Companionships of the Order of Australia for a pair of grotesques such as Daniel Andrews and Mark McGowan show just how much the honours system invented as part of creeping republicanism, and imposed without public consultation by the Hawke government, can be manipulated for political purposes. To reward people like that as exemplars of public leadership – in Andrews’ case for ‘eminent service to the people and Parliament of Victoria, to public health… and to infrastructure development’ is akin to awarding the Nobel Peace Prize to V. Putin. To take Andrews’ supposed areas of achievement in order, some 800 of the ‘people of Victoria’ died as a result of his government’s mismanagement; parliament was shut down; and cost overruns for ‘infrastructure development’ will probably end up bankrupting the state.

McGowan is a kind of pale imitation of Andrews – a Tito to Andrews’s Stalin – but just as crazed in his penchant for locking people up.

Let’s face it, the pool of genuinely meritorious honours material at the top of our state and federal regimes, with ‘career politicians’ who have never done a proper day’s work in their life, is pretty stagnant. You hardly deserve public recognition if all you have ever achieved since stirring up protests on some benighted campus is a bit of branch-stacking in the office of some shoddy MP, sucking up to the unions, and then whoosh into a safe seat.

One way, perhaps, to make our honours system more ‘relevant’ to life as it is lived, is to widen the pool to include some international figures. Yes, it’s supposed to be an Australian list, but as good globalists (or so the left tells us) we’re all against national borders these days as something only the ‘Trumpian far right favours’. We might also counter the narrow focus of the honours list on contemporary achievement by extending eligibility back in time.

With these additional advantages the next honours list could include some eminently notable personages whose presence would lend lustre to our system for recognising merit in public life. And while we’re at it, we should also dump the dreary old names inherited from Britain’s outmoded honours lists and replace them with something authentically Australian, something reflective of the sunburnt country, preferably with an indigenous association. Order of the Voice would have been rather good, if that noble venture hadn’t fallen in a heap. How about taking a cue from the Oscars and giving our honours someone’s name? The Lindas for example, after she of the dulcet discourse, or, combining the two major strands of our national ethnicity, the Pascoes from the Cornish Aboriginal tradition.

Leaving that decision to the future, here’s my selection of suitable recipients of a revitalised honours system.

Companions of the Brand New Order of Australians:

Ms Brittany Higgins (Mrs David Sharaz) of Le Grand Payout, France, formerly of Canberra, for exemplary service as a loyal political adviser.

John Smacka-Spouse, perpetual secretary of the Amalgamated Union of Industrial Saboteurs, for services to workplace relations and AFL football.

Adam Paul Scrote, leader of the Greens party, for his remarkable qualities of good taste, balance and common sense.

Monash University doctoral student Tasmin Mahmoud Sammak of the charitable organisation ‘Free Palestine’ for services to the clothing industry (‘Keffiyehs R Us’ Designer Protestwear, Preston, Melbourne).

Dr Anthony Stephen Fauci of Washington, D.C. for services to the advancement of Covid.

Craig Andrew Foster, retiring chairman of the Australian Republican Movement, for sheer chippy pointlessness.

Dame Penelope Ying-Yen Wong of Canberra for excellence in alienating allies.

Grand Mufti Abdul Abulbul Amir of El-Fatwah Mosque, western Sydney, for services to harmonious multicultural integration.

Dr (honoris causa) Phillip Andrew Hedley Adams of Sydney for services to self-promotion (the Honours Committee considered several names in this particularly rich field of national and international endeavour, among them Ms Catherine Jane Caro of Sydney, Mr Julian William Kennedy Burnside and Professor Timothy Fridtjof Flannery, both of Melbourne, and Ms Taylor Alison Swift of everywhere you go and has earmarked them for a future list).

The late Bro’ George Perry Floyd Jnr of various penitentiaries for giving the sanctimonious left a candidate for canonisation.

The Hon. Andrew Giles, Minister for Immigration (just hanging on) for services to community safety.

His Holiness Pope Francis of Vatican City for services to loopy environmentalism.

Mr Stan Grant of Naarm for his flawless reinvention of himself from Channel 7 newsreader to ‘First Nations’ icon.

‘Witness J’ of Melbourne for services in pursuit of punishment of clerical child abusers, with particular reference to clerics who have never abused anyone.

Mesdames Louise Milligan and Laura Tingle of Melbourne and Sydney respectively for their sterling efforts in maintaining the highest standards of impartiality of the national broadcaster.

The late Mr Mao Zedong, former Premier of China (‘the Andrews and McGowan of Beijing’) for services to population control.

Feminist performer Ms Hannah Gadsby (pronouns they/me/who?) for eminence in the genre of comedy without humour.

The late Nero Claudius Caesar Augustus Germanicus, sometime Emperor of Rome, for services to urban redevelopment.

Portraitist Vincent Namatjira for excellence in caricature.

Honours such as the above, awarded for true merit, would do much to lift the present system above unseemly contention and avoid expressions of dissatisfaction with individual awards, such as the petition by the National party to have the Governor-General rescind the honours so richly deserved by Messrs Andrews and McGowan. (This is only sour grapes because the Nationals’ leader didn’t get one.)

Inevitably, as night follows day, the Andrews protest has been matched by the moronic sycophancy of the ‘I Stand with Dan’ campaign. They deserve to be locked up.