Simon Cowan | Few winners and COVID lockdown enthusiasts the biggest losers in 2022

The biggest losers this year are the (thankfully now dwindling) cadre of lockdown enthusiasts. Having started the year confidently asserting their belief that a single case of COVID justified locking down whole cities, if not states, they have been comprehensively routed from the public square.

For example, Australia recorded more cases in December this year than during the entire second half of last year, where most of us were locked down at some point. Yet, now we deal with it via personal protections by the vulnerable, not by caging healthy people.

The lockdown holdouts remain stubborn, especially on social media, but now people have stopped panicking, sensible policy has resumed.

It turns out that the lockdown's (Chinese) emperor has no clothes either, with increasingly violent unrest in China at continued attempts to enforce COVID zero.

On the other side are the big winners, the ascendant Labor party. Winners in the federal election. Winners in South Australia. Winners in Victoria, despite the premier being the lockdown pin-up boy. They are a genuine chance of winning in NSW at next year's election.

Since the high point following Kevin Rudd's election, it's not exactly been smooth sailing for the left of politics. But nothing unites a political party more than winning, so right now they are masters of their domain.

In fact, the big challenge for the ALP may be to avoid overreaching while they hold all the levers. While neither side of politics is great at listening to voices outside their own bubble, right now Labor is taking a lot of advice from those who agree with them. That's not always a great way to get long-lasting reform through.

On the other hand though, the Liberal party appears to be in disarray, especially in Victoria (where they have made little headway in a decade) and Western Australia (where they have been reduced to a rump).

You get the sense the Liberals have more losing to do before they start winning again.

And that's before you get into the troubles that Scott Morrison managed to get himself into. They say that to really screw things up you need a team. Maybe that's why Morrison took on those extra ministries? Who knows ... almost no-one, apparently.

While the Labor party has been a beneficiary of their Liberal malaise, arguably the biggest winners have been the independents and minor parties.

From the growth of the Greens in Victoria to the triumphant teals at the federal election to David Pocock pilfering a Senate seat at the breakdown, it's been a banner year for the malcontents of politics.

Of course, the minor party movement has been growing for years, especially in the Senate, but it's extending now to the lower house as well.

While predictions that this will grow unchecked to cannibalise the major parties are clearly premature, history suggests that independents tend to stick around once they are elected.

If nothing else, it will take a concerted effort from either major party to dislodge the independents from any one of their fiefdoms and - like the medieval kings of old - laying siege to a rebellious castle in one electorate merely leaves the others vulnerable for opportunistic attack.

Speaking of castles, those who owe the bank for the pleasure of owning their home have certainly lost out this year. It's now become a macabre routine: another Reserve Bank meeting, another rate rise, another email from the bank saying that payments are going up.

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Even if you concede that the Governor of the Reserve Bank didn't technically promise to keep interest rates at zero until 2024, people have every right to be livid that the mismanagement of the economy by the RBA and the government led to inflation getting out of control.

COVID supply chain disruptions and the war in Ukraine played their part, but things wouldn't have spiralled without the excessive fiscal and monetary stimulus in 2021 and the months of inaction in the first half of this year.

In the end, someone always has to pay for the folly of government. This time it's home owners - especially younger home owners.

Turning to the global stage, it's not been a great year for many past winners. In the US, after a terrible showing by his endorsed candidates, Donald Trump's return to the White House looks ever less likely. Joe Biden hasn't covered himself in glory either; his administration stumbling from one mess to the next.

Not that the autocrats have had a good year. Vladimir Putin is mired in the Ukrainian mud, while Iran's decades of Islamic theocracy is being challenged by a major revolt.

The Queen passed away this year, and with her seems to have passed any restraint from certain members of her family, who are so upset by all the attention they are getting that they had to release a podcast and documentary series pointing out just how tough it is to be rich and famous.

While we are on the topic of darlings of the progressive set, closer to home, Jacinda Ardern is starting to resemble nothing so much as a salutary lesson on government overreach. Turns out you actually can't run a country on gesture politics alone - even New Zealand.

If we were to try and sum it all up, it would be to say that at least 2022 was better than 2021 and 2020, but it won't be hard for 2023 to top that lot.