rhetoric. Their work diminished the country, if from a lower position than some progressives might wish to believe.
Tim Gurner
Property developer, eternal youth spruiker and owner of a forehead that snipers dream of, Tim Gurner came to global prominence (as ever, we do ourselves proud), courtesy of The Australian Financial Review, by not so much saying the quiet part out loud regarding the relationship between business and workers as screeching it at the top of his lungs:
Unemployment has to jump 40 to 50% in my view. We need to remind people that they work for the employer, not the other way around. Tradies have definitely pulled back on productivity. They have been paid a lot to do not too much in the last few years, and we need to see that change.
The punchline you could see coming around a corner was, of course, that this rugged believer in hard work and self-starting got started thanks to loans from his dad and grandfather.
Alan Joyce
It’s been a banner year for business in Australia. But none could hold a candle to departing Qantas CEO Alan Joyce, who gave an omnishambles masterclass in his “farewell tour“. Qantas had already treated its reputation to the kind of cool, expert dismantling that we usually associate with Robert Jordan and bridges by the time the Australian Competition and Consumer Commission’s case against Qantas was made public: the continued sale of tickets for flights that had been cancelled weeks — sometimes months — earlier, and the refusal to tell people foolish enough to have trusted the airline. Eventually, the farewell tour was cancelled mid-encore and Joyce, with nothing to his name but his pride and $150 million dollars, was jettisoned.
