The Australian’s Australian of the Year: Nominate your hero from 2020

The Weekend Australian has opened nominations for its 2020 Australian of the Year, with the winner named on January 23.

A rural fire fighter extinguishes the remains of a vicious blaze in Glenwood.

A year of crisis, which started with bushfires and morphed into 10 months of coronavirus disruption, has produced its share of heroes.

As we enter a new year, we would like to invite our readers to reflect on the Australians who ­inspired us and saved us in 2020.

The Weekend Australian is opening up the nominations for its Australian of the Year for 2020, and the winner will be announced on January 23.

Readers are invited to nominate contenders from any field: politics, business, science, entertainment, medicine, public servants and members of the community who have served with distinction.

The Australian’s Australian of the Year award has been bestowed on people from all walks of life, ­including economist HC “Nugget” Coombs in the inaugural 1971 award, Queensland corruption ­inquiry head Tony Fitzgerald in 1988, eye surgeon Fred Hollows in 1990 and astrophysicist Brian Schmidt in 2011.

Last year’s award was given to the volunteer firefighters who protected vast tracts of NSW and Victoria from the bushfires that alarmed the globe. But no sooner had the smoke cleared, than COVID-19 hit, forcing a national lockdown in March.

Thousands of unnamed healthcare workers battled COVID-19 in hospitals and nursing homes around the country. Police and transport workers managed hotel quarantine. And tireless contract tracers worked around the clock to keep ahead of the spread of the virus.

Scott Morrison, with advice from former chief health officer Brendan Murphy, led a government response that has to date prevented the catastrophic infection rates seen in other countries.

Mr Morrison, together with all state and territory leaders, formed a national cabinet that has co-­ordinated Australia’s successful response to the pandemic.

App users tap here to nominate your Australian of the Year

NSW Premier Gladys Berejiklian and her Chief Health Officer Kerry Chant formed a formidable team of contact tracers and a testing regime that has been replicated by neighbouring states to combat growing case numbers and rates of mortality.

Soon after the national lockdown began in March, Jimmy Barnes began sharing a series of intimate home performances on social media where he was accompanied by an unexpected guitarist: his wife, Jane. His late-career transition to open-book, heart-on-sleeve family man saw him become a true inspiration as Australia’s working class man during a year compromised by COVID.

NRL chairman Peter V’landys, dubbed “the man who saved sport”, is widely considered the most significant sporting figure of the year.

In the arts, David McAllister signed off after a record 20 years as the artistic director of the Australian Ballet. Starting his career in 1983, McAllister shifted the fortunes of the national company and made it his own.

Pat Turner announced herself as a prominent Indigenous leader last year after a career largely in bureaucracy. With the support of Scott Morrison, she helped push through a new Closing the Gap agreement that holds states and territories to account on targets for the first time.

Australia’s biggest sporting triumph in 2020 was the women’s cricket team, led by Meg Lanning, who won the T20 World Cup in front of 80,000 spectators at the Melbourne Cricket Ground. Ellyse Perry was named the ICC women’s cricketer of the decade.

In business, Woolworths CEO Brad Banducci oversaw a mammoth task to ensure shelves were stocked after frenzied panic buying took supermarkets by storm.

In October the Richmond Football Club clinched its third premiership in four years in a triumph for coach Damien Hardwick and president Peggy O’Neal.

This is by no means an exhaustive list of Australians who impacted our lives in 2020. Now it’s over to you. Nominations can be made either online or by filling out the nomination form on this page.

We encourage our readers to put in a nomination for The Australian’s Australian of the Year, which was first won in 1971 by economist HC “Nugget” Coombs. Prominent Australians can be nominated by filling out the coupon above, or sending an email to [e-mail]. Nominations close on Thursday, January 21.