Is it possible to rehabilitate the Order of Australia awards? Or should they be put out of their misery, written off as another Coalition monument to political cronyism — just as the Albanese government has done with the once independent and respected Administrative Appeals Tribunal?
This week, a new batch of 1000 or so honours awards will issue forth from the governor-general’s office on Australia Day.
In years gone by, as Crikey has reported, senior honours were handed to friends of the Coalition government at a dizzying rate. Our trawl through the awards made to politicians in the Australia Day and Queen’s birthday honours of 2019 and 2020 showed that out of a total of 62 honours 42 went to Liberal or National party figures while 20 went to ALP and independents.
This means two-thirds of all gongs went to conservative parliamentarians.
There was a large difference in the distribution, too. In the most prestigious categories, the AC and the AO, Liberal and National party grandees received 14 of 18 awards.
Awards went to former Liberal/LNP/National premiers Ted Baillieu, Denis Napthine, Campbell Newman, Barry O’Farrell and Mike Baird. The backroom operative Tony Nutt, barely known outside Liberal HQ, picked up an award. So did Bronwyn “helicopter” Bishop, the partisan speaker of the House of Representatives.
On the ALP side, the former ALP figure-turned-Murdoch-media-favourite Graham “whatever it takes” Richardson was honoured for his high service to the nation.
Let’s not forget 2021 when former tennis champion turned Pentecostal pastor Margaret Court received an award upgrade under the reign of Scott Morrison. Morrison later journeyed to Court’s Victory Life church in Perth for the official opening of its prayer tower and to deliver a sermon in which he promoted the role of God over government.
Speaking of which, there were the Tony Abbott-George Pell-inspired awards of 2016 which saw the second-highest honour, the AO (Officer of the Order of Australia), go to The Australian’s Greg “I loved George Pell” Sheridan for his “distinguished service to print media as a journalist and political commentator on foreign affairs and national security, and to Australia’s bilateral relationships”.
Catholic ethicist Dr Bernadette Tobin, a prominent voluntary assisted dying opponent, received the same high honour in 2016, in her case for “distinguished service to education and philosophy, to the development of bioethics in Australia as an academic, and as a leader of a range of public health advisory and research councils”. It is perhaps only tangentially relevant that Tobin is the daughter of right-wing Catholic royalty BA Santamaria, and great friends with the late cardinal. Looking for a common link here?
Abbott, another great Pell man, had only recently departed the prime ministership, and given the long lead time on an Australia honour it is surely not beyond the realms of possibility that his mitts were all over the appointments.
Of course all of this was rendered quite unremarkable in the shadow of the greatest howitzer of all: Abbott’s decision in 2015 to award an Order of Australia knighthood to Prince Philip, Duke of Edinburgh, Earl of Merioneth and Baron Greenwich, Knight of the Most Noble Order of the Garter, Knight of the Most Ancient and Most Noble Order of the Thistle, Member of the Order of Merit, Knight Grand Cross of the Royal Victorian Order upon whom had been conferred the Royal Victorian Chain and Sovereign of the Most Noble Order of the Garter.
What to do with this legacy of cronyism, favouritism and left-field lunacy?
There is now a new breed and a new broom at the awards. In October Prime Minister Anthony Albanese announced four appointments to take over the machinery of the Australian honours.
The new chair of the Council for the Order Australia is Shelley Reys (AO), a Djirribul woman of Far North Queensland. Reys was the inaugural co-chair of Reconciliation Australia, where she had a significant role in the Rudd government’s official apology to the Stolen Generations. Her long career in reconciliation bristles with governance credentials, as Albanese’s announcement was keen to highlight — along with the fact that she was the first woman and First Nations woman to be appointed chair of the council.
There is huge symbolism in her appointment of Reys, taking over from Liberal Party stalwart Shane Stone.
Albanese also made three appointments to the seven-person advisory council, meant to represent the community. All appointments are strategic in their own way.
Annie Butler, a registered nurse, is federal secretary of the Australian Nursing and Midwifery Federation, Australia’s biggest union, with more than 300,000 members, and is a formidable campaigning force.
Cathy McGowan was the independent federal member for Indi who — legendarily — ousted the Liberal’s Sophie Mirabella and in the process set the template for the success of other community independents, notably the teal candidates who swept aside Liberal MPs and ministers at last year’s election. McGowan’s sister Ruth has been a driving force of Honour A Woman, which lobbied hard to fix the gender disparity which has been ingrained in the awards.
