AAP senior correspondent Mike Hedge reviews some of the major issues that made headlines in Australia in 2013.
1. THE WILL OF THE PEOPLE. From the end of January when Julia Gillard announced a September poll, the nation was in election mode. The Labor Party, however, was not. Plagued with internal disputes fuelled largely by Kevin Rudd, the ALP spent the nation's longest election campaign lurching from crisis-to-crisis and leader-to-leader. Ms Gillard faced two challenges to her leadership in five months, surviving only one of them. As a result Mr Rudd returned to the position he vowed he wasn't seeking and, for the second time, lost it.
As a result Australia begins 2014 with Tony Abbott as the nation's 28th prime minister and a government that doesn't have the numbers in the Senate until July 1. The Abbott government also faces challenges, the most obvious among them the economy, the problems associated with asylum seekers and the Indonesian spying issue.
The 2013 poll that took the Coalition from level pegging at 72 seats each to a 35 seat majority came as much from Labor's failure to instil order in its ranks as from any inspirational Coalition policy. But it was a victory decided long before a vote was cast.
2. NEW KIDS ON THE BLOCK. The September federal election made one newsmaker an even bigger public figure and created a new world of parliamentary dialogue post July 2014. Billionaire businessman Clive Palmer, heading his own political party after a bust-up with the Liberal-National Party in Queensland, won the Sunshine Coast seat of Fairfax and drummed-up sufficient voter support elsewhere to have Glen Lazarus and Jacquie Lambie elected to the Senate under his Palmer United Party banner. Not content with two of his own senators, Palmer won over the most unlikely of parliamentarians - Ricky Muir a Victorian representing the Australian Motoring Enthusiast Party - to form an influential voting bloc in the upper house. With at least two other micro-party senators - David Leyonhjelm (Liberal Democrats) and Bob Day (Family First) - entering the Senate as well, the expanded crossbench will wield considerable influence over the Abbott government.
3. SPIES AND SMUGGLERS. Along with the usual unwanted luggage left behind by its predecessor, the Abbott government inherited a monumental embarrassment from Labor. The behaviour of Australian spies who tapped the phones of Indonesian President Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono, his wife and others may not be so unusual. But they got caught, thereby causing a major diplomatic embarrassment. Prime Minister Tony Abbott upset Mr Yudhoyono by failing to apologise, relations between the two countries soured dangerously, violent anti-Australian protests flared in Jakarta and all manner of retribution was threatened.
The fallout from the spying incident included threats by Indonesia to end its questionable co-operation in the long-running battle against people smugglers. The issue was one of the hardest fought in the election campaign and had shown signs of improvement with the introduction of the Coalition's Operation Sovereign Borders program on September 18. In November 2012, 2630 asylum seeker arrived in Australia on 43 boats. By late-November this year, four boats carrying fewer than 200 people had arrived.
4. SUFFER THE LITTLE CHILDREN. As the royal commission into institutional child abuse got underway during 2013, a Victorian government committee released a report that proved a shocking prelude to its national counterpart. In a scathing assessment of the Catholic Church, the Victorian inquiry found a culture of denial and cover-ups had led to thousands of sexual offences against children being committed by clergy over many decades. It recommended legislation and to help address the problem, but not in time to save the lives ruined and lost thanks to the evil and diabolical behaviour of dozens of priests and others who had vowed to nourish and protect their victims. The royal commission has already revealed shocking stories with many more to come.
5. BOOM TO BUST? One of the major themes of the federal election campaign, not surprisingly was economics. Kevin Rudd crowed how he and Labor saved Australia from the global financial crisis. Tony Abbott pointed to the sudden budget blowout, rising unemployment, carbon taxes and mining super profit levies as evidence of economic mismanagement. By many measures, the Australian economy is in a precarious state. Unemployment is rising, demand for natural resources is weakening, the dollar remains over-valued despite falling more than 10 per cent against the US unit and poor productivity and a narrow industrial base weigh on domestic economics. The Abbott administration will need a lot of good luck as well as good management to succeed in its ambition to have the budget in the black within its first term.
6. JUST LUCKY, I GUESS. Former NSW government minister Eddie Obeid says his wealth and success is the result of hard work, honest dealing and uncanny coincidence.
The NSW Independent Commission Against Corruption (ICAC) leaned more toward the view of its lead counsel Geoffrey Watson who likened the alleged behaviour of Obeid and colleagues to that of the notorious rogue soldiers who introduced corruption to NSW in the early days of the colony.
