Miranda Devine: Grace Tame’s Scott Morrison snub backfires

While our Prime Minister remained courteous and dignified, Grace Tame produced a performance of ignorance and petulance, writes Miranda Devine.

What a graceless sourpuss is Grace Tame.

I’m glad I wasn’t in the country in 2021 to endure her reign as Australian of the Year.

It really was a cruel double whammy that our sunny, optimistic nation was saddled with such a killjoy at the same time as the pandemic was taking its toll.

Thank goodness Graceless Tame’s days representing Australia are finished, although apparently ole’ Fitzy wants her to be President of his toy Republic.

Of course he does, and the chances of that happening are Buckley’s and none.

Just one look at Tame’s disrespectful behaviour with the Prime Minister and his wife at an AOTY breakfast at The Lodge on Tuesday tells you everything you need to know about how foolish it was to elevate such a person to any position of honour.

Prime Minister Scott Morrison with Grace Tame on Tuesday. Picture: NCA NewsWire / Gary Ramage

She couldn’t even bear to look the Prime Minister in the eye when she grudgingly shook his hand. First, she stood aloof, looking thunderous when the time came to take a photo.

Then she extravagantly sloped across the yard like a petulant two-year-old forced to eat her greens. The PM and Jenny Morrison smiled and stretched out their hands in hospitable greeting.

Tame scowled and gave the PM a contemptuous side-eye. Then she snubbed his always gracious wife’s handshake, grimacing as if it was just too hard to smile at Mrs Morrison.

How embarrassing for a grown woman of 27 to act so petulantly.

Who the hell does she think she is?

Tame’s behaviour was so extraordinary that even her fiancé Max Heerey looked uncomfortable – and he was rude enough to keep his sunglasses on throughout the encounter.

Miranda Devine Opinion column. Grace Tame snubs PM Scott Morrison at an official function.

Regardless of what she might think of the man Scott Morrison (and there’s no justification for her contempt anyway), Tame has a hide to treat the office of Prime Minister with such disrespect, and at the historic Lodge to boot.

If she loathes Morrison so much, she should have stayed at home. There’s just no excuse to be so rude.

As Senator James McGrath said afterwards: “It is a pity her behaviour and attacks on our prime minister are so partisan, political and childish.

“If she didn’t like being Australian of the Year, she should hand back the honour.”

Exactly.

The Prime Minster is our elected representative. So Tame’s contempt for him is really contempt for Australia, whether she and her tiny fan base realises it or not.

Having spent most of her year of exalted status playing base party politics, tweeting venom against Morrison and his cabinet, and being feted by the ABC for her trouble, she decided to crown it all off with a sullen performance for the cameras so unhinged it makes you wonder if she lives for the plaudits of Planet Twitter.

Grace Tame was the 2021 Australian of the Year. Picture: Brook Mitchell/Getty Images

But even Twitter had harsh words for her behaviour.

Here are some of the reviews:

“Grace by name, not by nature.”

“No class”.

“Spoilt brat.”

“Petulant.”

“Pathetic showboating for her Twitter crowd.”

“DisGrace.”

“Elected Prime Minister graciously farewells a divisively partisan appointee.”

“PM thanks graceless, sour individual that has no appreciation of the honour or country she was gifted.”

“Good riddance to an individual that sought only to politicise the role”.

Amen.

Whoever decided that such an unsuitable person would make a good standard bearer for the nation needs their head read.

But that is always the way with the worthless Australian of the Year award.

Rather than paying attention to all the flailing campaigns to change the date of Australia Day, we should just scrap the AOTY.

It’s a pointless, made-up role that achieves nothing except to promote a divisive leftist agenda, always with the aim of stirring up trouble for any Coalition government in power, especially before an election.

Prime ministers should snub the farce.

The AOTY is rarely representative of the Australian people but instead caters to a tiny base of Twitter brokens obsessed with prosecuting boutique ideological issues borrowed from overseas, usually to do with identity politics, “existential” climate alarm, the evil patriarchy, “toxic masculinity” and “systemic” racism.

Even if the AOTY were to start off as a normal person, by the end of their year in the spotlight they will have been thoroughly shaped into a left-wing activist by the media.

Forget it. Most Australians have switched off and turned the page.

There’s enough to celebrate about Australia and its people on Australia Day without the need to sanctify troublemaking nobodies who think they are more important than the prime minister.

The funny thing is that Tame probably won Morrison votes because he maintained his courtesy and professionalism in the face of her embarrassing provocations.

Miranda Devine is in New York for 18 months to cover current affairs for The Daily Telegraph