Annabel Crabb is a regular columnist, TV host and leading political commentator.
As 2016 careens to its conclusion with all the elegance of a golf buggy captained by a sleep-deprived ice freak in a Santa suit, it is probably unsurprising that quite so much of its penultimate fortnight would be spent, internationally, arguing about women with controversial pants.
Political correctness is – it's now universally accepted in this country, or by anyone with a brain at least – out of control.
That seeing One Nation, ambling across the courtyard accompanied by Jean-Claude van Damme, did not at the time seem especially weird gives you an idea of how off-the-charts bonkers much of the final parliamentary fortnight has been.
Many working women who noticed the recent headlines about the gender pay gap being stuck rather firmly at about 16 per cent will have raised their eyes silently heavenward and wondered if this stuff will ever change.
A kind of madness has come over the world.
There's a great story – possibly apocryphal – about the former Illinois governor, senator and diplomat Adlai Stevenson, drawn from one of his historic electoral whuppings by Dwight Eisenhower, against whom Stevenson twice ran for president in the 1950s.
Unintended consequences are everywhere in politics. The rise of One Nation is one of them.
I lived through the great text-speak campaign of the early 2000s, and I'm not going to break now.
Five tips that will have you wielding power responsibly in no time at all.
The gossamer-thin membrane that separates real life from Celebrity Fantasy Island was rent irretrievably asunder on Tuesday.
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