The year comes to an end, but the quandaries do not!

Is it too early to make concluding observations about 2025?

The tennis world is in its Christmas/New Year hiatus with Australia set to be its focus when it reawakens throughout January. For most Australians, tennis has momentarily surrendered its attention to the joys and agonies  of cricket and Formula One racing. Australia bestrides the cricketing world like a colossus against the visiting traditional bete noire English team. For cricket fans, an irresistible pun- so far there has been a very ‘Starc’ contrast between the teams.

Australia’s Formula One fans are aggrieved having seen Oscar Piastri lead the F1 championship for most of the year only to see it, almost inexplicably, taken from him by his teammate Landro Norris, who claimed his first F1 Drivers’ title after the last Grand Prix of the year in Abu Dhabi. It was a closely driven thing with Norris winning the title by a mere two points, from defending champion, Max Verstappen. For Piastri, it was a case of “oh, the little less and what worlds away.”

The political world, however, remains in perpetual flux. There might be more democracies than ever before in our history, but one doubts if confidence in democratic processes has been lower this century.

Remember the fearless political forecasts of 35 years ago? It was the "end of history." In the shadows of the collapse of the Berlin Wall, Liberal democracies were to reign ascendant. Such governments would, forever,  be entrenched as the irresistible and singular means of government. Democratic sentiment would be unparalleled. The world, finally freed from its bi-polar Cold War rival blocs, could pay attention to eliminating global inequalities. Despots, tyrants and autocrats would be rarer, and a united United Nations could overcome the vexing veto power of its Security Council and focus on building a better world for all.

Not quite yet, it seems! Populism and extremism have taken hold in the world’s greatest democracies as fissures emerge about the political responses to global environmental, economic and social challenges, especially climate change and immigration. Too many areas of the world, notably Ukraine, the wider Middle-East and Sudan and its neighbour, Mali, remain either in conflict or in a parlous peace.

In America, tariffs come and go as the President collects an inaugural FIFA Peace Prize at the announcement of the draw for the 2026 World Cup. Since when has an international sporting body had the chutzpah to make such awards?

Also in America the “Kennedy curse” has struck again. Tatiana Schlossberg, the granddaughter of President Kennedy, announced that she has been stricken with a rare form of blood cancer which is terminal. A mother of two, aged 35, she would no doubt be praying for a vaccine and/or advances in medical science to save her life. Increasingly, Americans are turning away from life-saving vaccines with the tacit, if not overt, encouragement of the son of Tatiana’s great uncle, Robert Kennedy. Tragic irony, indeed.   

In the United Kingdom, a Labour government elected with its greatest ever majority is heading, if the opinion polls can be believed, to a first term electoral defeat not by its traditional class-based enemy, the Conservative Party, but rather by a single issue party promising to rewrite the rules of immigration to the United Kingdom’s immigration policy.

Across Europe countries are struggling to deliver the promises of liberal democracy, especially to its post-Baby Boomer generations. These are the citizens who having not been able to afford a house are being called on to pay a greater share of their taxes to fund the services that their older citizens require.

Demographic changes in the democracies, most notably greatly slowing population growth rates, exacerbate the problem. What about immigration to increase demand and provide labour and services? Politically, it seems the worse of two evils.

Australians were treated to a diversion its similar problems, when the Prime Minister, Anthony Albanese, marrying for the second time, became the first Prime Minister to wed in office. Waiting until after Parliament had risen for its Christmas recess, the celebrations were a low-key affair at the Prime Minister’s official residence. After all the unfavourable ‘optics’ of his purchase of a $4.3 million retirement property, restraint was the order of the day.

What could go wrong? As the couple took off on their honeymoon, revelations of his Communications Minister, Anika Wells, spending public monies of over $100,000 on airfares to New York for herself and staffers soured the nuptial mood. Further disclosures about taxpayers footing the bill for Wells’ family accompany her to major sporting events, including the Australian Open, did not exactly reinforce the government’s wish to be seen as driven by proletarian priorities.

At a time when the Communications Minister would have wished to have been extolling Australia’s Under 16 social media ban legislation that comes into effect today, many in the community are bewildered that a senior Minister has been “bulk billing” the taxpayer in the manner she has.  Memo to the Minister: communicating and displaying defensible standards of behaviour is the hallmark of responsible government. What did Shakespeare remind us about the “insolence of office”?

When all the publicly funded travelling is done, the new year will present no less of a challenge to our government. In Australia , the government has decided to cease its electricity bill rebates. Costing close to a mere 8 billion dollars a year, the rebates were considered necessary to offset rising electricity prices caused by the government’s policy of hurriedly moving towards renewable energy. The rebates are gone, but increased electricity prices will remain.

One day someone will write the book of the most fanciful political promises ever made. In Australia, Bob Hawke’s promise in the mid-1980s that “by 1990 no Australian child will be living in poverty” ranks as one of the grandest. Anthony Albanese’s 2022 commitment to lowering every Australian’s power bill by $275.00 , now appears similarly facile, if not cynical.

What can we be certain about in 2026?  Well, Minister Wells will not be travelling to the Australian Open! I suspect she will be confined to electorate office barracks for some time.

So, what will those attending the Australian Open have served up for them ?

As much as the promoters focus on the possibility of a ‘next-Gen’ player breaking through for their maiden Grand Slam title- think Fritz, Zverev, Auger-Aliassime, de Minaur, Musetti, Shelton-most expect the Sinner/Alcaraz rivalry to manifest itself in another showdown in the Men’s final.  Will Djokovic announce that this is the beginning of his farewell year?

In the Women’s Draw, look out for a resurgent Elena Rybakina to add the Australian Open to her Wimbledon title of 2022. Guileful and graceful, Rybakina has the temperament and game to master Melbourne!

Roll on 2026- for those lucky enough to be in early days of a southern hemisphere summer, we can take heart that many who have taken Voltaire’s advice to cultivate one’s garden decided to plant spectacular jacaranda trees.

There is something about the vibrancy and clarity of their blooms set against the shimmering summer skyline that elicits the optimism and beauty of our world. Almost as much a Federer or Edberg backhand, a McEnroe half-volley, a Graf forehand, a Seles or Nadal backhand pass, a Navratilova volley, or a Djokovic return of serve !