The first was awarded on 16 January 2009 to Trooper Mark Donaldson, who had rescued an International Security Assistance Force interpreter under heavy fire in Uruzgan Province in Afghanistan.

[7] It was originally intended that the Victoria Crosses would be cast from the bronze cascabels of two cannons that were captured from the Russians at the siege of Sevastopol.

The Victoria Cross for Australia is awarded for ... most conspicuous gallantry, or some daring or pre-eminent act of valour or self-sacrifice, or extreme devotion to duty in the presence of the enemy or belligerents.

Author Robert Macklin has speculated that this has opened up the field of eligibility to policemen and women or civilians during a terrorist act.

[27] "Tradition holds that even the most senior officer will salute a Victoria Cross recipient as a mark of the utmost respect for their act of valour.

[28][29] Under Section 103, Subsection (4), of the Veterans' Entitlements Act 1986, the Australian Government pays a Victoria Cross Allowance to any service person awarded the medal.

[32] The various forms of the Victoria Cross are inherently valuable, as was highlighted on 24 July 2006, when at the auctionhouse Bonhams in Sydney, the VC which had been awarded to First World War soldier Captain Alfred Shout, fetched a world-record hammer price of $1 million.

Shout had been awarded the Victoria Cross posthumously in 1915 for hand-to-hand combat at the Lone Pine trenches in Gallipoli, Turkey.

[33][34] The Australian War Memorial in Canberra currently holds 66 Victoria Crosses, 63 awarded to Australians—including Mark Donaldson's Victoria Cross for Australia on loan—and three to British soldiers; this formed the largest publicly displayed collection in the world,[34] until the opening of the Lord Ashcroft Gallery at the Imperial War Museum (IWM) in London during November 2010, which displays the 168 VCs owned by Michael Ashcroft and 48 more held by the IWM.

[36] The first Victoria Cross for Australia was awarded to Trooper Mark Donaldson of the Special Air Service Regiment by Governor-General Quentin Bryce at Government House, Canberra, on 16 January 2009.

[37][38] On 2 September 2008, Donaldson rescued an interpreter under heavy enemy fire in Oruzgan province during Operation Slipper, the Australian contribution to the War in Afghanistan.

[37]Corporal Ben Roberts-Smith MG of the Special Air Service Regiment was awarded the second Victoria Cross for Australia on 23 January 2011.

[40] Corporal Roberts-Smith was awarded the medal for single-handedly charging and destroying two Taliban machine gun positions during the Shah Wali Kot Offensive in Afghanistan on 11 June 2010.

[41] Corporal Roberts-Smith had previously been awarded a Medal for Gallantry in 2006, and upon receiving the VC became the most highly decorated serving member of the Australian Defence Force.

[43][44][45][46][47] Corporal Daniel Keighran of the 6th Battalion, Royal Australian Regiment was awarded the Victoria Cross for Australia on 1 November 2012 for actions in the Battle of Derapet (Oruzgan province, Afghanistan) in August 2010.

[48][49] On 13 February 2014, Prime Minister Tony Abbott announced that Corporal Cameron Baird of the 2nd Commando Regiment would be awarded a posthumous Victoria Cross.

[51] On 10 August 2020, Morrison accepted the findings of the panel and recommended the Queen posthumously award Sheean the Victoria Cross for Australia.

The next sitting day, 4 April 2001, Senator Schacht introduced the bill for three members of the Australian forces to be awarded the Victoria Cross for Australia.

[54] The bill was read a first time and Senator Schacht gave his Second Reading Speech in which he said it could be argued that an Act conferring a Victoria Cross for Australia may be beyond the legislative power of the Parliament but he believed that the "naval and military defence of the Commonwealth" power under section 51(vi) of the Constitution gave the Parliament authority to legislate with respect to honours and awards.

He landed at Anzac Cove on 25 April 1915 and, on that first night, took a donkey and began carrying wounded from the battle line to the beach for evacuation.

[58] In 1965, a campaign to award the Victoria Cross to Simpson resulted in his image with a donkey appearing on the obverse of the Anzac Commemorative Medallion that was announced in 1966 and first issued in 1967.

Historians such as Anthony Staunton, writing in the Australian Journal of Military History, have opined that the Victoria Cross for Australia should not be awarded retrospectively.

[59] It was announced on 13 April 2011 that 13 cases of valour would be examined posthumously by the Australian government's Defence Honours and Awards Appeals Tribunal.