"If it is corruption, then it is corruption on a scale probably unexceeded since the days of the Rum Corps," Mr Watson said in his opening address.
In some ways, the Obeid story is one of a penniless migrant who made good. In others, according to ICAC it is one of rampant plundering of the public purse that has placed Obeid at the centre of one of the biggest political scandals in a state that has had its share of them. Certainly much of the wealth that made Obeid NSW's richest politician was earned through honest toil. But as ICAC heard over much of 2013, serious questions need to be answered about the rest of it.
After months of hearings ICAC found Obeid, his son Moses and fellow former NSW Labor government minister Ian Macdonald engaged in corrupt conduct and has recommended criminal charges be laid against them. The major allegation is that Macdonald, who as NSW Minister for Mineral Resources, decided in 2008 to allow coal mining on property the Obeids had just purchased in the Bylong Valley north-west of Sydney.
7. DOPING IN SPORT. One of the most stunning revelations of 2013 emerged in February. As significant as it was, it spent the next six months or so becoming less serious.
A 12-month investigation by the Australian Crime Commission into doping rocked some of the biggest names in the biggest games - despite its outcome being poorly handled by an over-excited government.
The initial reaction included the lament by former Australian Sports Anti-Doping Authority boss Richard Ings that February 7, the day the results of the investigation became public, was the worst day ever in the country's sporting history.
"This is not a black day in Australian sport, this is the blackest day in Australian sport," Ings said.
In the end the Essendon AFL club was fined $2 million, denied the chance to play in the finals series and coach James Hird was suspended for 12 months.Cronulla Sutherland, the rugby league club most heavily involved in the scandal is yet to be sanctioned and no charge has been laid against sports scientist Stephen Dank who was a common link throughout.
8. TOWARD RECOGNITION. On the fifth anniversary of Kevin Rudd's apology to the stolen generations, Australia moved a step closer to constitutional recognition of its original inhabitants. In an appropriately harmonious act of unity between politicians from both sides and the people who are the country's least-well represented, the Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Peoples Recognition Act passed the lower house.
Then Prime Minister Julia Gillard and opposition leader Tony Abbott rightly committed themselves to recognising the "unique and special place" of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islanders in the fabric of their country. What Ms Gillard described as "the unhealed wound that even now lies open at the heart of our national story", Mr Abbott dubbed a "stain on our soul". Indigenous leaders including Patrick Dodson and Lowitja O'Donoghue witnessed the moment from the floor of the house applauding as they received what for 113 years they had been officially denied. The Act paves the way for a national referendum it is anticipated will rubber-stamp the Act and provide for inclusion of a recognition clause in the constitution.
9. BIKIE BILLS. The Vicious Lawless Disestablishment Bill; the Tattoo Parlours Bill; and the Criminal Law (Criminal Organisations Disruption) Amendment Bill. The Queensland parliament decided to get tough on outlaw motor cycle gangs over the past year, passing a string of new laws aimed at curbing their influence and behaviour.
The brazen and violent behaviour of the gangs prompted the Queensland government's action, for which Premier Campbell Newman was unapologetic.
"They are very tough laws - the toughest in Australia," Mr Newman said. "The unequivocal purpose of these laws is to destroy these criminal organisations. I say this ... take off your colours, get a real job, act like decent, law-abiding human beings, and become proper citizens in the state of Queensland and you won't have to go to jail. But if you persist .... you will be destroyed."
It was a strong lead followed one way or another, by most other states where bikie gangs have become heavily involved in, among other things, drug running, extortion and arms trading.
10.HOT, DRY AND DISASTROUS. The year started with bushfire emergencies in two states. Tasmania lost 200 homes - most near the Tasman Peninsula town of Dunalley - in the island state's worst fire disaster in decades. Amazingly, no lives no lives were lost. A single photo of a family sheltering under a jetty while flames leapt around them came to symbolise the event.
Around the same time, NSW was fighting its own blazes hit by bushfires. A tortuous heatwave precipitated the January fires. One of the largest fires had its centre in the Warrumbungle National Park and destroyed some 50 homes. The two weeks of fires were preceded by temperatures at least 15 deg above average for the first eight days on the year and a record for Sydney of 45.8 deg on January 18.
But they were followed eight months later by even more destructive blazes. The official fire season started in September only a week after the end of winter, as early as anyone can remember. A month later fires in the Blue Mountains, Upper Hunter and the southern tablelands took hold in earnest. In around 10 days they destroyed 248 buildings and burned some 118,000 hectares. And the most dangerous months are still to come.
