Prominent advocate and former ABC deputy chair Wendy McCarthy has been awarded an Order of Australia for her decades long service across multiple communities including the arts, business, health and women’s leadership.
The businesswoman and author of several books was among several distinguished Australians recognised in this year’s King’s Birthday Honours List, including Scott Morrison, author JM Coetzee, costume designer Catherine Martin and her husband Baz Luhrmann, Aunty Geraldine Atkinson, broadcaster Philip Adams, Australian operatic soprano Greta Bradman and the late Jim Remedio and Ian Cousins.
Among McCarthy’s several accomplishments was her role in successfully campaigning for women to be allowed to have their male partners present when they gave birth in Australian hospitals. She advocated for women’s rights and helped to establish the New South Wales branch of the Women’s Electoral Lobby.
The 83-year old former Chancellor of the University of Canberra said “to be acknowledged by the highest recognition in the land is personally quite extraordinary.”
“I’m still coming to terms with that,” she told ABC Radio National Breakfast on Monday. “This award… recognises that community leadership is a special kind of leadership, and everyone can have a say in it. For me, that’s the ultimate democratic place for women to be, and the leadership of women has emerged so strongly, particularly in the last decade, that you can only be struck by the lost years when women didn’t have a place in leadership. I’m proud that they do now.”
McCarthy described herself as a “personal political kind of leader” who has fought for fairness.
“I am a product of public education, and I’m also a great proponent of public education,” she said. “I could see the inequality and I could also see that if you had a troubled family, it could be held up against you. I always felt that was incredibly unfair.”
Reflecting on her work championing to change the laws for male partners to be present a birth, she said, “It was astonishing to see how people [in the medical profession] thought that they owned the experience rather than you.”
“I’ve played a long game…to make sure that community leadership enabled people in communities to have the lives that they wanted to lead. Whether it’s been reproductive rights or early learning and care, it’s just something that I feel really passionate about.”
McCarthy was one of 800 Australians receiving the country’s top civil recognition on the Kings Birthday holiday. Other recipients include professor of clinical neuropsychology Skye McDonald, human rights advocate and gender equality expert Helen Dalley Fisher and Menaka Iyengar, the director of the Indian Crisis and Support Agency.
The list of recipients was announced by Governor-General Sam Mostyn on Sunday night.
Mostyn described the honours list as one that recognised the “selfless service, integrity, achievement, creativity and care that flourish across our country”.
“Every day, and all across the country, Australians are doing extraordinary things with passion, generosity, energy, and resolve,” she said.
“To all who are being recognised in The King’s Birthday 2025 Honours List, I want to offer my congratulations and gratitude for all that you have given to Australia — and I look forward to meeting many of you at the investiture of your awards.”
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