The Australian of the Year is a national award conferred on an Australian citizen by the National Australia Day Council, a not-for-profit Australian Government-owned social enterprise. Similar awards are also conferred at the state and territory level.
History
Since 1960 the award for the Australian of the Year has been bestowed as part of the celebrations surrounding Australia Day, during which time it has grown steadily in significance to become one of the nation's pre-eminent awards. The Australian of the Year announcement has become a notable part of the annual Australia Day celebrations. The official announcement has grown to become a public event, and the Canberra ceremony is televised nationally. The award offers an insight into Australian identity, reflecting the nation's evolving relationship with world, the role of sport in Australian culture, the impact of multiculturalism, and the special status of Indigenous Australians. It has also provoked spirited debate about the fields of endeavour that are most worthy of public recognition.
The award program promotes active citizenship and seeks to elevate certain people as role models. Three companion awards have been introduced, recognising both Young and Senior Australians, and proclaiming the efforts of those who work at a grass roots level through the "Australia's Local Hero" award.
Sponsorship The Australian of the Year award receives substantial sponsorship from private companies, including a relationship in excess of thirty years with the Commonwealth Bank. The close relationship with the Australian Government ensures that the award's profile and reputation is significantly enhanced.
Awards history, by decade
1960s
During the 1960s, a network of state-based organisations worked hard to increase the profile of Australia Day. The most active and best resourced of these was the Victorian Australia Day Council, which had grown out of the Australian Natives' Association. In January 1960 the council's chairman, the unabashed patriot Sir Norman Martin, announced the introduction of a new annual award for the 'Australian of the Year'. He explained that Australia Day was a fitting occasion on which to give proper recognition to a leading citizen, whose contribution to the nation's culture, economy, sciences or arts was particularly outstanding.
For the first two decades the Australian of the Year was chosen by a panel of five, which included the Victorian Premier, the Anglican Archbishop of Melbourne, the vice-chancellor of Melbourne University, the Lord Mayor of Melbourne and the president of the National Council for Women. Although the panel was certainly distinguished, it would in time become too closely associated with Melbourne to be appropriate for a national award. The panel's first choice of Nobel Prize winning immunologist Sir Macfarlane Burnet gained general approval. The editors of The Age proclaimed the new honour was symptomatic of Australia's growing confidence as a nation: 'We are beginning to count for something in the world and we should be intensely proud of this fact.'
International achievement remained a key criterion during the award's first decade. Several sporting heroes were honoured, from America's Cup skipper Jock Sturrock and swimmer Dawn Fraser, to world champion motor racer Sir Jack Brabham and boxer Lionel Rose. The pioneering neurologist Sir John Eccles followed Burnet's example, becoming the second of five Australians to take out the Nobel Prize/Australian of the Year double. Achievers in the artistic realm were also well represented, including opera singer Joan Sutherland, renowned dancer and choreographer Robert Helpmann and the four members of the chart-topping singing group The Seekers – Judith Durham, Athol Guy, Keith Potger and Bruce Woodley. The focus on international achievement reflected the philosophy of the award organisers, who described the Australian of the Year as 'the person who has brought the greatest honour to Australia in the year under review.'Australia Day Council (Victoria), 'Annual Report, 1970 – 1971'
1970s and 1980s During its first two decades, the Australian of the Year award grew steadily in national prominence, but it increasingly suffered from its close association with the Victorian Australia Day Council. A competing Australian of the Year award was established by newspaper The Australian in 1971. In 1975 the newly formed Canberra Australia Day Council also began to name a rival Australian of the Year. The Canberra council was run by a vibrant group of local inhabitants, who pursued a more progressive agenda than their Victorian counterparts. In particular, the Canberra council was sympathetic to the emerging republican movement, while the Victorian council was staunchly committed to constitutional ties with Britain. The Victorian council also battled a common perception that it was an exclusive organisation that represented the Melbourne Establishment. Australia's turbulent political climate nourished this division, and the Australian of the Year award was embroiled in a wider debate about Australian nationalism.
Between 1975 and 1979, the Canberra Australia Day Council named four Australians of the Year. Prime Minister Gough Whitlam lent his support to the Canberra award when he presented the inaugural honour to Major General Alan Stretton, the commander of the emergency response to Cyclone Tracy. The Canberra council also made good use of the federal parliamentary press boxes to promote its award to the national media. The Victorian council was singularly unimpressed that a rival Australia Day organisation had copied its idea – in 1977 it described its own winner, Dame Raigh Roe, as 'the real Australian of the Year'. The impasse was only resolved when the Fraser government created the National Australia Day Council (NADC) in 1979. The Victorian council willingly transferred responsibility for its award to the new national body, while the Canberra council agreed to discontinue its rival program. In 1982, the Victorian council was further sidelined when that state's Australian Labor Party government led by John Cain created a new Victorian Australia Day Committee within the Premier's Department, which joined the NADC's official national network.
