Amid calls for better recognition of Australia's community leaders, the appointment of Dewani Bakkum as a member of the Order of Australia (AM) is highly appropriate.
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Originally from Fiji, Ms Bakkum's entire career has been motivated by serving and helping the community, with her latest role since 2010 as chief executive of the Migrant and Refugee Settlement Services Australia (MARSS) playing a key part in supporting the ACT community.
"I'm in shock and never imagined that I would get an award, so I'm very honoured to receive this, but all I had to do was put my head down and believe in what I was doing all these years," Ms Bakkum said.
"All my life, my passion was always to do charity. Coming from my background which was Fiji, I at a very young age committed myself to helping other people because of my upbringing and the disadvantages that we had growing up with a single mum."
The experience of migration is one Ms Bakkum is very familiar with herself, having moved to Australia from Fiji in 1982, which she says has shaped the way she approaches her role in supporting migrants and refugees adjusting to their new home today.
"Coming into Australia you have to integrate and settle into the community, learn the cultures and I never thought I would be involved here, but then I realised it made no difference if it was from my country or Australia itself, there are people who need help. So it gave me that insight to continue doing this kind of work in Australia," she said.
"Due to my background, it gave me a lot of insight into their needs and working in an organisation gave me more opportunities, with the help of federal and local government funding, to close gaps in the community that assist migrants and refugees to settle here."
In more recent years, inclusivity has become a prevalent point of discussion in regards to who receives Australia Day awards, which senior research fellow at the ANU Dr Karen Fox says is a conversation Australia has been having for centuries.
"The idea of Australia and New Zealand as egalitarian is a really long history. One of the threads of conversation that you find in newspaper commentary in the late 19th century is around that idea that the Australian colonies are new young democracies and that knighthoods should be a part of the old world class system," Dr Fox said.
"So if you remember when Tony Abbott revived the titles of knights and dames in 2014, I realised when I was watching and reading the public debates around that, in some ways, the conversations we were having were very similar to the conversations that were going on the 1880s and 1890s."
"Bringing this to public attention is important because it's a national institution and it's an opportunity for us to say something about what matters to us as a community."
Class and egalitarianism is a strong theme throughout Australia's history which Dr Fox says also plays into how gender is represented in the awards.
"We've been having quite a lot of conversation lately about gender imbalance in the awards, so there's a long history from when women first got admitted into the honours system back in 1917, before that women generally were not eligible for awards," she said.
"But when the Order of the British Empire was created in 1917 during World War I, it was created largely to have a way in recognising the war services of the population in Britain and the Empire and women were a part of that."
"So one of the themes is around inclusivity and how well the system is reflected through the diversity of the community over time."
MORE AUSTRALIA DAY HONOURS:
- Dylan Alcott named Australian of the Year
- Meet the major award winners of the Australia Day honours list
- Canberran Valmai Dempsey wins Senior Australian of the Year
- Peter McGrath kicks an Australia Day Honours goal
- 'Our future is brighter than our past': Patty Mills uniting a nation
- Half century of sport for Vergano OAM
- Rod Sims, now Rod Sims AO, wants to fix the world
- ANU's Professor Amanda Barnard recognised in honours list
- Dewani Bakkum's service to migrants and refugees honoured
- Former chief scientist Alan Finkel made officer of the Order of Australia
- Champion for the disabled Sue Salthouse said 'yes' to every challenge
- Deepak-Raj Gupta OAM blazed a new political trail
- David Gruen AO stepped up as chief statistician during pandemic
- Bonnie Carter dedicates OAM achievement to all unborn babies
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