The White Hat Guide to how we chose the list of 200 Significant Australians

Why 200?

That's easy. We set out to choose 100 but just couldn't trim enough remarkable people off the list so we ended up with 200. Even then we've cheated - there's over 200 but nobody is ever going to count them so we should be able to get away with that.

What constitutes an Australian?

This one is not so easy. If a person was born in Australia but spent most of their careers overseas  we have sometimes claimed them as Australians. This includes people like Jack Smart and Peter Porter. Often Australians who have become world class have had to travel to where the audiences or laboratories are. Then there are people like Patrick White and Germaine Greer who were often highly derogatory about their country of origin, or Rupert Murdoch who chose to renounce his Australian citizenship in order to further his business interests. In the end we restricted ourselves to people who have lived in Australia and who were influenced by, or have influenced, Australia. For instance, people who still retain a noticeable Australian accent are likely to have been influenced by their time in Australia. As it turns out, there are only a small percentage of people on our list where people might want to quibble about their nationality, and, to our knowledge, none who would object to being described as Australians.

Why significant?

Why not great Australians? Why not famous Australians? Why not successful Australians? Why not most popular Australians?. Well, that's harder still.

We didn't choose great Australians because there are some people who have had a strong influence on Australia who are not necessarily great. Ned Kelly was a murderer but was quickly elevated to legend status. We may have large reservations about the work Daisy Bates did with the Aborigines, but she is still a remarkable woman who influenced thinking in Australia. Some others like Vida Goldstien are included not so much for what she achieved but for what people think she achieved. Many people would argue that Rupert Murdoch is not a great man, but most would agree that he is a significant person who has had an impact not only on Australia but the rest of the world.

Selecting people from the history syllabus would leave major holes. It is the nature of much current Australian history teaching that areas such as the hard sciences, mathematics, engineering and the like are simply ignored. Although twelve out of Australia's thirteen Nobel Prize winners  are scientists or mathematicians, many history teachers could name only a few of them and less could explain the significance of their work, but most could wax lyrical about minor writers or painters who never achieved international recognition. Similarly the place of business and industry in Australian history is often ignored or dismissed as 'vaguely dirty'. Hence whole numbers of significant Australians have been written out of (taught) history.

We didn't choose successful Australians because there are many people who were successful at earning money or attention but who left nothing of enduring worth behind them. or who did not take the step of converting a successful life into a significant life.

Fame would produce a strangely skewed list because of the nature of fame in Australia. Australian hegemony tends to denigrate people who become world class or successful in their area. This is sometimes called The Tall Poppy Syndrome - the tall poppies get their heads cut off. The only areas where it is acceptable to succeed are sport, and commercial entertainment such as pop music. As Robert Hughes put it - "Sport is the only form of elitism that Australia will accept- and that is its great hypocrisy". (It was also Hughes who referred to Australia as a "fame brothel") This means that many important Australians are unknown to the Australian public at large and are rarely to be found on school curricula while many unimportant people are famous and feature heavily in school assignments.

Fame in recent years has become a commodity manipulated by the media. Television stations for instance go to great lengths to manipulate people's thinking about who is important or famous. Quiz programs are devised so that people feel that it is clever to know the details of the products and people (often in Hollywood movies) which that station is promoting. Celebrity trivia is often rebranded as 'news' and Melbourne even has a free evening paper which seems dedicated to this purpose. Alternatively, by appearing on a reality TV program you can achieve instant fame for doing nothing of significance or value. Our list contains very few (if any) instant idols, vacuous 'personalities' or other products of commercially manufactured fame (it took Geoffrey Rush 20 years to become an overnight success).

Then there are some people who are (mildly) famous in Australia for just one aspect of their achievements. Thus the polymath Clive James is famous for his television shows but many Australians are not familiar with his achievements as a poet, essayist and journalist. Like many others on our list, he would not have included if we were just considering the achievements for which people are famous.

People like Steve Irwin are currently famous but it make take some years before we find out whether his contributions to entertainment and the environment, are lasting and sustainable and of the significance of others already listed. If they prove to be he will happily be added to our list.

If you need convincing that fame would not be a useful criterion, just try observing some of the chat groups on the internet and their rather sad lists of those who the contributors regard as 'famous Australians'. You will probably find few or none of our Nobel Prize Winners or Inventors.  We decided therefore to restrict ourselves to people that matter and will leave it to the media and others to laud those who are 'famous for being famous'. After all there are plenty of Australians who are famous but not important, and there are plenty of Australians who are important but not well known.  (See also the ABC Radio program exploring fame in music.)

