Australia's annual Ernie awards mocking the most sexist public comments in the country used to have a somewhat lighthearted edge.

But campaigners against sexism are warning that this year some of Australia's most influential people are displaying increasingly blatant misogyny.

Last night radio broadcaster Alan Jones took out the main award for declaring: "Women are destroying the joint, Christine Nixon in Melbourne, Clover Moore here, honestly there is no chaff bag big enough for these people."

Kyle Sandilands' comment of: "Your hair's very '90s and your blouse, you haven't got that much titty to be having that low-cut a blouse, watch your mouth, girl or I'll hunt you down", came second to Jones in the media section.

And while sportsmen have featured in the past, Basketball Australia won this year's sport award for flying the women's Olympic basketball team to London economy class, and the male team business class.

The Ernie awards were first held 20 years ago in honour of a union leader who said women only wanted to be shearers for the sex.

Sally McManus is the secretary of the Australian Services Union and she says sexism is now getting worse.

"I think for a long time in the 90s a lot of us, especially young women, thought it was getting better and we just sort of expected that it would just keep getting better and better and better and that's turned out not to be the case," she said.

"Lately a lot of us have just thought, 'no, it's gone too far'. You've got to draw a line in the sand.

"It's just gone too vitriolic, too horrible, too unacceptable and it's going backwards. It's going backwards for us, it's going backwards for the next generation."

The woman behind the awards is former New South Wales politician Meredith Burgmann.

"The misogyny is probably worse this year, and I think that's because we do have a woman Prime Minister. Just for the last few years it's been getting worse and worse," she said.

The award for good attitude towards women went to Defence Minister Stephen Smith for his comment that inappropriate Defence Force behaviour will not be tolerated.