Best radio, er, package

Before she started talking about burqas and left the Palmer United party, Jacqui Lambie’s most memorable moment of 2014 came when she asked someone on radio whether he was “well hung”.

Asked on Hobart’s Heart FM what she looked for in a man, Lambie said rather candidly: “They must have heaps of cash and they’ve got to have a package between their legs, let’s be honest.”

Speaking to a 22-year-old listener called Jamie, Lambie said she was “a bit concerned because you’re so young, I’m not sure you’d be able to handle Jacqui Lambie”.

She then asked him if he was well endowed, to which Jamie replied: “Like a donkey.”

Whether you saw it as refreshingly endearing or sexist, it’s hard to imagine any other MP – let’s say Eric Abetz, for example – involved in such a conversation on air.

The miner award for services to coal

With the abolition of the mining tax and the scrapping of the carbon tax, it’s hard to see what else the big mining companies would have wanted from the government this year, other than perhaps campaigning on its behalf to world leaders. Oh yeah, it did that, too.

At the G20 summit, Tony Abbott is understood to have told Barack Obama, Angela Merkel et al that “as the world’s largest producer of coal, I’d like to stand up for coal”.

Abbott had earlier pleaded that there should be “no demonisation of coal. Coal is good for humanity.”

But all that humanity-enhancing climate change isn’t driven by renewable energy, of course. Joe Hockey took aim at wind farms not once, but twice in 2014, calling them “appalling” and “utterly offensive”.

After all that, it’s hard to imagine what else the coal industry could get from this government. I mean, it’s not as if Coalition MPs would actually wear the industry’s insignia in parliament or anything, would they?

The Malcolm Turnbull award for efficiency in broadcasting

With all the howls of protest over the ABC “efficiency dividend”, it was good to see that at least one group of Australians showed how lean broadcasting could be in 2014.

In May, a group of children in remote Western Australia broke into a community radio station they had recently visited, and amused themselves by cooking chicken nuggets, dying their hair and swearing over the airwaves until police were called by outraged listeners.

Grasping the nuances of edgy broadcasting even faster than known wit Kyle Sandilands, and all for zero dollars, the six youngsters should probably expect a call at some point in 2015 from the ABC’s managing director, Mark Scott, his fingerless gloved hands trembling as he sits in an empty, frigid Ultimo office with the words “Team ABC-Australia” daubed crudely on the barren walls.

The Grauniad award for services to subediting

With the disappearance of one Malaysia Airlines flight and the destruction of another, the rise of Islamic State and concern about a new cold war, you’d be forgiven for thinking that 2014 has been a rather grim year.

The normally sedate Australian Financial Review was perhaps prescient in April, then, when it screamed that the “World is fukt” from its front page.

Company chief executives spluttering over their hand-squeezed grapefruit juices saw the headline in the West Australian edition of the special Anzac Day weekend edition of the AFR, which was in reference to the government’s decision to spend $12.4bn for 58 F-35 Joint Strike Fighter jets.

Michael Stutchbury, the Fin’s editor-in-chief, sheepishly explained that production staff “pressed a wrong button”. It did at least provide fresh inspiration to those folk minded to wear sandwich boards bearing ominous predictions.

The George W Bush trophy for pain inflicted upon the English language

Opposing a government that has got itself into so many near-farcical difficulties should have gifted Bill Shorten a stellar year. Instead, he seemed determined to invent a subtle variant on the English language.

“These people opposite are the cheese-eating surrender monkeys of Australian jobs,” Shorten yelled. “A crocodile wouldn’t swallow that,” he said on another occasion, before sticking to the aquatic theme with a terrible pun on the river Nile.

His now-infamous “zingers” prompted my colleague Daniel Hurst to coin the Twitter hashtag #ShortenSweet.

This horrifying linguistic mangling is a symptom of modern politics, of course. Instead of ideas being thoughtfully and passionately advocated to the public, we are left with disjointed sound bites that are short enough to squeeze into the evening news bulletins. Expect to be spoken to like you’re a cretin in 2015, too.

Most unusual approach to attracting women award

Julien Blanc has somehow forged a living as a “pick-up artist”, holding seminars where he essentially tells paying clients that women will fall for them via emotional abuse and force.

Blanc, an American, attempted to bring his road show of romance to Australia, only to be thwarted by protesters and unwilling venue managers.

Known women’s right activist Scott Morrison stepped in to cancel Blanc’s visa and he promptly left. He was later barred from the UK.

Most mystified response to music criticism award

I’ve always been more of a Stax than Motown man, but you’ve got to doff your cap to the motor city firm’s lineup – Stevie Wonder, Marvin Gaye, Smokey Robinson and so on.

Motown was masterminded by Berry Gordy, whose son – known as Redfoo – attempted to create his own legacy in 2014. Not only did Redfoo feature in Channel 7 karaoke documentary X Factor, he also appeared in a song widely attacked for being misogynist.

