Let's have a look back on the year that was. 2024 - there is a lot to digest, 

January:

It just wouldn’t be a normal year in Australian politics unless it kicked off in earnest with yet another controversy over Australia Day. As usual, we could always count on a clumsy attempt to accommodate noisy extremists by a large out-of-touch corporation – in this case Woolworths. Not content with blowing $1.56 million on the failed ‘yes’ campaign at last year’s voice referendum, in January this year Woolworths claimed it was making a “commercial decision” to no longer stock Australia Day merchandise. Already on the nose thanks to high grocery prices and appalling practices towards suppliers, the Woolworths plan was roundly condemned with Pauline Hanson saying: “Just because businesses like Woolworths command virtual monopolies does not give them the right to dictate to Australians how or when we can celebrate the founding and success of success of our country. These businesses do not get the right to decide our national day is offensive. If there are people who find Australia Day offensive, they’re welcome to find another homeland.”

February:

Queensland’s Supreme Court determined that COVID-19 vaccine mandates imposed on nurses and police in the state during the pandemic were unlawful. The determination vindicated the nurses and police officers who stood up for their individual rights against appalling vaccine coercion, and also vindicated One Nation’s attempt to enshrine these rights in legislation during the pandemic. Pauline Hanson welcomed the decision as a victory for individual freedoms and human rights: “From the very beginning I always maintained the mandates were unlawful and unconstitutional. From the very beginning I spoke against the vaccine coercion on essential workers like health practitioners and police. From the very beginning I spoke against the government and institutional discrimination imposed on those who refused the jabs, cheered on by a largely compliant media. I was right. One Nation was right.”

March:

No issue illustrates the great divide between the nation’s political class and the Australian people than immigration. Every honest poll on the issue shows most Australians want lower immigration, or think current levels are too high. With record numbers flooding over the border under Labor (more than 125,000 in January alone), One Nation introduced legislation for a national plebiscite on immigration numbers. Plebiscites have always been available to Australian governments to accurately gauge public sentiment but have been rarely used; only three times since 1901, the last time in 1977 to decide our national anthem. The major parties, the Greens and the cross bench all voted it down with Pauline Hanson noting: “They’re absolutely terrified of what they know Australians would say in a compulsory national vote on immigration levels. They’re not just ignoring the opinion polls. They’re ignoring the growing cities of tents, swags and cars as more Australians fall into homelessness and despair. They’re ignoring the huge numbers of people lining up to inspect a singe rental property. They’re ignoring the growing congestion in our cities. They’re ignoring the families struggling to find the money to pay skyrocketing rents. They’re ignoring the growing chorus against high immigration from economic commentators. It’s no wonder they’re running scared.”

April:

One Nation’s ‘Please Explain’ fish ‘n’ chip van made its debut just before Anzac Day, as One Nation headed for Brisbane’s McKillop Park (in the heart of the Queensland premier’s electorate) to provide a feed for families who were living in the park after being forced into homelessness, and to highlight the plight of Australians in a worsening national housing crisis driven by Labor’s record immigration. Our policy to address the housing crisis came into sharp focus: lowering immigration to reduce high demand for housing, banning foreign ownership to increase the supply of housing for Australians, enabling superannuation funds to invest part of an individual’s super as equity in the individual’s home to improve affordability, and improving availability by removing unnecessary restrictions on renting out rooms and granny flats.

May:

In a rare example of common sense, the Queensland government rejected a proposed trial to inject waste carbon dioxide into an aquifer that formed part of the Great Artesian Basin. Containing enough water to fill Sydney Harbour 130,000 times over, the Basin is a vital resource for farming, mining and remote communities that was threatened with contamination by the proposed trial. One Nation led the political campaign against the trial while the so-called party of farmers, the Nationals, were quietly pushing for it to go ahead. Pauline Hanson successfully moved a Parliamentary inquiry into the matter while farmers launched court action to force the Federal government to apply environmental legislation it had neglected to pursue: “We must examine how Labor, Greens and Coalition commitments to net zero emissions are driving activities that could destroy critical environmental assets like the Great Artesian Basin.”

June:

Revelations from Budget estimates showed the cost to Australian taxpayers of the National Disability Insurance Scheme (NDIS) had blown out by $2.4 billion in 2023-24 and that 90% of NDIS plan managers had ‘significant indicators of fraud’. In June, the NDIS minister – former Labor leader Bill Shorten – was finally acting to reign in some of the more ridiculous spending with some reforming legislation. It was revealed the NDIS was paying for many things it should not be such as luxury holidays, bogus therapies, prostitutes, narcotics, home deposits and even donations to political parties. In an unprecedented event in Australian politics, Pauline Hanson joined Bill Shorten for a press conference to urge the Senate to support the government’s reforms: “One Nation supports the NDIS in principle. These principles include support for people living with a disability who really need it, and only for what they really need. Anything else is a luxury taxpayers can’t afford and shouldn’t be paying for anyway. Following this principle is the only way to ensure the NDIS remains sustainable and continues to have the goodwill of Australian taxpayers.”

