2025 – that was the year that was… and here it is, month by month, through the bright eyes of the CityNews columnists – a quirky, serious, funny and sad look at the 12 months just gone. HUGH SELBY takes a sniff around June…

Remember June? Shortest day? Perhaps, perhaps not. Following all the excitement of the Federal elections, with David Pocock taking votes from everyone, it was back to “business as usual”.

Not that that phrase has a “one-size-fits-all” meaning. Stephanie Owen Reeder was about to release her latest book, Peculiar Parents, about the lives of some  60 different Australian animals. Her “usual” is quite unusual.  She researches, writes and sometimes illustrates to benefit herself and her readers – a nice approach to a meaningful “retirement”.

There’s nothing retiring about the Gilbert and Sullivan Pirates of Penzance which the Queanbeyan Players chose to celebrate their first 60 years. It’s a send up, or parody, of 19th century conventions and self-important people like the Major General who is, as he declares, the “very model of a modern major-general”.

The very model of a modern mega debtor came alive in Mr Shush’s Keeping up the Act comic strip as “he who must be blamed” handed over the strings to an empty ACT purse to his long time devotee Chris Steel who, in the strip, looks rather like Pinocchio.

That notion of being sprung for public deception and deceit was to be taken up in earnest by columnist Robert Macklin whose targets were in Albo’s new government. We get to them a little later.

Meantime, no longer saddled with the nightly horror dreams about the red tram cost fiasco, our mega debtor jetted off overseas to sunny, warm climes with poolside daiquiris to “melt the conscience away”.

Mr Shush was prescient about what lay in store for the blue Liberal girl from Charnwood who was getting a wide range of groupie self-destructors’ advice about how to create an opposition to mega-debtor’s antics. Didn’t work out for her or her party: she and they are still in the wilderness.

Robert Macklin was most upset about the new Albo government’s rush to approve a mighty polluting enterprise far away from Canberra: Woodside’s gas project on the North West Shelf. 

Robert thought Albo’s timing for the announcement was Macchiavellian, but not in an admiring sort of way. This is a bit hard on Macchiavelli, who requires leaders to be “great liars and deceivers”. The word “great” has work to do: something more than mere cunning is required.

Columnist Andrew Hughes, writing about the same new government, was admiring of their mix of domestic progressive policies and international patriotic stance.

Robert Macklin got the inside story of a meeting between Albo and the Donnie in a helicopter somewhere in Canada. The latter as good as said we were suckers for paying for AUKUS. Seems, though, that this chat is fake news or, at any rate, plausibly denied.

Richard Calver, peripatetic chaser of the fermented grape, soulfully reported that drinking, any alcohol drinking, even good wine, is inimical to good physical health. He was being too hard. Don’t we know how a drink in moderation is wonderful for our mental health? 

Imagine extra years of life as a healthy sad sap. It doesn’t bear thinking about.

On the other hand, overcoming a spinal problem and rowing for 

Australia U23 in Poland is an achievement to cheer. That’s what university student Olivia Nattey had in store, come July. She rowed in the Women’s Four which came 12th, not as good a result as they had hoped for, but, heh, there’s plenty of time for improvement.

Also cheer worthy was young jazz singer Matilda Lorenz’s success in gaining a scholarship to a famous school of music in the US. Sometimes it’s just meant to be. A decade ago, her mother took her to listen to a jazz singer in New York. That was the occasion when Matilda knew the future that she wanted. That singer is the director of the program that she has now joined.

While Matilda is starting out in America, the Canberra Theatre, like the Queanbeyan Players, is celebrating its 60th. The Theatre decided to celebrate with the Australian Ballet’s production of Carmen. This production focused on the violent relationships between men and women.

But those relationships don’t have to be violent. They can be very supportive. Enrico and Franca Taglietti made Canberra their home in the 1950’s. He was to be the architect for numerous projects, along with furniture design.  

He died in 2019. This year the Canberra Museum + Gallery in Civic is celebrating his work until next February, so plenty of time over the end of year, early new year to go along and enjoy.

Former barrister Hugh Selby is the CityNews legal matters columnist.