Your complete guide to 2000
With Kisma Ayriars
January
18. Anna Kournikova loses her second round match at the Australian Open tennis in Melbourne, which is a pity really because although she can’t play the game to save her life, she’s got a top arse and great tits.
26. A re-enactment of the arrival of the First Fleet during Australia Day celebrations in Sydney goes horribly wrong when – unbeknownst to organisers - Victorian RSL president Bruce Ruxton uses live ammunition during his guest appearance as Governor Phillip.
February
12. Controversial umpire Darryl Hair no-balls Shoaib Akthar for throwing in the first of the one day international series cricket finals, sparking fresh allegations of racism particularly as he is standing in an interstate match in Perth at the time.
20. In a shock move, the Nine Network shifts the long-running 60 Minutes program from its 7.30 pm Sunday timeslot to allow Daryl Somers to make a return to the small screen in an all-new program – Hey, Hey It’s Sunday.
29. Disgraced former Queensland Police Commissioner Terry Lewis celebrates his birthday and demonstrates his forgiving streak by inviting former bagman Jack Herbert and wife Peggy for lunch.
March
1: A terrorist bomb sinks New Zealand's defending America's Cup yacht, NZL 60, in Auckland Harbour. A secret Australian security agency no-one had ever heard of before claims responsibility for the attack, arguing that it was in Australia's interests as New Zealanders will be even more unbearable if they had successfully defend the Cup.
2: The Australian Broadcasting Authority releases the findings of its “Cash for Comments” inquiry. The inquiry clears radio talk-back king John Laws of any wrongdoing, although it recommends he gives back the 34 Toyota LandCruisers.
8. The Queensland Bulls win the inaugural Pura Milk Cup, and The Courier-Mail is faced with a dilemma on how to caption the picture of the triumphant side holding the cup they’ve been refusing to mention for months now.
11. After spending more than a week in hospital, former self-confessed Queensland Police bagman Jack Herbert and his wife Peggy die. Doctors suspect food poisoning.
16: Belligerent and drunk Australian film star Russell Crowe king-hits last year’s Best Actress winner Gwynth Paltrow at a pre-Oscars cocktail party.
17: At the Academy Award presentations, belligerent and drunk Australian film star Russell Crowe misses out on an Oscar for his work in The Insider, but is awarded a special Oscar for his services to the film industry.
April
1. Media tycoon and Australia’s richest man Kerry Packer declares he has given up the punt for good and will instead donate to charity the vast amounts of money he used to gamble annually.
1. James Packer, son of media tycoon Kerry Packer and a heartbeat away from being the nation’s richest man, announces all Packer-related companies would now be paying their full rate of tax as well as back taxes.
1. Media tycoon and one of America's richest men, Rupert Murdoch announces he is relinquishing his US citizenship to become an Australian again, even though it means forfeiting holdings worth billions of dollars in a string of American public and private companies.
1. Lachlan Murdoch, son of
media tycoon Rupert Murdoch and a heartbeat away from being one of America's
richest men, issues a directive to all editors of New Ltd publications prohibiting
favourable editorial coverage of movies, events, organisations or sports
in which the worldwide conglomerate has an interest.
1. Queensland Premier Peter Beattie refuses to comment on an issue when
contacted by the media.
1. SOCOG has a day free from controversy.
1. Sydney radio identity Alan Jones urges his listeners to vote Labor.
1. Cosmopolitan magazine in the United States lists Australian Prime Minister John Howard in its list of the world's 10 sexiest men.
25. Anzac Day celebrations in Sydney go horribly wrong when special guest, Victorian RSL president Bruce Ruxton, spies a Japanese cargo ship steaming up the harbour just as a 21-gun salute is about to start.
May
6: British PM Tony Blair has a chance to counter criticisms that he’s more than a cynical, poll-driven, closet conservative politician, when he and his wife Cheri celebrate the birth of their new son. The couple name him Margaret Hilda.
18: Former Deputy Prime Minister Tim Fischer confesses he now suspects he may have suffered from being Tim Fischer as a child.
25. US Vice-President Al Gore escapes an assassination attempt by a crazed gunman while campaigning in Los Angeles for the Democratic Party’s presidential nomination.
June
10: Prime Minister John Howard calls a snap election for the last Saturday in June, citing the smooth introduction of the GST and the Australian people’s overwhelming acceptance of the new tax as his main reasons for calling the poll mid-term.
17. The Patrick Stevedores company makes a surprise purchase of the Seven Network and immediately cuts all newsreading teams to just one presenter, sacks all weather presenters as well as the two presenters of the Saturday Gold Lotto draw – forcing viewers to read the numbers themselves – and stops the practice of presenters going home after prerecording late-night update bulletins.
18. Seizing on the changes at the Seven Network as an election issue, federal Minister for Industrial Relations Peter Reith says TV presenters are grossly overpaid, work only a few hours a day and Australian live television must be more competitive in the global market.
30: Prime Minister-elect Kim Beazley says the ALP had made mistakes while in government and that he and his colleagues would certainly be doing things vastly different this time around. But because he would lead an open and honest government he had to admit he didn’t believe in the former and certainly wouldn’t be doing the latter. Not only that, humble pie can go fuck itself.
July
1. July begins
5. Former Victorian Premier Jeff Kennett is elected unopposed as the federal Opposition Leader and says he hopes the party can find him a safe seat to run in as quickly as possible.
12. Prime Minister Beazley says the new Labor Government will not be able to axe the GST because it was already too entrenched in the Australian business and taxation system and rakes in too much money.