July:

There is no political party in Australia that fights to protect freedom of speech more than One Nation, and in July the party sought a Parliamentary inquiry to explore the ramifications of enshrining the right to free speech in the Australian Constitution. It should not have been a controversial proposition in Parliament, which serves as the seat of Australian democracy, but this was when Labor was promoting its hideous ‘misinformation and disinformation’ bill aimed at suppressing free speech. Labor and Greens actually voted against it, while cross bench senators just didn’t bother voting, forcing the motion’s defeat. Pauline was scathing in her response: “I am absolutely disgusted this simple, uncontroversial inquiry about putting the most important democratic right we have in our Constitution was voted down by Labor and the Greens. I’m equally appalled that certain cross benchers didn’t even bother to turn up. Free speech is a right that’s foundational, inalienable and essential. It deserves the protection that only our Constitution can provide. But here we are in 2024, where the woke left go to the most extraordinary extremes to silence, censor, de-platform and gag any view that does not meet their approval.”

August:

One of the better outcomes from last year’s referendum on an indigenous voice to Parliament was the exposure of the aboriginal industry’s profligate waste and failure to ‘close the gaps’. This waste came into focus in August when it was revealed taxpayer-funded grants to aboriginal corporations since 1 July had totalled more than $1.6 billion, outstripping every other sector by a large margin. It also coincided with the valedictory speech of Linda Burney, the indigenous Australians minister who had failed so spectacularly to deliver the voice for Labor despite getting $450 million to promote it. As Pauline said it: “Australian taxpayers’ money continues to be sucked into the black hole that is the aboriginal industry with no accountability, no transparency and no effective outcomes. More and more Australians are demanding answers about where all this money has gone. One of the answers, I suspect, was revealed in Linda Burney’s valedictory speech. She called the choice between practical reconciliation and symbolic reconciliation ‘false’, and the argument for prioritising practical outcomes ‘phoney’ and ‘outdated’. But symbolism delivers nothing of value – law and order, jobs, good homes and education – to indigenous Australians.”

September:

The march of hateful intolerant gender ideology has been faltering in some places overseas but not in Australia, where lawmakers – with the notable exception of One Nation – refuse to act to stop ‘trans’ women (biological men) invading private women’s spaces and women’s sports. This was highlighted by the infamous ‘Giggle v Tickle’ case where a trans individual succeeded in having a court order a woman-only online space accept him/her/it/them/whatever. It was also highlighted by the repeated thwarting of attempts by One Nation to inquire into the rapid rise in the use of puberty blockers on children at gender clinics, and the poor treatment of medical and psychological experts who raised concerns about the ‘gender affirmation’ approach. One Nation introduced legislation to amend the Sex Discrimination Act and restore biological definitions of men and women, but as usual Labor and the Greens colluded to block it. In response, Pauline highlighted the stunning hypocrisy lefties now wear as a badge of honour: “Labor and the Greens claim to support women’s rights, but their conduct today demonstrates they do not. Biological women seeking protection from men intruding on their privacy have no support from these hypocrites who think contrived gender identities are more important than human biological reality.”

October:

Perennial activist and complete moron Lydia Thorpe – a former Greens senator – had already established a strong reputation for idiotic and stupid behaviour but she took it to a new level in October when she confronted Charles III with her usual racist nonsense on his first official visit to Australia as the King. The hate-filled racist activist eventually found herself dragged out of the reception, and later censured by the Senate. Sadly, it was too little, too late. Having gotten away with her childish tantrums and pathetic antics for so long, Thorpe is no longer able to behave like a normal or reasonable adult and later in the year she was finally (and temporarily) kicked out of the Senate for throwing paperwork at Pauline Hanson in the chamber.

November:

When Australian universities were permitted open slather on recruiting international students, they rapidly developed an addiction. Foreign students must pay their fees up front, while Australian students can defer most of their fees until they earn enough to pay them. In the past 20 years, foreign students enrolments went up 370% and foreigners now make up almost 30% of all students at our universities. Most of them are not accommodated in student housing but in Australia’s extremely tight rental market, making our housing crisis much worse than it needs to be. Labor finally acted to curb foreign student enrolments and oh my, didn’t the universities scream in protest like any junkie denied their fix! It was another rare occasion when One Nation backed a Labor bill cutting enrolments by 53,000. As Pauline said: “This bill doesn’t go anywhere near far enough in reducing the appalling number of foreign students taking up university positions and accommodation at the expense of Australians, but it's a start. It’s still 53,000 foreigners not keeping 53,000 Australians out of secure accommodation.”

December:

Dual citizens can’t be members of the Federal parliament, but former Afghan immigrant Fatima Payman doesn’t let that inconvenient truth get in the way of her sense of entitlement to sit in the Senate. The entitlement in Payman is so strong that when One Nation sought to refer her eligibility to sit in Parliament under Section 44 of the Constitution, she pulled the race card immediately and screamed it was all about that rather than her apparently lacklustre efforts to renounce her Afghan citizenship, which fell far short of what was required from Malcolm Roberts and others caught up in the 2017 eligibility crisis. It’s almost an obsolete trope now when lefties scream racism to avoid responsibility and accountability but then again, no-one is accusing Payman of being innovative. If she’s so confident of her eligibility, she’d happily front an inquiry. She won’t, which suggests only one thing – she’s not confident of her eligibility. One Nation’s petition to Parliament to have Payman referred was launched in December and has received signatures from more than 50,000 people.

Have a merry Christmas and a happy New Year…