[2] This Imperial system remained in place until its full phase out in 1994 (although the Monarch of Australia may still confer some of these honours to Australians in their personal capacity).
[3] The Australian honours and awards system consists of honours, which are appointments to orders of chivalry (namely the Order of Australia), and awards (which are decorations and medals – decorations are medals for valour, gallantry, bravery, and distinguished or conspicuous service).
The Commonwealth of Australia ceased making recommendations for Imperial awards in 1983, with the last Queen's Birthday Australian Honours list submitted by Queensland and Tasmania in 1989.
The Queen continued to confer honours upon Australians that emanate from her personally such as the Royal Victorian Order.
[7] Individual Australian states, as well the Commonwealth government, were full participants in the Imperial honours system.
Originally there was bipartisan support, but Australian Labor Party (ALP) governments, both national and state, ceased making recommendations for Imperial awards – in particular, appointments to the Order of the British Empire mainly after 1972.
During the Second World War, the Governor-General, on the advice of wartime Labor governments, made recommendations for gallantry awards, including eleven for the Victoria Cross.
[8] The defeat of both governments at the polls that year marked the end of Australian recommendations for Imperial awards.
There followed more than two years of negotiations with state governments before the Prime Minister, Paul Keating, made the announcement on 5 October 1992 that Australia would make no further recommendations for British honours.
[12] Controversy attended these awards in 2021 when former tennis player Margaret Court received the Companion of the Order of Australia.
Court is known for her homophobic and transphobic views, and GP Clara Tuck Meng Soo, journalist Kerry O'Brien, and artist Peter Kingston have rejected or returned their awards in protest.
A relatively recent change is the introduction of the Honours for recognition of outstanding service in dangerous operations short of declared theatres of war.
He also translated an individual ball of wattle blossom into a simple convex golden disc with a rich texture of beads and radiating lines accentuating a ring of blue enamel representing the sea.
In 1976, Malcolm Fraser recommended to Queen Elizabeth II the addition of the medal and grade of Knight and Dame in the order.
In November 2015, Prime Minister Malcolm Turnbull (a prominent republican) announced that the Queen had accepted his request to amend the order's letters patent and cease awards in this class, after Cabinet had agreed that he should advise that these titles are no longer appropriate in the Australian honours and awards system.
It is up to the Honours Secretariat to provide the council with as much fully verified information as is possible on each nominee so that appropriate consideration may be given to each case.
This is a long process and up to eighteen months can elapse between the original submission and publication of a successful nomination.
Appointments are made for eminent achievement and merit of the highest degree in service to Australia or to humanity at large.