Christian Porter class action lawsuits
Attorney-General Christian Porter (Image: AAP/Lukas Coch)

The Arsehat of the Year poll has comes to resemble the US election. Two candidates, uniquely awful in their own ways, have attracted monumental voter turnout from their respective bases (people who read Crikey in the case of Prime Minister Scott Morrison, and people who do what Jordan Shanks tells them in the case of Jordan Shanks). But for now, we’re casting our eye on some of the other candidates.

Christian Porter must be wondering what a guy’s gotta do to win an Arsehat around here. He was a pre-poll favourite, and in a year less relentlessly awful, less full to the brim with sleaze, less crammed with avarice, he would surely walk it home by a margin similar to last year’s winner, Angus Taylor.

Apart from sailing through unscathed the alleged misconduct that made him a national security risk, this year he continued his ongoing, sadistically drawn-out prosecution of Bernard Collaery and Witness K. And then, summing up the impunity with which this government operates, he ended the year with an attempt to gut Australia’s worker protections.

Despite this, he’s currently languishing in third, ahead of fellow underachievers Gladys Berejiklian and Alan Tudge.

In terms of the Person of the Year we can only express our great disappointment that Zoey Salucci-McDermott — who summed up so much of 2020 back in January by being forced into a handshake with Scott Morrison — isn’t getting more votes.

She’s down there with all the other also-rans, aka basically everyone who isn’t Victorian Premier Dan Andrews. It’s looking like it would take a hell of an upset for anyone to overtake him.

You can still make a difference! If you haven’t already, have your say by voting here.