17. At the US Democratic Party’s convention, Vice-President Al Gore is chosen overwhelmingly as the party’s candidate for the November presidential elections.
22. At the US Republican Party’s convention, aged former presidential candidate Bob Dole is called upon to deliver the speech nominating Texas governor George Bush Jnr as the party’s presidential candidate. During his speech, a forgetful Dole accidentally nominates himself and confused delegates carry his nomination by acclamation.
23. Bob Dole announces George Bush Jnr as his vice-presidential running mate.
27: French tennis star Amelie Mauresmo is bundled out of the Wimbledon first round and at the post-match press conference blames her unexpected loss on worries over a prostate cancer scare earlier in the week.
25. Cricket’s international controlling body announces that all other cricketing nations have agreed to let England batsmen defend just the one stump in all Test matches over the next 12 months, to see whether the once-proud home of cricket can become more competitive on the world stage.
August
11. It is finally revealed the assassination attempt on US Vice-President Al Gore in May was successful. Democratic Party officials hastily organise another convention.
18. At the end of a five-and-a-half-hour lunch with former Labor senator and powerbroker and now SOCOG official Graham Richardson, visiting IOC head Juan Antonio Samaranche admits to reporters waiting outside the restaurant that it’s fun scaring shit and money out of people, telling everyone else what to do, doing fuck-all yourself and being treated like royalty everywhere you go.
18. Tragedy strikes the early evening rehearsals for the lighting of the Olympic flame at the Homebush Stadium in Sydney. Twenty-four people are taken to hospital with severe burns when Graham Richardson breaks wind as a replica Olympic torch passes behind him.
22. The US Democratic Party chooses political warhorse Senator Edward Kennedy as its presidential nominee. Senator Kennedy reveals Madonna as his choice for vice-presidential running mate.
23. Senator Kennedy makes an impassioned speech accepting the Democratic Party’s nomination – calling on the memory of his two dead brothers and summoning the memory of his party’s past heroes such as FDR and Harry Truman. Despite the genuine tears his performance brings to the eyes of convention delegates, US media reports are overwhelmingly negative – focussing on the fact the Senator was naked from the waist down.
September
2. In one of the most remarkable comebacks in sports history, the South Sydney Rabbitohs finally have a court win and go on to take out the flag in the Kiama Blowhole and District 2nd Division grand final.
10. The 2000 Sydney Olympics opening ceremony goes terribly wrong, and millions of television viewers around the world recoil in horror as a TV camera accidentally pans onto federal ministers Amanda Vanstone and Bronwyn Bishop.
15. Red hot favourite Ian Thorpe tragically misses the start of his blue riband 400 metres freestyle final at the Sydney Olympics after getting one of his size 17 feet stuck in the pool’s skimmer box.
25. Olympics Minister Knight declares the Sydney 2000 Olympics the best the city has ever hosted.
27. Former Prime Minister and 60 Minutes reporter John Howard claims Australia would have doubled its medal tally at the just completed Olympics if he had remain the country’s leader.
October
4. Queensland Premier Peter Beattie shrugs off media criticism after appointing former ministers Dean Wells, Paul Braddy, Wendy Edmond and Matt Foley to newly created trade posts in Monaco, Venice, St Moritz and Bordeaux.
8. Muhammad Ali and Don King face off in a Las Vegas nightclub for the undisputed heavyweight boxing championship of the world. Watched by billions wordwide, the $150 million, winner-take-all 12 round fight ends in a tame draw but sports analysts agree the bout goes a long way to restoring the sport's tarnished image.
12. Heart-throb actor Pierce Brosnan quits as the silver screen’s fifth James Bond, handing the baton to Mike Myers, who signs to a four-picture deal.
25. The Queensland Government finally awards a $300 million contract to build Brisbane’s light rail but Premier Beattie warns the winning consortium that the light rail would not necessarily be built anywhere near where everyone thought it was likely to go, or for that matter if it would be a light rail project. “All we have determined to date is that a contract has been awarded,” he says.
November
5. United States First Lady Hillary Clinton’s campaign for a New York senate seat is in ruins after a male aide, 19, goes public with claims she tried to shove a Cuban cigar down the eye of his penis.
9. Forced to buy his own vodka for the first time in living memory, former Russian leader Boris Yeltsin is again admitted to hospital. Doctors say he is suffering from too much blood in his alcohol stream.
23. Following his surprise win in the US elections, President-elect Bob Dole is invited to visit Texas, the home state of his running mate George Bush Jnr. As former governor of the state, Bush himself organises the visit down to the last detail – even arranging an open limousine for Dole to ride through the streets of Dallas.
30. After drying out for almost three weeks, Boris Yeltsin reveals – in flawless English – that he has never spoken a word of Russian.
December
5. Media, aviation and retail tycoon Richard Branson, fresh from establishing Virgin Airlines in Australia, announces plans to purchase and merge Qantas and Ansett as part of a bold plan to give Australians what he describes as a highly competitive “two-airline policy”.
15. An appearance in a department store in Cabramatta in western Sydney by guest Santa Claus, Victorian RSL president Bruce Ruxton, goes horribly wrong.
10. Former Texas governor George Bush Jnr becomes president-elect following the death of Bob Dole. Bush pledges he will run a clean and vigorous administration after he assumes office in January 2001. He also commits himself to establishing an inquiry into Dole’s apparent suicide after the 77-year-old was found with a gunshot wound to his right temple.
31: The peoples of the world finally welcome in the dawn of a new millennium.Billions around the globe look up and marvel at the latest advances in pyrotechnics - fireworks that stay up in the sky all nigh simply by adding to the explosive mixture the chemical component used in viagra.
