Bunyip aristocracy annoints its own

In a properly run committee wouldn’t the chair see these high-profile nominations, call the committee together and discuss the potential ramifications for the perceived neutrality of the awards if they were to appear to be rushed through?

There is also no reason the nominee has to accept the award – Paul Keating could have been “Paul Keating AC” any number of times, but each time has declined. So Andrews and McGowan are both in on this, and should have had more discretion.

Or was the committee willing to leverage its perceived neutrality to push through a narrative on COVID with Andrews and McGowan as willing participants?

The second alternative appears to be the most likely.

When you go to the Australian Honours and Awards site the first entry under the menu item “Australian Honours and Awards” is COVID-19 Honour Roll, the list of which is replete with people who pushed government-backed misinformation all through the pandemic.

So ensuring the reputations of the incompetent appears to be on the top of the committee’s to do list.

It should also be noted that the former head of the TGA, Professor John Skerritt, received an AM in this birthday honours, and that former CHO of Queensland, Jeannette Young, was awarded an AC in 2022, again for services to public health, at a time when Australia was still in the tail end of the pandemic measures.

So the sandbagging is on. Even as the evidence of the damage done by our pandemic policies mounts the establishment is moving to elevate and protect some of those who did the most damage.

The affair also points to just how partially Labor manipulates what are supposed to be impartial civic organisations so that not even organisations that do important work, like the Reserve Bank, are safe.

While it might look like good politics in the short term, in the long run this behaviour undermines trust in the system, and without trust the system breaks down.

This is almost certainly not what Gough Whitlam had in mind when he dumped Australia’s “bunyip aristocracy” of dames and knights for an Australian system of honours almost 50 years ago in 1975.

It’s ironic that under his successors a new class appears to be emerging every bit as insular and establishment as the one he sought to dismantle where a band of courtiers dispenses honours to other courtiers, reinforcing and cementing in the ruling narrative.