Happy New Year? This magazine always tries to look on the bright side so let’s kick off with the positive news before sounding a warning note of the perils that lie ahead. 2023 was a good year for Australia. The defining political event of last year was the resounding defeat of the woke, sorry, the indigenous Voice to parliament. This was the first vote anywhere in the Western world that saw a national referendum specifically on the  creed and ideology of wokeness. A vote on a policy built on a ‘vibe’, lacking any detail and any genuine cost-benefit analysis. In other words, a typical ‘progressive’ concept. And wokeness lost. We are proud to say that we were at the very forefront of turning what everyone expected would be a resounding Yes vote for the idea into a landslide No. Indeed this magazine was the only mainstream media outlet in all of Australia brave enough to nail our colours to the mast with a striking and unambiguous No graphic image as early as June of last year. Nobody else had the guts. Others bleat on about being ‘on the right side of history’  – we actually were.

This year there is always the possibility of an early federal election. In which case, we will campaign just as passionately and determinedly for a change of government. We believe the Coalition is the only choice for Australia if this country is to avoid sinking into an irreversible Argentinian-style descent of lowering living standards, stifling bureaucracy, crony corporate/political corruption and vanishing prosperity. Unlike under Mr Turnbull or Mr Morrison, it is clear that the Coalition under Peter Dutton understands that wokeness is a dangerous ideological enemy, not some benign force you play footsies with when it suits you. We also believe that, as with the Voice, the majority of Australians are increasingly waking up to the Albanese government’s true colours; the overt ideology behind every decision, the idiocy of its cabinet members and the incompetence with which it governs. In the words of a famous 1970s rock group, ‘we won’t get fooled again’.

So the good news for Australia is that we are already past the halfway mark of the failed Albanese experiment and heading towards at least two terms of Coalition government, possibly more. The bad news for Australia is that it will require bold policy decisions and significant pain to haul on the handbrake and turn this country around.

Unlike most conservative commentators, this magazine does not shy away from embracing the likelihood that before the year is out America will again have voted for Donald Trump to be president. The reality is that, like the Voice on steroids, the 2024 US presidential election is above all a vote on the socialist, even communist, and indeed poisonous ideology of wokeness. Much as the ALP is no longer the party of Hawke or Keating, so too the Democrats are no longer the party of Kennedy or even Clinton. When all other media outlets, even conservatives, were cautiously welcoming the ‘moderate’ Joe Biden’s victory in 2020, we accurately predicted he would kill world peace, particularly in the Middle East. Sadly, we actually underestimated how bad he would be. Nobody could have imagined the depths of depravity and the horrors of 7 October, a direct result of Mr Biden re-embracing Iran, bribing the ayatollahs for hostage exchanges, dismissing the Abraham Accords and abandoning non-Islamist Afghanis to the murderous Taleban. We still have twelve months left of Mr Biden and Kamala Harris, and it will likely be a very tumultuous time as the West’s enemies seize the dying days of this woeful administration to cause even more havoc. It is unlikely, for example, that China will sit on its hands much longer before making an overtly aggressive move to further its designs on Taiwan.

Could Cop28 have seen ‘peak climate madness’? Let us hope so. Our hapless Energy and Climate Change Minister made a goose of himself (nothing new there) by not only serving up a bonkers ‘acknowledgment of country’ to the bemused oil delegates in the shifting sands of Dubai  – thereby exposing the stupidity of the entire inter-connected woke ideology – but worse he failed to grab the golden opportunity to embrace nuclear energy as the only credible path to ‘net zero’. This set us apart from our major trading partners and Aukus allies, an act which the Albanese government then compounded by voting for the Gaza ceasefire (the US voted against and Britain abstained) and then refusing the US request for a warship for the Red Sea. Fail, fail, fail.

On other woke agendas there are also signs the tide is turning. At the last federal election Mr Morrison missed the opportunity of a lifetime by burying the transgender issue and silencing his candidate for Warringah, Katherine Deves. There is no question that were a referendum to be held on the issue of women’s rights in sports and so on versus ‘transgender rights’, the result would be even clearer than the Voice result; probably around 85 to 15, except, of course in the ACT, where it would be the opposite. The Coalition must now realise ‘culture war’ issues are there to be won and to steal votes from the blue-collar left.

This year will be another important year for The Spectator Australia, and we are grateful for your support. Last year saw our subscription numbers reach record highs  – so thank you!  – and we of course also offer you our must-read daily online magazine Flat White, Spectator TV and The Spectator Australia’s ‘Australiana’ podcast, not to mention daily and weekly emails. Happy New Year? You betcha.