There is a growing perception that Anthony Albanese is more comfortable rubbing shoulders with the elite than doing his job

The electorate is ill-served with mediocre politicians who lack conviction and competency – in 2024 we need real leadership.

As we look ahead to the Year of the Dragon, here are three items on my 2024 wishlist.

Better leaders

Whether it’s Absent Albo, the part-time Prime Minister, or the ham-fisted Victorian Liberal leader John Pesutto, the electorate is ill-served with mediocre politicians who lack conviction and competency.

Airbus Albo likes nothing more than an overseas trip, but he’s equally underwhelming at home.

We need better leaders than absent Anthony Albanese. Picture: Sam Ruttyn

When it comes to consequential issues, the PM lacks depth, he’s a surface-level politician adept at “performative caring’’ but fails to deliver policies that improve the lives of Australians.

From energy policy to foreign affairs to constitutional reform, he is not one for detail.

Among the PM’s lowlights of 2023 was being shamed into belatedly visiting crime-riddled Alice Springs where he spent four whole hours on the ground before returning to Melbourne for three nights at the Australian Open downing ice-creams and beers.

It’s little wonder that there is a growing perception that Anthony Albanese is more comfortable rubbing shoulders with the elite than doing his job.

It remains to be seen whether Australians forgive him for inflicting an acrimonious, race-based referendum on the country.

Meanwhile, the Victorian opposition will begin 2024 preoccupied with personal legal battles after MP Moira Deeming, who they forced out of the party for standing up for women’s rights, indicated she’d be expanding her defamation case against the Opposition Leader to include deputy leader David Southwick.

There are a couple of other Liberals who’ll have a nervous Christmas wondering if they’re next.

The Victorian opposition will begin 2024 preoccupied with personal legal battles. Picture: David Geraghty

Bigger celebrations

We have a great deal to celebrate in The Lucky Country and whether it’s Australia Day on January 26 or Christmas, we should go big, beautiful and bold.

But every year our national holiday is under attack by a small but loud group of influential activists and agitators boosted by like-minded malcontents in the media.

The self-loathing revisionism must not be indulged; it must be exposed for the empty, divisive, race-baiting that it is.

One does not need to be religious to appreciate the joy of the season but Christmas decorations around Melbourne have been lacklustre at best.

The City of Melbourne has missed a golden opportunity to boost tourism and trade by giving Melburnians and visitors a reason to linger in the city.

The decorations in the CBD are “mid’’ as the kids say, and rival the pitiful output of Stonnington Council with their nonsensical “Make Merry” displays.

Stonnington City Council has come under fire for its ‘Make Merry’ Christmas displays.

The council claims that stripping Christmas from festive decorations was a way to be “inclusive” and “acknowledge the different celebrations held in December”, but rest assured it isn’t non-Christian migrants triggered by Christmas decorations but the usual short-fringed, Teal-voting Karen born, raised and now living within 5km of Toorak.

More justice in the justice system

A return to the principles of due process and presumption of innocence would be welcome.

And, while Brittany Higgins dominates the headlines, a story published in The Australian without much fanfare last week highlights how police and particularly public prosecutors can become hypnotised by Leftist dogma that is often at odds with the principles of fairness.

Brittany Higgins has dominated the headlines. Picture: davidsharaz/Instagram

NSW District Court judge Robert Newlinds lashed prosecutions that amount to a “miscarriage of justice” and are “lazy and perhaps politically expedient”. This followed a case where a man spent eight months in prison before being granted bail in a case that should’ve never gone to trial.

“This prosecution is a miscarriage of justice. The evidence did not, in any realistic way, ever demonstrate any prospect of the crown obtaining a conviction,” Judge Newlinds said.

“I do wish to record that I am left with a deep level of concern that there is some sort of unwritten policy or expectation in place in the Office of the Director of Public Prosecutions of this state to the effect that if any person alleges that they have been the subject of some sort of sexual assault then that case is prosecuted without a sensible and rational interrogation of that complainant … justice has not been served and will not be served by repeated cases being prosecuted based on obviously

flawed evidence.”

The report also noted that the complainant had made similar allegations against a number of other men – including one recently acquitted in a case described by a senior legal figure as “a farce” and two others still before the courts.

The justice system’s inadequacies are also evident in the way that it can disregard genuine victims and prioritise what’s in the long-term interests of a criminal.

Soft sentencing that is divorced from community expectations, unequal treatment under the law and selective policing have undermined the public’s trust in key institutions.