{"id":355600,"date":"2026-01-26T10:47:29","date_gmt":"2026-01-26T00:47:29","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.vibewire.com.au\/?p=355600"},"modified":"2026-01-26T10:47:31","modified_gmt":"2026-01-26T00:47:31","slug":"wannabe-astronaut-confirmed-as-australian-of-the-year","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.vibewire.com.au\/?p=355600","title":{"rendered":"Wannabe Astronaut confirmed as Australian of the Year"},"content":{"rendered":"\n<p>Australia may have hit a new low under Anthony Albanese with this years pick for Australian of the year.  Nothing against the winner but we\u2019ve hit peak DEI when Katherine Bennell-Pegg who seems nice enough but hasn\u2019t even been to space yet beats: <\/p>\n\n\n\n<ul class=\"wp-block-list\">\n<li>Dr Thompson who established Third Wave Volunteers \u2013 a global movement of first responder volunteers <\/li>\n\n\n\n<li>Carrie Bickmore who raised $27m and established the Brain Cancer Centre in 2021 <\/li>\n\n\n\n<li>Dr Rolf Gomes who created the first Heart of Australia mobile Heart Trucks that provides life saving medical services for rural and remote cardiac patients <\/li>\n\n\n\n<li>Dr Kippax, a retrieval specialist who directed a team to perform a life saving emergency amputation of whitewater rafter Valdas Bieliauskas\u2019 leg while underwater <\/li>\n<\/ul>\n\n\n\n<p>Of all the life saving, and innovative contributions made in Australia in the last year, a women who trained to travel in a spacecraft wins, incredible.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>While I applaud her, she hasn&#8217;t been to space and has done nothing for Australia. Her success is personal success. There are more deserving Australian women out there.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>I bet next year the Australian of the Year will be Tony Armstrong.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>While I applaud her, she hasn&#8217;t been to space and has done nothing for Australia.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":22,"featured_media":355601,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"om_disable_all_campaigns":false,"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"_uf_show_specific_survey":0,"_uf_disable_surveys":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[273,35],"tags":[997,19366,19372,19371],"class_list":["post-355600","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-australia","category-breaking-news","tag-australia-day","tag-australia-day-2026","tag-australian-of-the-year","tag-katherine-bennell-pegg"],"aioseo_notices":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.vibewire.com.au\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/355600","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.vibewire.com.au\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.vibewire.com.au\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.vibewire.com.au\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/22"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.vibewire.com.au\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=355600"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.vibewire.com.au\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/355600\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":355644,"href":"https:\/\/www.vibewire.com.au\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/355600\/revisions\/355644"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.vibewire.com.au\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/355601"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.vibewire.com.au\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=355600"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.vibewire.com.au\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=355600"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.vibewire.com.au\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=355600"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}