Vote now for Crikey’s 2025 Arsehat of the Year. It’s a crowded field
On the occasion of the 20th anniversary cricketAs part of ‘s prestigious year-end awards, we are calling for nominations for our most sought-after award, Arsehat of the Year. cricket The readership came, as always.
Below are people looking at the state of the world at the beginning of the year and thinking, “Yeah, but how can I get things done?” worse?”
In past years we’ve generally tried to keep our list of candidates short, but in honor of the free-flowing lists of our heritage, this time we’re giving you plenty of options. It is a testament to the situation that had been going on for a quarter of a century by the 2000s that we still had to exclude a few nominations. Despite the extended list, we are still looking at one of the most competitive fields we have ever created.
Presented in alphabetical order:
Anthony Albanese: We always need to think more about including a prime minister in this list; This is difficult and unforgiving work. However, like his predecessor Scott Morrison, Albanese ranks easily. Although we could include many others – for example, due to the over-involvement of special envoy Jillian Segal tackling antisemitism, or Deputy Prime Minister Richard Marles and his increasingly deteriorating Defense management, and Australia’s increasing entanglement with the increasingly out-of-control US – we ultimately come back to Albanese and his cynical approach to his time in the top job. Open transparency, gambling reform and, given his honesty, his government might easily have been mistaken for the rabble he had now soundly defeated.
Professor Warren Bebbington: It’s a measure of the strength of the field that Professor Bebbington might have missed out on a well-deserved nomination this year if a reader hadn’t reminded us that, as chairman of the board of Melbourne University Press (MUP), Bebbington “carried the can for the demise of an 85-year-old literary institution.” meanjinand seems to thwart any opportunity to save him. For bloodless managerialism and cultural disrespect”.
Bureau of Meteorology: For the new website, of course.
Andrew Hastie: Say what you want about Tony Abbott or Kevin Rudd, their attempts to destroy their own party’s leadership were at least somewhat believable. On the other hand, Hastie tells his leader Sussan Ley a few headaches He further injured the opposition’s deplorable position as a policy maker (in a year when he was already going to keep Panadol afloat on his own) and without actually pulling the trigger and trying to seize the party leadership. He also received a number of posts for his tone-deaf video, advocating nostalgia for, as Bernard Keane put it, “let’s go back to the 1970s and drive deathtrap muscle cars”.
Justin Hemmes: Merivale hospo don hosts a Liberal fundraiser at his Vaucluse estate ahead of the May election, adding to the list of disasters that have befallen former opposition leader Peter Dutton and making his Arsehat of the Year debut for a number of reasons. After taking over half of Sydney and making it almost impossible to go out for dinner or a drink in the CBD without lining his pockets, he now plans to – as one reader put it – “ruin Melbourne’s hospitality/nightlife too”. That’s all while Merivale is being blamed Exploiting staff, ignoring sexual harassment allegations, and putting VIP customers ahead of worker safety.
Pauline Hanson: Hanson somehow avoided winning this coveted award Crikey’but judging by the number of nominations it received from our readers this year, it’s among the early favorites for 2025. Hanson seems to have gotten into it”I’m going door to door trying to shock people” period, reaches its zenith and is best exemplified by reheated demonstration of wearing a burqa In parliament. “There’s nothing under this burqa,” Bernard Keane first wrote in August 2017, and it’s a measure of Hanson’s unwavering toxic politics that you can make the same argument again almost a decade later. Adding to this stinking salad is the fact that, if the polls are anything to go by, working.
Barnaby Joyce: Another reason for Hanson’s number of nominations was her year-long flirtation with former national leader Barnaby Joyce; This started, as we noted, “shortly afterwards.” Joyce was seen lying on the ground “He was in a sewer in Canberra, pouring obscenities into his phone”. Joyce has been nominated in droves this year and has managed to turn an almost pathological need for the spotlight – and the resulting abandonment of his old party – into what we might call a media storm if it weren’t so slow and tedious. Call it a media drizzle day.
Linda Reynolds: Like Barnaby, former government minister Linda Reynolds is on this list for making personal grievances the country’s problem. Looks like his attempt wasn’t verified enough bankrupt rape victim Reynolds continued through successful defamation lawsuit against former employee Brittany Higgins – aided and Encouraged by friends in the media – a demoralizing and demoralizing public trial of an already sad event.
Meg O’Neill: Woodside CEO got approval for one interview – that’s how bad it was. “It has been a fascinating journey to watch the debate, especially among young people who have a very ideological, almost zealous view that fossil fuels are bad and renewables are good, happily plugging in their devices, ordering things from Shein and Temu – i.e. having something small shipped to their homes, without ever realizing the energy and carbon impact of their actions.” recorded in May. It is true that young people need to do more to restructure global supply chains and the functioning of the energy system. I think we need a completely neutral fossil fuel CEO to show them the way.
Tim Nicholls: One reader nominated the Queensland health minister for many reasons: “Not only has he decided to undermine health services for transgender youth, he has also ignored basic legal requirements to do so and has lost court battles over it. Health, meanwhile, is an ongoing cancer on the QLD Government’s agenda, poor metrics and ever-spreading news.”
Dan Tehan: Tehan has indeed ‘shadowed’ the ‘shadow energy and emissions reductions minister’, overseeing a climate change policy that even Coalition deniers think might be a bit much, and, as one reader put it, ‘made a number of new LNP leaders look like Mensa graduates’ in the process.
Murray Watts: There is also the Labor Party’s work on the environment. Minister Murray Watt capped off the year with a win by passing Labour’s long-delayed environment bills through parliament, making some much-needed improvements, though not enough to win the support of the Greens. But boy oh boy, it comes from a low bar. There were attempts to remove independent approval processes in legislation and the decisive failure that launched his tenure as environment minister: the approval of a proposal to extend the life of Woodside’s Western Australia gas plant beyond 2030.
TimWilson: Tim Wilson, of course, delivered the only good news the Liberal Party had in May 2025, winning against teal independent Zoe Daniels. Wilson hasn’t added to his list of public embarrassments since returning to office, but if anyone wants to understand how important it is to get moderate Liberals back into office, look no further than the hugely effective work Wilson and his colleagues have done to influence Coalition climate policy.
honorable mentions
US President Donald Trump was mentioned many times by readers but was disqualified on the grounds that he is not Australian. Part 44 approach We went to Arsehats this year. I owe a big thank you to the reader who put forward Peter Dutton, despite Dutton’s withdrawal from the competition a few years ago, because he “has to win something”, having approached the 2025 elections with the care and skill of the Hindenburg designer.
Moreover, I was devastated to report that multiple readers took the time to highlight “Charlie Lewis” as a candidate.
