It’s that time of year again: the season of awards and honours. This year, there seem to be masses of them. We had just recovered from the Oscars, the Golden Globes and the Emmys when the Queen’s Birthday honours descended on us, with the Booker Prize and the Walkleys coming up fast on the rails and the announcement of the Nobel prize-winners well underway. And there is always the congregation of the Living National Treasures lurking in the background, in case you missed out on the others. Finally, there is the ultimate luvvies’ wet dream – the Human Rights awards.

Most of the recipients of these honours are chosen by tribes of elites appointing one another to titles and honorifics, like the real estate agents on your local council taking it in turns to approve each other’s sub-divisions. Most normal people have virtually no hope of receiving an honour in any of the categories presided over by their betters, unless of course they discover with the aid of a grant from the Australia Council that they are really part-aboriginal and deserve to be recognised as the nation’s leading unpublished transgender poet.

Accordingly, being concerned for the underdog, we have been looking at those of our compatriots who have not yet been recognised for the unique contribution they have made to society. Thus, we have found that there is indeed a group of unrecognised champions of one cause or another who should be given their rightful place in the pantheon of service. But their contribution is not the normal one that gets you written up in the Age or lauded on the ABC. Indeed, the common quality of these outliers is that their favourite cause is, or soon will be, a dismal failure. Indeed, the fastest known way of achieving that objective is to have one of this collection of thought-leaders and social activists appointed to be its patron or chair. Their patron saint should be Saint Jude, he of the lost causes, because, if a cause is not lost when a member of this group becomes its patron or chief advocate, it soon will be.

For example, the bandanna republican movement picked up the celebrity Peter FitzSimons as its chairman and public face. Not only does this gentleman present as a refugee from a theatrical outfitter, but his every utterance must surely dissuade any sensible person from having anything to do with the republic. Particularly so is his plan to choose the head of state without allowing the people a vote, a system that FitzSimons’ organisation laughingly describes as ‘robust’. And what a miraculous coincidence it is that the steady decline in the fortunes of the republic has occurred on his watch. So, for those of us who do not want a republic, we are forever grateful for his sterling effort in keeping it at bay by arguing in favour of it. Of course, when he retires, the republic may get a new air of respectability. Fortunately, there will still be Malcolm Turnbull and, if he reprises his magnificent performance of 1999, the republic will again be defeated. I hope he does not change sides, as he did on the Voice. With Turnbull opposing the republic, it might produce an upsurge of support.

The same principle, the celebrities’ kiss of death, applies to the Voice. The whole promotion of that cause must be designed to have people reject it, and its supporters are making a very good fist of it. You would think that to enlist support for such a radical proposal, its champions would be moderate and circumspect instead of frightening the horses. But no, the minister in charge, Linda Burney, and her fellow advocates seem hell-bent on cementing the notion that the Voice will have the widest possible ambit over everything that a government can do, which must make Australians wonder why they have a parliament. And the fatal support of the Greens makes it clear they are more interested in using the Voice to uproot our whole system of government, which it will. People will also be rightly suspicious when they see so-called business leaders falling over each other to support the Voice; when cartels get together, the public pays the price, and the people know it. Then, there should have been an intellectual side to the argument, but academics like Greg Craven simply ridicule lawyers who have a different view from them and who might know something about the law because they work in it, instead of talking about it. And not to be left out, Albanese has given the proposal its own comical twist by having his ministers dress up in their Akubra hats and join in all the mumbo-jumbo of smoking ceremonies and pseudo voodoo that it invokes. So, by advocating the Voice, this new establishment is doing a very good job of making the people increasingly dubious about the whole concept. I hope they keep it up. My only worry is that out in the twilight zone of the Greens After Dark is Senator Lidia Thorpe who is vigorously opposed to the Voice because it is another colonial experiment and not revolutionary enough. With her vigorous opposition, the Voice might even be passed.

Finally, I have been going cold turkey to wean myself off the ABC and I have had some success in ignoring their radio propaganda. But I found it hard to throw off the iron grip of Insiders and 7.30 until their major advocates, David Speers and Sarah Ferguson, came along. I have found the former so obnoxious in interrupting his panel of journalists and his own interviewees that he has forced me to abandon his program. And I cannot abide another night of Sarah Ferguson and her concoction of frowning, grimacing, arm-waving and of course her persistent and rude interruptions.

So now you can see that the great promoters of political causes are their own worst enemy. I deserve an honour for exposing it.