An Australian Year in Review

I'm a sucker for end-of-year lists and reviews, about politics, sports, music, professional aardvark racing, whatever. So I watched the end-of-year review on the WIN network this evening, and I thought the order accurately showed some of the emphasis Australians place on things...

The Year according to WIN:

1) Steve Irwin's death. Yep, big news. This was a quarter of the hour-long broadcast.

2) Sports wrap-up. Australia's good showing at the soccer World Cup in Germany; hosting the Commonwealth Games in Melbourne; the retirement of Olympic gold medalist swimmer Ian Thorpe; the championships of the National Rugby League and Australian Football League.

3) Politics. Kevin Rudd beats Kim Beazley in a leadership challenge to become head of the Australian Labor Party as they prepare for elections in September 2007. Prime Minister John Howard continues to insist going into Iraq was a good decision, an assessment that WIN's political analyst noted his fellow Australians increasingly do NOT share. The emergence of climate change as a big issue in Aussie politics, and labor relations. (Note that the entire political year was covered in less time than was devoted to local sports!)

4) The death of "Peter Perfect," Australian auto racing legend Peter Brock, in a racing accident. Brock was a big figure here. (Three of the top four stories were sports and celebrity deaths...)

5) Evacuation of Australians from Lebanon. There is a significant Lebanese-Australian community here, and there were a lot of Aussie citizens in Lebanon when Israel's bombardment began. Nearly 5000 Australian citizens were evacuated.

6) The Beaconsfield mine disaster. Two miners spent two full weeks underground after a cave-in in this mine in Tasmania, before being rescued to acclaim. It was a real media orgy, and a classic Australian story about two regular guys who survived a pretty tough ordeal.