The broadcasting luminary Phillip Adams has been appointed a companion of the Order of Australia on the King’s birthday honours roll, where he is joined by the former prime minister Scott Morrison and film-making couple Baz Luhrmann and Catherine Martin.
Adams was made a member of the order in 1987, then an officer in 1992. At the age of 85, he can now add the suffix AC – denoting Australia’s highest civilian honour – to his name.
“It’s good, isn’t it, given I left school at 15,” he said. “If they waited any longer, it would have been posthumous.”
Adams started writing at the age of 16 for the communist newspaper the Workers’ Weekly Guardian and today writes for The Australian, earning “a penny from Rupert, who keeps me on, as I often say, to give the illusion of pluralism”.
He said his nomination was “interesting” in that it involved two ex-prime ministers from different sides of the political fence: Kevin Rudd and Malcolm Turnbull.
He is most proud of his roadmap – and subsequent securing of funding – for the Australian film industry, his early alerts to climate change and work on refugee justice and the voice referendum – even if, by his measure, some of those campaigns have been “fizzes”.
But his most enjoyable role was his 33 years at the helm of Radio National’s Late Night Live, “pumping out an infinite number of interviews”, he told Guardian Australia.
Morrison, the prime minister from August 2018 until May 2022, is also among the 14 people appointed companion of the order, with his leadership in Australia’s contribution to Aukus singled out for mention by the council overseeing the honours.
The former Liberal leader said he was “honoured and grateful” to have been appointed and that his time as the country’s 30th PM was an “immense privilege”.
His tenure faced “unrelenting” natural disasters and a global pandemic, through which, he said in a statement, “Australia proudly prevailed”.
He thanked the Australian people and his former colleagues, in particular Josh Frydenberg and Michael McCormack, as well as the Liberal party “and the people of Cook in southern Sydney for the honour of representing them in the Australian parliament”.
“Above all, I am exceedingly grateful to my wife Jenny, daughters Abbey and Lily, my mother Marion and late father John, and all my family and friends,” he said.
Luhrmann, the writer and director of Strictly Ballroom and Romeo + Juliet, and his artistic collaborator and partner, Martin, have also been appointed to the order as companions.
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Martin won four Academy Awards for her costume and production design on The Great Gatsby and Moulin Rouge!, adding a Bafta for her costume design in 2022’s Elvis. She and Luhrmann have 20 Australian Academy of Cinema and Television Arts awards between them.
Prof Graeme Stephens, a co-director at Nasa’s climate sciences centre, the Sydney businesswoman and author Wendy McCarthy and South African-Australian author JM Coetzee have become companions of the order, adding the honour to a long list of previous accolades, including Coetzee’s Nobel prize in literature.
As the ambassador to the Holy See from 2012 until 2016, John McCarthy worked closely with the late cardinal George Pell. The Catholic church lawyer, involved in the controversial Towards Healing church-run compensation scheme, becomes a member of the order.
The former Vogue Australia editor Kirstie Clements receives a medal of the order of Australia, as does the skin cancer awareness ambassador and former Australian Women’s Weekly editor Deborah Hutton.
A meritorious award goes to the ACT’s Dr Bridget Gilmour-Walsh, an architect of new federal vaping legislation.
This year’s King’s birthday honours roll recognises 830 Australians across general and military divisions. The youngest recipient, Scott Guerini, 19, is recognised for his charitable fundraising, while the oldest, South Australian resident Henry Young, is honoured at the age of 101 for his service to veterans and tennis.