Professor Samina Yasmeen AM is an academic from the University of Western Australia and director and founder of its centre for Muslim states and societies.
This week Reys wrote an opinion piece in The Sydney Morning Herald and The Age, which was a rallying cry for more diversity in nominations as the way to change who actually receives an award. This was likely also to be a spoiler alert to forestall any disappointment at this week’s awards. The process of nominating someone for an award and doing the necessary check takes around two years.
Reys’ pre-announcement announcement focused too on slaying the myth that the honours go to the well known at the expense of the little person who toils away unacknowledged for years.
But she didn’t mention the years of absurd and overt political cronyism which has made a mockery of the awards — what we might call AAT syndrome, where an institution is so leached of integrity that it no longer has our trust.
It is also hard to take a system seriously when it professes to be powerless to remove honours given to Pell after royal commission findings on his knowledge of child abuse and his failure to take proper steps to act on complaints about dangerous priests. Or that it was powerless to remove the highest honours in the land from former High Court justice Dyson Heydon, after he was found to have sexually harassed junior court staff. Heydon quietly relinquished his honour in October, without public explanation, around the time of Albanese’s appointments.
The system also operates in near total secrecy. The governor-general’s office never comments on specific awards and the processes are exempt from freedom of information laws.
Rather than attempt to renew, reshape, rebrand and relaunch the honours, maybe it’s time to start all over again.
Should there be a whole new honours system? Let us know by writing to letters@crikey.com.au. Please include your full name to be considered for publication. We reserve the right to edit for length and clarity.
Well said Mr. Hardaker. The only way to make the Australian honours system look good is to compare it with the British system, which has now reached the point where Russian oligarchs who pour their ill-gotten money into the Tory Party are ‘elevated’ (that is apparently the accepted term) to the House of Lords, which is growing inexorably towards a thousand members. The basis for awarding the rest of the ‘honours’ there are little better.
The first and most important step for any respectability in the honours system is to make it completely independent of partisan political influence. There must be nobody involved who has any ties to a political party. If those who run the major parties want to give fancy titles, awards and medals to their mates they can do it as their own internal party business, without dragging Australia into it.
yes indeed. The awards as they are currently given, do more to dishonour Australia than to recognise serious and worthy achievement. A deserving recipient will look as dodgy as a political sponger ( i guess thats the aussie way: cultural cringe).
There is a serious problem with the brand
The ones who truly deserve the highest awards are the selfless community volunteers who get OAMs, not those who get awards for simply doing their already well-paid jobs
Don’t knock it – London is now unchallenged in the field of money laundering……..and the realty industry is most appreciative.
Yep – the basis of modern capitalism.
The EU tax lawyers regard Britain as the perfect ‘off-shore tax haven’.
The attraction for hard done by oligarchs, Belgian dentists and faux eurotrash royalty is not merely the minimal accountability but a robust legal framework to protect ill gotten gains so one needn’t be concerned about a coup or change of government coming over all graspy grasping.
Then there’s the 10 or so Oxford Street U.S. ‘candy stores’ in London’s highest retail rental zone…..which close and reappear when the city’s rates become due. Who knows what’s going with these shops without customers.
Brexit enabled it and I guess that’s the Brexit benefit they all talk about.
The UK example is forward planning with the upper house or Lords becoming dominated by Tory grandees, grifters and donors…. Fast forward, if UK Labour wins government how are they going to pass any slightly contentious legislation via the House of Lords?
Worse, is when asking British, English especially, about UK politics, they are oblivious like when Brexit was looming due to disinformation via media, due to disengagement and/or disgust with the system; well done.
Oddly enough, given that Starmer, officially leader of the opposition and therefore embodiment of all the UK’s hopes for some relief from the various plagues, catastrophes, miseries and afflictions delivered by the Tories over the past decade and more, is mostly indistinguishable from a plank made of jelly and offers nothing on almost every issue, he does have an answer on that. Labor’s policy, for now, is to scrap the Lords and replace it with an elected upper chamber. Your guess is as good as mine on how this will go. And of course any bill scrapping the Lords has to be passed by the Lords (although there are workarounds), so there’s at least one little difficulty with his cunning plan.
Sinking Ship Rat is on the money – I mean, you would think the pollies would be erudite and principled enough to not shamelessly treat the honours as a self-congratulatory club (what is it with conservatives and titles?), but reality has proven otherwise (are they so dumb that they thought no one would notice – or is that they think the voters are such mugs that we wouldn’t notice?). We need some sort of board to decide these things that’s independent of govt. It could be on a tenure type basis similar to the way High Court judges are appointed, so it’d generally be reasonably balanced in terms of political flavour. Wouldn’t be hard to do.