The NADC made immediate changes to the selection process, appointing an independent panel of ten leading Australians from diverse fields. Despite this rigorous approach, the panel's first choice of historian Manning Clark did not please conservative politicians, as Clark had been critical of the Fraser government's social policy. If nothing else, the controversy was a clear sign that the award had become a prominent and valued feature of the Australia Day celebrations. In time the selection of the annual winner fell to the board of the NADC itself, whose members are appointed by the Prime Minister of the day. Former NADC chairman Phillip Adams recalls that heated debates were common. Typically the Australian of the Year was chosen at a special two-day board meeting, which Adams likened to the election of a Pope: 'We would go into conclave, there would be lots of hot air, then a puff of smoke.'Interview with Phillip Adams, 16 December 2008
The Australian has continued to publish its own annual award, which sometimes coincides with the choice of the National Australia Day Council.
During the 1980s, there was an expectation that corporate sponsorship would replace Government funding and that the NADC would become self-sufficient. The list of former Australians of the Year provides circumstantial evidence of this shift towards a more popular imperative. Economist Sir John Crawford and judge Sir Edward Williams thoroughly deserved their awards, but were perhaps not well placed to promote the importance of Australia Day to mainstream Australia, or to secure corporate sponsorship for the NADC. Subsequent winners included marathon runner Robert de Castella, comedian and actor Paul Hogan, singer John Farnham and cricketer Allan Border, who were far more likely to attract public attention. In 1988, the editor of the Sydney Morning Herald expressed concern at this development: 'One worrying trend with the award is its attachment to ratings. This year's candidates appear to have been people who held high public profiles.' Yet the steadily rising numbers of nominations indicated that the award was capturing the public imagination.
1990s During the 1990s, the Australian of the Year award intersected noticeably with the politics of national identity. In its attempt to encourage unified national celebrations, the NADC was a strong promoter of both multiculturalism and reconciliation. The council was also linked to the growing republican movement and the campaign to change the national flag. Australians of the Year in this period included Yothu Yindi lead singer and prominent Aboriginal identity Mandawuy Yunupingu; environmentalist and republican Ian Kiernan; and Chinese-Australian paediatrician John Yu. Yunupingu's award continued a strong tradition of honouring Indigenous Australians. The first Aboriginal winner was boxer Lionel Rose, who quipped: "One hundred and eighty-two years ago one of my mob would have been a dead cert' for this." Since then a further seven Indigenous people have been named Australian of the Year, for achievements in sport, music, politics, law, public service and academia. Many have played a role in Indigenous advocacy and some have raised concerns about the celebration of Australia Day on 26 January, most notably the 1985 recipient Lowitja O'Donoghue.
Prior to 1994 the award was given for the outstanding Australian of the previous year; that is, the 1992 Australian of the Year was announced on Australia Day in 1993. From 1994 onward the award became one for the year ahead, so that the 1994 Australian of the Year was announced on Australia Day in 1994. This resulted in there being no Australian of the Year for 1993.
2000s onwards
Debates about the Australian of the Year award often revolve around the relative balance between sport, science and the arts. Fourteen winners have excelled in sports as diverse as cricket, swimming, athletics, sailing, tennis, boxing and motor racing. A recurring criticism that sport features too regularly peaked in 2004, when Steve Waugh was the fourth sporting winner in seven years and the third Test Cricket captain to be honoured. Despite the perception of an over-emphasis on sport, the list of past winners reveals a strong endorsement for scientific achievement; as of 2009 thirteen Australian scientists have received the honour, including ten from the medical sciences. A long-term view also reveals that Australia's talented artists have not been neglected; ten winners have excelled in creative pursuits, including six musicians, a dancer, a painter, a comedian and a Nobel Prize-winning novelist.
Many Australians of the Year do not fit neatly into categories such as sport, science and the arts. Phillip Adams once described the past winners as "an eclectic collection of people who reflect the diversity of achievement in this country". Australians of the Year have also excelled in public administration, the military, social and community work, business enterprise, academia, religious leadership and philanthropy. There has been relatively little public debate about the gender balance of past winners. In 1961 several news outlets incorrectly referred to Sir Macfarlane Burnet as 'Man of the Year'; the mistake was not allowed to continue, as Joan Sutherland took out the second award, but it is certainly true that women are under-represented. By 2009, 11 winners out of a total of 56 were women.