Next week a report on the Australian honours system will be tabled in Parliament. A review of the system was certainly needed. It seems silly to have two separate days on which honours are bestowed, both Australia Day and the Queen’s Birthday. It would be better to just have honours on Australia Day or perhaps just on Federation Day.
Over the years the honours system has become democratised to some extent. Any Australian can nominate any other Australian for an award and awards have been taken out of the hands of the government of the day. These two important principles must be maintained after the review. However, the awards are frequently attacked on the ground that the highest awards have an over-representation of politicians and public servants and have an over-representation of people who were just doing their jobs, albeit very successfully. Both of those categories are filled with people who are generally very well rewarded financially for their efforts. The awards also come under fire because the highest awards go to those mentioned above, while the lower awards seem to go to those who make the greater personal sacrifice with voluntary work for good causes outside their normal career or whose work is fairly poorly paid.
The honours system should reward excellence as well as sacrifice, but it should be primarily focused on the outstanding and out-of-the-ordinary. The list should not look like a round-up of the usual kinds of people. Precisely how the nation achieves that is difficult to say. We have come some distance to improving the honours system in the past 25 years and whatever reforms are made, it is likely that the power elites will ensure one way of the other that their kind get the most and highest awards … but at least that trend should be minimised.