The Australian’s Australian of the Year: Who stood up in a year of hunkering down?

While most people were happy just to get through 2021 unscathed, we hunt for the person or people who made the biggest contribution to Australian life.

Melbourne Cup-winning jockey Michelle Payne was The Australian’s Australian of the Year for 2015. Picture: Aaron Francis

In a year where much of the ­nation hunkered down and looked to simply come through unscathed, who stood up? Who threw back the doona and, through their purpose, passion and effort, made a contribution to the country that stands above all others?

As the editors of this paper sit down to choose The Australian’s 2021 Australian of the Year, 50 years on from the first winner in 1971, never will they have faced a tougher choice.

Last year seemingly bled on from 2020, the first Covid year. When first Delta and then Omicron complicated any near-term return to normal, we cleaved into separate states and territories, making the task of picking a ­national recipient even harder. So our editors are asking for your help, with The Weekend Australian now calling for nominations.

Readers are invited to nominate contenders from any field: politics, business, science, entertainment and the arts, sport, education, medicine, public servants and members of the community who have made a real difference.

Many of these fields of endeavour have featured among previous recipients since 1971 when economist HC “Nugget” Coombs was the inaugural winner. They include heart surgeon Victor Chang in 1984, opera diva Dame Joan Sutherland in 1989 and Indigenous leader Noel Pearson in 2004.

Four prime ministers have taken the award: Gough Whitlam (1972), Bob Hawke (1983), John Howard (2001) and Kevin Rudd (2009).

Novelist Patrick White was the winner in 1973, environmentalist Bob Brown in 1982, and rights activist Eddie Mabo in 1992, National Gallery director Betty Churcher in 1996 and Melbourne Cup-winning jockey Michelle Payne in 2015.

A strong case could be mounted for the 2014 recipient, doctor and Muslim community leader Jamal Rifi, to be recognised again. Dr Rifi has worked tirelessly in southwest Sydney and beyond to both inoculate tens of thousands from Covid-19 and dispel misinformation about the vaccinations.

He drove to the homes of his most vulnerable and hesitant ­patients to give them the jab. He built a mobile Covid testing clinic in his front yard to help protect his community. And he stepped in personally to inoculate unvaccinated crew members of merchant ships arriving into Australia.

With Covid and the response dominating our lives, others front of mind include Lieutenant-General John Frewen, the man brought in by the federal government halfway through the year to speed up the vaccination rollout.

Immunologist Peter Doherty has worked tirelessly to dispel myths and rumours about the disease and its vaccines. He remains a patron of the Peter Doherty Institute, which has been front and centre during the pandemic with its Covid modelling.

And Nick Coatsworth, the ­nation’s former deputy chief medical officer, has been an outspoken Covid commentator, calling on chief health officers to take a “less risk-averse” approach given the high vaccination rates.

But for every public face of the Covid response there were tens of thousands of private ones. If one person could be chosen to represent frontline workers putting themselves in harm’s way to keep the rest of us safe it should be Jill Dempsey, a Melbourne emergency department nurse and mother of three teenage children.

In November Ms Dempsey ­became the first healthcare worker in the country to die of Covid-19. She was described by her colleagues as “incredibly hardworking and beloved” and brought care, warmth and compassion to her work every day.

Journalist and activist Nina Funnell, Australia’s pre-eminent law reform campaigner and advocate for sexual assault survivors, continued her important work, including speaking to parliamentary committees on changes needed to social media defamation laws.

Amid the Covid gloom, four words brought great joy and relief to Australians in 2021: “My name is Cleo”. West Australian Detective Senior Sergeant Cameron Blaine was the first to hear them, after he and 140 officers in Taskforce Rodia worked relentlessly for 18 days before finally finding missing four-year-old Cleo Smith in a home in Carnarvon. The ­entire team, led by Detective Superintendent Rod Wilde, are worthy of consideration for the award.

So too is Alison ­Battisson, a former boxer turned human rights ­lawyer. In August, as the Taliban swept into Kabul, Ms Battisson used hundreds of text and voice messages to help a man navigate him and his Hazara wife, three children and a nephew through days of life-threatening danger out of the city and eventually to Sydney. They were just six of more than 100 refugees Ms Battison and her network helped out of the wreckage of Kabul.

In an unlikely Olympic year, many sportspeople made a strong case for consideration.

Indigenous basketballer Patty Mills led the Boomers to a bronze medal in Tokyo. His foundation supports a range of initiatives for in-need communities and he has donated millions of dollars to causes including reducing black deaths in custody. Another Indigenous champion, Ash Barty, had a less than successful Olympics campaign but won Wimbledon.

Swimmer Emma McKeon won four individual gold medals at the Tokyo Games out of seven overall, the equal most by any ­female athlete in any sport in a single Olympics.

Wheelchair sportsman Dylan Alcott completed the Golden Slam in wheelchair tennis in 2021, winning all four tennis majors and the Paralympics gold medal.

Newly-installed Australian cricket captain Pat Cummins makes a late bid for the paper’s 2021 gong, having so recently skippered his side to a crushing Ashes victory over England.

And gentle giant AFL ruckman Max Gawn captained Melbourne, one of the oldest professional sporting clubs in the world, to its first premiership since 1964.

Many artists and performers continued to shine despite Covid.

David Gulpilil died in 2021, leaving behind the richest of cinematic legacies. The film My Name is Gulpilil was released in 2021, a confronting documentary covering his acting career, alcohol ­addiction, personal relationships and the cancer that eventually claimed him.

In business, as many companies looked to simply ride out the Covid storm, CSL chairman Brian McNamee oversaw moves to grow the biotech giant even further to become one of the world’s largest as it pursues a takeover of Swiss pharmaceutical giant Vifor. CSL is also considering setting up Covid vaccine manufacturing capability in Australia.

Afterpay founders Nick Molner and Anthony Eisen were the cash converters of the year, selling the seven-year-old business to digital payments company Square for a reported $39bn.

Finally to our politicians. Can a case be made for Scott Morrison, or his Health Minister, Greg Hunt, for their navigation of Australia’s Covid response and high national vaccination coverage?

Readers may think NSW Premier Dominic Perrottet should be recognised for flicking the policy switch from suppressing Covid to living with it in recognition of the need to keep the economy open, compelling other (but not all) states to follow. Or should his West Australian counterpart, Mark McGowan, be rewarded for keeping almost 2.8 million Australians virtually Covid-free?

There is a compelling case for the award to go to one, or all, of the many working parents who spent 2021 juggling their job, family and homeschooling their children during months of lockdowns.

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 form above, or sending an email to [e-mail]. Nominations close on Friday, January 21.