If not famous, what about well known? That produces similar difficulties to famous. If, for instance, we were to restrict ourselves to people with entries in high profile online publications like Wikipedia (which is extensive but not encyclopaedic) we would end up with a strangely skewed list. For instance in Wikipedia (as ay December 2006) you can find individual listings for television newsreaders and presenters of no lasting significance to Australia but no listing for Sydney Kirkby and numbers others who ended up on our list. For a number of years, Australian history all but disappeared as stand-alone subject in most Australian schools, so television executives were often the major arbiters of who becomes well known - and a fairly sad and vacuous lot it often was.

In the end we decided on the label significant Australians selected using the following criteria:

• People who are the world's best at something significant.
• People who have helped us understand or think about who we are.
• People who have made a significant, lasting difference or impact - meaning that Australia or the world is a different place because of them.
• People who have captured the public imagination over a significant period of time
• People who have created, invented, inspired or contributed something of long term significance.
• People who have achieved something. For most of our history, Australians have admired those who have rolled up their sleeves and done something . There has been somewhat less admiration for who only roll up their sleeves in order to wear an armband demanding that "somebody else should do something about it" or stand on the sidelines shouting "it's not fair". In the past Australians have called these people "whingers" or whiners". Currently the fashionable term is "social activist". We have chosen (with a couple of exceptions) to only include those who have achieved something rather than drawn attention to themselves and maybe achieved some passing fame in the process.

Some comments on our final selections

Although for convenience we have organised people under various categories, it is a characteristic of remarkable people that they often excel in a range of areas. Someone like Sir John Monash would easily have made this list for his achievements in any of half a dozen areas alone.

• Aboriginal - Aboriginal people came to Australia some 40,000 years ago and over that period that there have doubtless been many remarkable Aboriginal people. It is likely that the exploits of some are embedded in the great dreamtime stories, however there must be many we will never know about. It is interesting that the proportion of Aborigines we have included on our list is much greater than their proportion of the population. This is not as the result of some 'positive discrimination' or 'political correctness'. They were included on their own merits as remarkable and significant Australians and are scattered throughout the various categories below.
• Pioneers & Explorers - In pruning down this list many famous names are missing. However there is also an important explorer that most Australians would not recognise - Sidney Kirkby. We have also included Robert O'Hara Burke, not because he proved to be a great explorer but because of his important place in Australian folklore.
• Inventors, scientists, mathematicians, engineers and medicos - Eleven out of Australia's twelve Nobel Prize winners are scientists, medicos or mathematicians indicating that these are areas of endeavour where Australia is truly recognised as world class..
• Education - We have only listed one person in this category but that is rather misleading. Many people listed in other categories were also important educators. For instance, Lawrence Bragg was an excellent lecturer, Dame Joan Hammond an important singing teacher and so on.
• Legal
• Business & Philanthropy
• Economists & Politicians
• Other Social Achievers - This is the area that gave rise to the greatest argument in discussion regarding an appropriate name for the category. In the end we discarded names including advocates (some who call themselves advocates are self appointed spokespeople for those who "cannot speak for themselves" because they would not be elected by those who could). We eventually discarded social dissenters, agitators and activists because in the end that was all a number of them ever did - dissent or agitate. In recent years there is a certain irony around the word social activists because it often refers to someone who is not doing something active about a problem - merely demanding that someone else sho do something active. We also unfortunately rejected the label of social worker, because of the connotations with a certain style of social worker who does not work to break the cycle of dependency but rather to maintain their importance in their own little empire.
  In the end we decided on the label other social achievers to indicate that these were people who achieved something positive for society. Some were activist, others advocates, others dissenters, others social workers and so on. However the important thing was that in the end they made a difference.
  And finally why the word other? We added this because many people in other categories were (or are) social achievers. Achieving major recognition in almost any field, or doing the hard work of being elected to office or rising to a position of influence, are often the best ways to be in a position to make a real difference to society. Examples can be found in nearly all categories. For instance,  Weary Dunlop, Fred Hollows, Gus Nossal, Nugget Coombs, and others are all responsible for important social advances. This category of other social achievers therefore contains social achievers who don't particularly fit in to other areas.
• Philosophers, Historians & Religious
• The Arts
• Sport
• Military
• Media
• Popular Entertainment
• Infamous Australians

You may not agree with our criteria and selection. However, if it promotes curiosity, discussion and informed debate, then it has fulfilled its purpose.

Go to 200 Significant Australians to see our final list.