There was, and probably still is, a standing joke about long service and good conduct awards. The medal you get for turning up and not being caught, was the punchline. Many of the honours I’ve read about appear to be something similar. Doing your job, getting paid and then being honoured. I always felt honours, like bravery awards, should be for something well and truely over-and-above doing your job. Volunteers for example who do great works and are not paid. People who go well beyond the Position Description, regularly over lengthy time. People who tackle thankless challenging tasks and succeed. Not sure being a political donor, stalwart, crony or just plain rich counts.
I imagine he felt like this https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eciDVOAIXHc
At least he’d have had a squadron of secretaries to do the appointments and paperwork.
Totally agree. Why honour someone with a great salary who is just going what they are supposed to, when there are so many volunteering their time, skills and ideas?
Richard, although not of the calibre myself myself, I have three relatives in the extended family who as volunteers did great community work and were delighted and proud the receive recognition with a gong. Sadly the politically associated awards described in this article belittles their contributions. They condem the outstanding contributions to the same level as political lackeys.
When Peta Credlin flouts her AO, it symbolises just how ridiculous the current system is. Similarly Alan Jones.
I agree that something new is needed that. apart from anything else. is not so apparently class-based. Doing amazing community work that helps many usually gets the lowest-ranked award, while simply doing your job as a politician, military leader or captain of industry, or Party-friendly hack, get the highest-ranked awards.
Exactly my thoughts Bill.
Forget the politicisation of the awards- that’s a sideshow.
The real reason they are a joke is because they are ostensibly intended to honour people for their service to the nation and its citizens.
But practically every award (bar the community awards) are given to those who were simply doing their job and/or serving themselves.
Sure, service to the nation and/or its citizens occurs coincidentally with the conducting of many kinds of jobs and pursuits, such as being a politician etc.
But unless it can be readily demonstrated that someone has undertaken substantive sacrifice in order to perform that role, it is clear service to the nation was secondary and entirely optional.
Why do the awards mean nothing?
Because we give them away for doing nothing other than being ourselves.
If we want them to mean something– they need to be given out for doing something.
Something that was primarily in the interests of serving the nation and its people… not something that we would have done anyway.
By the by:
The irony is not lost on me that the same conservative blowhards who rail incessantly about how kids these days in schools are mollycoddled and given ribbons and prizes for simply turning up…
are the bastions of these awards which are metaphorically and literally… nothing more than a little gold star for simply turning up.
Well said Damien. I can’t agree more.
What about Greg bloody Sheridan. That brazen fluffer of the well-to-do deserves a plunger instead of his medal.
I am actually blown away that this turkey is a journalist of national renown. There’s NO WAY the talent pool can be that shallow
Perhaps it was awarded in recognition of the fetching shade of brown of his tongue & nose?
Besties with the Nong recipient Toned Abs at uni I observed.
Probably what keeps him employed.
More flaunt than flout?
Does AO mean Arse Officially?
We desperately need a Media Hack award…….obviously sponsored by Rupert and Lachlan.
Remember when Keating declined an AO gong on the grounds that he had had enough recognition and reward in his career? Most recipients have – how many public servants and military figures are getting gongs for doing their job and occupying their seats for the requisite period of time. There is a case for some kind of recognition for the genuine unsung heroes – ordinary folk who foster dozens of disadvantaged kids, for example, but let’s drop the ersatz copy of a tired and discredited feudal honours system altogether. (Of course, in Keating’s case, he probably refused to accept anything from the Howard government, that he so deeply despised, but that makes sense too.)
In Keating’s case,it was an AC not an AO.
It is still a remarkably decent position he took.
Not only is it a remarkably decent position to take it should be the only position an Australian can take.
Thanks – using Order of Australia generically.
In keeping with Australian cynicism, how about a Nong Award David?. Less specific than a Darwin Award, for a one off or sustained activity. Abbott tapping Phil the Greek on the shoulder with a virtual blunt sword and intoning ‘arise Sir Prince Philip’ deserves at least a decade of recognition, you bet you are, you bet I am. And #30 for a daggy marketing failure.
One of the criterion for a Nong Award could be the Sadim, for those who’s very touch turns something to muck.
Scummo should receive the inaugural gong as his unfailing anti-Midas touch did so much damage to this country that it may be irreparable.