Phew. The Year in Review.
Perhaps the best thing you can say for 2017 is that it wasn’t as bad as 2016.
Proclaiming the year gone to be the Worst Year Ever has become a holiday tradition on par with listening to Paul Kelly’s “How to Make Gravy” and pretending to enjoy roast turkey. While 2017 didn’t quite reach the exospheric levels of awful that 2016 did, waking up at 4:30 each morning to put Schwartz Media’s The Briefing together puts me in pole position to declare that it came pretty bloody close.
As I write this, it is exactly one year since reality show host, alleged sexual predator and white supremacist Donald Trump was elected President of the United States of America. That fact coloured everything about 2017, in ways tangible and tangential. The bizarre fight White House Press Secretary Sean Spicer picked with the media about the crowd size at Trump’s inauguration on January 20 would be remembered fondly as a moment of relative sanity, given what was to come.
The inauguration was overshadowed by the Women’s March, the largest single day of protest in US history. The Trump administration had its first proper crisis a week later, when an executive order banning refugees and migrants from seven predominantly-Muslim nations from entering the United States sparked massive protests and legal challenges that continue today.
February began with Trump testing his diplomacy-by-Twitter approach on poor old Malcolm Turnbull, bemoaning his predecessor’s “dumb deal” agreeing to take refugees from Australian-run detention centres. The outburst followed a tense and extremely weird phone conversation between Trump and Turnbull, the transcript of which leaked in August. Turnbull cathartically mocked Trump at the Canberra press gallery’s Midwinter Ball in June, but his satisfaction must have been undercut somewhat by the footage some enterprising attendee filmed on their phone and posted online.
On February 13, defence adviser General Mike Flynn was forced to resign for misleading officials about his contact with Russian ambassador Sergey Kislyak, the first in an endless train of firings and resignations. Spicer resigned on July 21 after months of agonising performances at the press briefing lectern, leaving comedian Melissa McCarthy without a foil. White House Chief of Staff Reince Priebus bit the dust on July 28, replaced by former general and Confederacy enthusiast John Kelly.
Communications director and gel-haired New York finance shark Anthony Scaramucci followed him three days later, having lasted just ten days. White House chief strategist, Breitbart chief and neo-fascist Steve Bannon went on August 18, after a furious response to Trump’s suggestion that there were “good people” at the white supremacist rally in Charlottesville, Virginia that left an anti-fascist protester dead.
Most spectacularly, Trump fired FBI Director James Comey on May 9, an act Comey would claim a month later was a deliberate attempt to undermine the FBI’s investigation into Russian interference in the 2016 election. On October 31, indictments against former Trump campaign chair Paul Manafort and aide Rick Gates kicked off the Russia investigation in earnest. Manafort, Gates and adviser George Papadopoulos, who is cooperating with authorities after pleading guilty to lying to the FBI, may be the first domino to fall in a chain reaction that leads to the President. If we’re not all dead before then.
Amazingly, some not-directly Trump-related things happened too. January 26 was met with Invasion Day protests in Australia, and throughout the year several local councils voted to abandon citizenship ceremonies on the day, despite federal government sanctions. On May 25, the First Nations National Constitutional Convention rejected the government’s planned referendum on constitutional recognition, instead calling for an Indigenous Voice to Parliament. Their proposal would go ignored until October 26, when the government summarily dismissed it.
On July 4, 35-year-old Kamilaroi man Eric Whittaker died from head injuries sustained in Sydney’s Parklea Correctional Centre. On September 22, 22-year-old Aboriginal man Tane Chatfield died after being found unconscious in his cell at Tamworth Correctional Centre. States and territories continued to drag their feet on reforms that would make Indigenous deaths in custody less likely.
On July 13, Greens Senator Scott Ludlam resigned after discovering he was a New Zealand citizen, and brought half the Parliament crashing down behind him. Three months and a High Court judgement later, Australia was one deputy Prime Minister down and no closer to resolving the citizenship crisis. We were too busy spending $122 million on a very large opinion poll asking if we should let same-sex couples get married, even as Finland, Bermuda and Germany got on with it.
The postal vote aside, elections around the world generally proved to be less of a horrorshow han the year before. In May, France elected centrist Emmanuel Macron over far-right Marine Le Pen, copying the Netherlands’ repudiation of wild-eyed loon Geert Wilders in favour of centre-right Mark Rutte in March.
On June 8, UK Prime Minister Theresa May came within an inch of losing to a scruffy, bearded socialist with a Spanish cat named ‘El Gato’. The Grenfell tower fire six days later turned public sentiment firmly against the Tory austerity politics that caused it, and May’s Thick Of It-esque speech to the Conservative Party conference on October 4 cast doubt on whether she’ll last long enough to lead Britain out of the EU in 2019. She survives, for now.
Over the ditch, a 37-year-old amateur DJ ousted a conservative National government of nine years vintage on September 23, largely thanks to a septuagenarian with very odd ideas about immigration. Her fishing-show star partner reportedly laments not being able to order takeaway anymore.
War, violence and disaster pockmarked the year, as they always do. On April 4, more than 80 people were killed when Syrian President Bashar al-Assad launched a chemical weapons attack on the rebel-held town of Khan Sheikhoun. While Mosul and Raqqa were liberated from the Islamic State in June and October, the civilian death toll from US-led air strikes in both cities was catastrophic. Trump drew praise for his swift response to Hurricanes Irma and Harvey in September, only to abandon Puerto Rico to darkness and devastation when Hurricane Maria hit. 276 people died in a pair of bomb blasts in Mogadishu.
On October 1, a man with a history of abusing women shot 604 people in ten minutes at a music festival in Las Vegas. On October 31, another man killed eight people after driving a truck down a bike path in New York. On November 5, another man with a domestic violence record shot 46 people in a church in Texas. One of those massacres prompted Trump and Republicans to call for legislative action. The other two only got “thoughts and prayers”.
We lost some greats. ABC journalist Mark Colvin; funnyman John Clarke; songwriting legend Tom Petty. The slow-burn twin tragedies of Nauru and Manus Island continued to play out. The US-Australia refugee deal rescued some 54 souls, while more than 600 men refused to leave the Manus detention centre when it officially closed on October 31.
Fittingly for the Age of Trump, the back end of the year was dominated by sexual abuse scandals. Movie mogul Harvey Weinstein and House of Cards star Kevin Spacey both faced multiple allegations of sexual assault, shining a spotlight on the web of protection predatory men in Hollywood have enjoyed. A wave of similar allegations against politicians in the UK may have implications for the government’s survival, and provided some reassurance that “pussy-grabbing” doesn’t always go unpunished.
If 2016 proved predictions are a mug’s game, 2017 really laboured the point. Each horrendously early morning brought with it new shocks; new twists; new tragedies and hard-fought moments of solace. There’s scarcely been time to draw breath since Inauguration Day and the breakneck chaos it heralded. Looking ahead to 2018 feels impossible. But it’s coming for us, ready or not.
Alex McKinnon is a Sydney-based writer and journalist, and the editor of Schwartz Media’s The Briefing.
