THE Australian of the Year award has ­officially become a politically correct joke with the selection of former chief of Army David Morrison, the diminutive gender ­equity maven who believes military force achieves nothing.

The award, which ought to ­reflect and unite this great ­nation, has evolved into a mere plaything of social engineers and reflects all of the unhealthy preoccupations of the Left.

The lucky recipients announced on Australia Day then spend a year lecturing the rest of us about how backward and awful we all are compared to their enlightened selves.

From Adam Goodes to Rosie Batty and now Morrison, you would think we are an irredeemably racist, sexist nation in which every man is an incipient wife basher. (Search engine leviathan Google yesterday confirmed that black-armband view by transforming its homepage into a ­lament about stolen generations in a special “up yours” message to its Antipodean customers on Australia Day.)

But Morrison’s selection is the final nail in the coffin of irrelevance for the Australian of the Year award.

It is a travesty that he has been rewarded for exposing our military to the warped ideology of Anne Summers, Elizabeth Broderick, Jane Caro (the “eminent Australian” as he described her yesterday) and the rest of Australia’s left-feminist clique.

This is a man who, after having been chief of Army for four years, told Leigh Sales on the ABC’s 730 program last year: “I don’t think that there’s a military solution to anything.”

This is a man who has derided the Anzac legend as being too male and “Anglo-Saxon”. You’d be hard pressed finding a Digger with much good to say about him, judging by my straw poll of friends and acquaintances.

While Australian soldiers were dying in Afghanistan, Morrison was talking about social ­engineering concerns such as gender equity. Fourteen soldiers died between July 2011 and July 2014 in that dangerous and confusing war, when Morrison was chief of Army.

But instead of the leadership that ?soldiers at the frontline may have ?craved, they got flowery speeches decrying masculinity and patriarchy to mark International Women’s Day at the United Nations.

Then, of course, there was his celebrated 2013 video lambasting as sexists the male soldiers who were risking their lives in service of our country. The video catapulted him into the pantheon of politically correct saints.

“The standard you walk past, is the standard you accept,” he thundered in an address that went viral, mainly because it was written so expertly by his then-speechwriter, transgender Group Captain Cate McGregor.

Winning wars has nothing to do with gender equity, but sadly our society now rewards this kind of sanctimonious posturing.

Morrison has also declared that he will use his new position this year to champion another divisive pet issue of the progressive elites, the republic debate.

“It is time, I think, to at least revisit the question so that we can stand both free and fully ­independent among the community of nations,” he said in his acceptance speech on Monday.

This prompted a delighted Australian Republican Movement chairman Peter FitzSimons to propose Morrison as President of an Australian republic, a sure-fire kiss of death to the cause if ever there was one.

The bottom line is that a former chief of army honoured with the title of Australian of the Year in 2016 should be advocating for wounded returned soldiers and those suffering post-traumatic stress rather than treading the overtilled ground of gender complaint and a republic.

God knows our Diggers could do with a high-profile champion.

Quote:

Prime Minister for Canyons wrote on Jan 27^th, 2016 at 1:01pm:



I don't really know him, I was defence/Navy and we have had/have  two awful Chief's of Navy of late.  I was more interested in her thoughts on how Military Leaders seem to care more about popularist issues rather than the troops on the ground.

Prime Minister for Canyons wrote on Jan 27^th, 2016 at 1:01pm:


What is the background of these people who supposedly think he was a "great chief"?