McGrath promoted up the order to lead King’s Birthday Honours

Glenn McGrath may be Australia’s most successful fast bowler, but he couldn’t resist a light-hearted mention of his less noteworthy batting after being made an Officer of the Order of Australia in the King’s Birthday honours.

“To go from an AM to an AO is pretty special. To be alongside guys like Steve [Waugh] and Punter [Ricky Ponting], I’ve been promoted up the order,” McGrath, 54, told this masthead with a laugh.

Glenn McGrath speaking before this year’s Pink Test. Credit: Dion Georgopoulos

While proud of his cricketing achievements, which include 563 Test wickets at an average of under 22, it is the success of the McGrath Foundation supporting women surviving breast cancer that Glenn puts centre stage.

McGrath has been recognised for distinguished service to community health through breast cancer support, and to cricket as an international coach.

He received an Order of Australia in January 2008 for his cricket after retiring a year earlier a multiple World Cup and Ashes winner, while his late wife Jane was awarded an AM for her work setting up the foundation.

She died of the insidious disease six months later, prompting Cricket Australia and the SCG Trust to rename the Sydney Test the Pink Test, and day three of the match from Ladies’ Day to Jane McGrath Day. The Pink Test has raised more than $22 million for the foundation.

“The McGrath Foundation is something I’ve been incredibly proud of for a long time,” McGrath said. “To think back to when Jane and I first decided to tell our story of her battle through, or journey through, breast cancer … what it’s grown into now is absolutely incredible.”

McGrath said he has been amazed by the support “from the federal government right down to the person on the street”.

“I can’t think of a day that I’ve been out where someone hasn’t come up to me and mentioned the foundation and how great they think it is,” he said. “They’ve been touched by it.”

The foundation employs 223 breast care nurses who have supported more than 137,000 families, with an aim to have 250 nurses by the end of the year.

“This means every family, every person going through breast cancer will have the free service, free access to a breast care nurse wherever they live within a 75 [kilometre] radius,” McGrath said. “That’s always been our driving force.”

McGrath was speaking from Chennai, where he replaced another Australian fast-bowling legend, Dennis Lillee, as coach of India’s MRF Pace Foundation in 2012, doing three fortnightly stints a year.

It was under Lillee’s tutelage in Chennai in 1992, during the start of the now-annual Australian Cricket Academy exchange, that the pencil-slim McGrath’s career continued to take a giant leap forward, making his Test debut two years later.

“There was no magic formula with Dennis,” McGrath recalled. “His main emphasis was hard work.”

As a kid from Narromine he played a multitude of sports for fun, and had taken none of them seriously until he decided to have a proper crack at cricket, moving to Sydney in 1989 to play grade cricket with Sutherland.

“What I love most about cricket, you’re not out there by yourself, you’re out there with other teammates, plus the guys [support staff] off the field,” he said. “To win three World Cups, to win in the West Indies in ’95 for the first time in a long time, to win in India [2004] for the first time in a long time, those things really stand out.”

McGrath is among more than 700 Australians to be recognised with King’s Birthday Honours.

An equal number of men and women were recognised in the general division of the Order of Australia, spanning from 29 to 98 years old.

Leading Sydney cancer epidemiologist Professor Karen Canfell, one of six people appointed as a Companion of the Order of Australia (AC), said the honour was recognition of a “huge community of researchers” who had supported her research over decades.

Sydney cancer epidemiologist Professor Karen Canfell was appointed a Companion of the Order of Australia.Credit: Edwina Pickles

Canfell trained as an electrical engineer at Sydney University before turning to cancer research in the 1990s after taking an interest in the HPV vaccine being developed by Professor Ian Frazer.

She has been instrumental in developing and rolling out screening and vaccination programs that have dramatically reduced the prevalence of cervical cancer in Australia and other developed nations, and is now focused on eliminating cervical cancer in the Indo-Pacific.

Australia is on track to become the first country to eliminate cervical cancer as a public health issue, and Canfell said its model should provide a model for preventing and treating other cancers.

“For something like cancer, which is not one disease but one hundred or so different diseases … ultimately, they need large-scale solutions,” she said.

Composer and festival director Sir Jonathan Mills has led some of Australia’s most highly regarded cultural events. Credit: Edwina Pickles

‘The safest place for dangerous conversations’

The other Sydney-based recipient of the AC is Sir Jonathan Mills, the Australian composer and festival director who has been recognised for his efforts leading some of Australia’s – and the world’s – most highly regarded cultural events, including the Edinburgh Tattoo and Fringe.

Since his AO appointment in 2011, and knighthood in 2013, Mills has helped steer the University of Melbourne’s move to establish a creative campus in disused warehouses at Fishermen’s Bend. He also founded the biennial Edinburgh International Cultural Summit, which brought together culture ministers from around 50 countries, including “sworn enemies” in Russia and Ukraine, Israel and its neighbours in the Middle East.

As festivals in Australia and abroad grapple with how to accommodate diverse views on global issues, particularly the war in Gaza, Mills said there had never been a more challenging time to be a festival director.

Nevertheless, he remains a staunch believer in the power of art to build bridges between cultures, and sceptical of attempts to deny artists a voice.

“Art is the safest place for dangerous conversations,” he said. “​​It’s a question of balance … It is also about making sure that many voices are heard. If you’re excluding a voice, then you’re doing a great disservice to everyone.”

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