Literally I Can’t is accompanied by a video set at a frat house party. It follows a group of sorority girls who are pressured into drinking and dancing, despite repeating the words “literally, I can’t” – to which they are told “shut the fuck up”.

Responding to a backlash against what I suppose should be called a song, Redfoo took to Twitter to declare “another example of critics victimizing an artist by purposely misinterpreting his/her work to support a pre-existing agenda. ‪#LiterallyICant”

Hmm. Right. Let’s move on quickly because the song itself is so irritatingly catchy that you may be haunted by its vapid lyrics simply by reading this.

Obligatory wine scandal award – 2014 vintage

Three is supposed to make a trend, so if 2015 features a wine-related scandal then bottles of plonk should start carrying warning labels for politicians.

Last year Peter Dowling, the chairman of the Queensland parliament’s ethics committee, made headlines by sending his lover a picture of his penis dunked in a glass of red wine.

Less salaciously, Barry O’Farrell resigned as New South Wales premier after denying that he received a bottle of 1959 Penfolds Grange from the former Australian Water Holdings chief executive Nick Di Girolamo.

A thank-you note written by O’Farrell to Di Girolamo was tendered to the Independent Commission Against Corruption and the premier was off, blaming a “significant memory fail”.

The “give me your tired, your poor, your huddled masses” award

In 2014, Joe Hockey spent a lot of his time being shocked – SHOCKED – that anyone would suggest he was mean to disadvantaged people or that his budget was in any way unfair to them.

After justifying a new fuel tax because the poorest Australians “don’t have cars or actually drive very far”, Hockey had to furiously slam his Treasury tonsils into reverse.

Hockey said he was “genuinely sorry” if it appeared that he didn’t care about disadvantaged people, adding: “As everyone who knows me knows, all of my life I have fought for and tried to help the most disadvantaged in the community, and for there to be some suggestion that I had evil in my heart when it comes to the most disadvantaged is upsetting … ”

The nation’s students, pensioners, welfare recipients and chronically sick purred their agreement with Joe, slowly biting into their cigars as they settled down for an early evening brandy with Mathias Cormann.

The golden hostie award

It’s customary to do slightly outlandish things once you leave the pub, rather than on the way there.

It was therefore highly innovative for a West Australian man to drive his light plane – minus wings – to the local pub, park it outside and go for a drink. Props to him! (Props, you know, like a propeller. Oh, never mind).

Actually, that should be zero props, because the local police in the Pilbara town of Newman weren’t very impressed.

“It was a pretty stupid thing to do,” said police sergeant Mark McKenzie. “Kids were coming home from school. It could have been very ugly. All he needed was one gust of wind ... because without the wings, it’s not stable.”

Please, everyone, just stick to a car or bus or train or something. Even an Uber, as long as there isn’t money to be made from a nearby emergency of course.

Donald Rumsfeld award for concise explanation

The government is compelling telecommunications companies to keep logs on what their customers do for up to two years, so law enforcement agencies can access the “metadata” without a warrant when investigating crimes.

Step forward attorney general George Brandis to explain at excruciating length on Sky News what metadata actually is.

Brandis: “The web address, um, is part of the metadata.”

David Speers: “The website?”

Brandis: “The well, the web address, the electronic address of the website. What the security agencies want to know, to be retained is the, is the electronic address of the website that the web user is ... “

Speers: “So it does tell you the website?”

Brandis: “Well, it, it tells you the address of the website.”

Cancer Council award for sunburn awareness

When George Brandis’s head isn’t in television studios, its mouth desperately trying to force out coherent words about the internet, it faces potential danger in the form of the sun’s rays.

While waiting for Barack Obama to arrive for the G20, Brandis was photographed in the baking Brisbane heat, his head aglow. The attorney general’s bald pate had turned an angry red by the time the US president arrived, promoting concerns that he didn’t slip, slop or slap.

The “doctor’s advice? What doctor’s advice?” award

With the South Sydney Rabbitohs striving to end a 43-year NRL title drought, it was going to take more than a nasty facial injury to stop Sam Burgess.

The Rabbitohs player suffered a fractured eye socket and cheekbone in the very first tackle of the game, but played on.

Burgess finished the game with a blackened, swollen face. But it was all worth it, it seems.

“I look similar to a hamster at the moment,” he tweeted afterwards. “I wouldn’t change anything for the world though.”

Most tear-stained U-turn award

In a stunning development, a TV show that involved one man dating dozens of women before dumping them one by one ended in hurt feelings and resentment.

Blake Garvey was dubbed the “most hated man in Australia” after proposing to Sam Frost in the final of The Bachelor, only to break up with her shortly afterwards.

Garvey, a 31-year-old estate agent from Perth who also dabbled in entertaining hen’s parties, promptly sold his story to Woman’s Day alongside (der der der!) Louise Pillidge – one of the other contestants!

Garvey had apparently written a five-page love letter to Pillidge after telling Frost their engagement, televised to 1.3 million people, wasn’t really a thing.