A good indication that 2017 has started off as our busiest yet is that we are a few days late in publishing our annual Top 5 posts of the previous year.
We apologise for this tardiness, but we certainly have been busy!
In previous years Tony Abbott has always found a spot in the Top 5, but in 2016 it appeared that Tony was no longer newsworthy. In his place stepped ‘ordinary’ people. Oh, and a bloke called Donald Trump.
Anyway, what were The AIMN’s five most popular posts in 2016?
(The Top 5 is based on the number of views only. It does not take into account the number of comments or the post’s popularity with other online media sites such as Facebook or Twitter).
Number One . . . Is everybody happy now?, by The AIM Network.
Excerpt:
By now everybody in Australia knows who Duncan Storrar is. Until a week ago he was just an Australian battler who had faced more challenges in his life than most … until he asked a simple question on the ABC’s QandA program. A question that could have been asked by one of a million people, but it was he who had the guts to ask it, and it threw him headlong into the national spotlight.
He has been lauded as a hero of millions for doing so, but sadly, he has also been punished mercilessly. Mercilessly by a media giant who considers that it is themselves who decide how the Australian public will think and decide on what opinions they will hold. The LNP narrative was supposed to be “average” Australians get tax cuts, “small” business get tax cuts and that it’s Mr and Ms Average who hold multiple negatively geared properties. And if you don’t fit into how the Libs want “average” perceived, then you are a leaner, a no-hoper, a sponge on the public purse. Mr Storrar gave us all a reminder of what “average” in Australia is likely to be – a struggler who has to scrape to find enough money to take his daughters to the pictures, not someone who has a negatively geared property tucked away for their 1 year old baby.
And then something even worse happened (as far as the Murdoch media was concerned), the public rallied in support of Mr Storrar. Rip him up and tear him down as he has destroyed the narrative.
And the media attacks on Duncan have been appalling. We’ve all seen it. How could you not have?
Number Two . . . James Mathison takes it up to Andrew Bolt, by The AIM Network.
Excerpt:
Last week Andrew Bolt interviewed James Mathison – an independent candidate for the seat of Warringah which is currently held by Tony Abbott.
Because nobody watches Andrew Bolt the interview slipped under the radar, and we may never have known it ever existed if not for one of our readers stumbling across it on Facebook.
It may be the only interview you’ll ever watch in which Andrew Bolt takes part.
And it is definitely worth watching.
… he displays a few qualities at least that most of our politicians don’t possess when tackled by the media: he knew what he was talking about (in both policy and facts) and his answers weren’t a jumble of waffle. And best of all . . . he served it back to Andrew Bolt.
Number Three . . . The Weasel’s incomplete guide to the 2016 Senate, by The Weasel.
Excerpt:
Who exactly are all these jokers? And how am I supposed to figure out who they are among all the acronyms? The Weasel provides a quick run-down of the players in multiple electorates…
The Senate
There are 76 senators; 12 from each state and two each from the Australian Capital Territory and the Northern Territory.While the House of Representatives is where policy is tabled, The Senate is where is gets checked off and approved. Senators have a longer term at six years, and can have a large effect on what policy gets passed. This is why so many smaller parties aim for Senate seats. Be careful of what parties call themselves; almost all the parties with ‘liberal’ or ‘democratic’ in their name are generally neither.
Number Four . . . Let them eat toast, by Jennifer Wilson.
Excerpt:
By now, you’ve probably all heard the tale of Duncan Storrar, the man on $20,000 a year who asked assistant treasurer Kelly O’Dwyer on QandA why people much wealthier than him are getting tax breaks and he isn’t …
Let us not pay attention to the entirely legitimate question Duncan asked, a question many millions of us would dearly love to have answered by Treasurer Scott Morrison or, if we have no other choice, Kelly (let them eat toast) O’Dwyer. Let us instead go through the questioner’s trash cans in a mammoth effort to discredit and invalidate the perfectly legitimate question he is perfectly entitled to ask from his seat in the QandA audience upon which he is entirely entitled to settle his bum, even if he only earns $20,000 a year, because last time I looked, asking questions didn’t have a means test attached to it.
Number Five . . . Dear America, please don’t make Donald Trump your president, by Roswell.
Despite (just) being Number 5 for 2016 this post could arguably be considered among The AIMN’s most popular posts of all time. After it was published on The AIMN it was picked up by a couple of American sites where on one of which, we were told by the owners, it received 330,000 views in its first two hours.
Excerpt:
Dangerous, powerful men – supported by an obliging media – can easily change any nation. If they can change an easy going, laid back nation like Australia one can only shudder what they might do to a nation that has been on edge since the terrible events of 9/11.
You’ve been lucky not having a leader anything like Abbott: One that has made us frightened of shadows; of having us fear anyone with a long beard, a tanned skin, or a different religion. Of making us afraid that these people, at best, will take our jobs and security. At worst, slit our throats.
He turned us into a nation of nervous, frightened, angry vigilantes. Vigilantes who have set fire to homes belonging to people who speak Arabic; who threatened to kill people just because their skin was dark; who wanted people expelled from this country simply because they spoke a different language; who assaulted people in the streets because they wore a scarf around their head. No questions asked. Anyone who looked ‘different’ was a threat to our national security and had to be dealt with. Attacks on these people have become more daring, more devastating, and more frequent as each week passes.
It hasn’t helped us or ‘saved’ us one little bit, because to put it simply, the threat wasn’t there in the first place. If anything, payback might be on the horizon. Or worse still, blowback.
All great articles, but we could happily add another 500 to the list from all of our authors.
