Nicholas Gruen nails it when he says that honours and awards mostly go to people for doing their (already well paid) day jobs. What his article also neatly underscores(click on link below) is that there is a class structure inherent in the Australian, imperially approved, honours system ie the establishment people like judges and senior public servants, get the top gongs (for doing their jobs) while community members and volunteers get the lowest level awards. The structure of our honours system, although not the actual awards themselves, are approved by our Head of State, Queen Elizabeth II of England. When PM Abbott reintroduced the very unpopular knighthoods in 2014, he had to get the Head of State’s approval while PM Turnbull had to get her approval to remove them again in late 2015. A truly Australian award system introduced under a Republic should be an improvement on this inequitable arrangement that favours certain groups in our society. [“We’re awarding the Order of Australia to the wrong people”, Nicholas Gruen, The Conversation online, 25 January 2019]
Woman for an Australian Republic, Adelaide Ironside, republican poet and artist 1831-1867
Self portrait 1855, Newcastle Art Gallery NSW
