Australia’s zeal for handing out medals, official honours and all manner of lapel pins to recognise the good deeds of its citizens and government workers has reached such sweeping proportions that the Official Secretary to the Governor-General came close to running out stocks of the shiny trinkets, a Senate Estimates hearing has heard.

In an otherwise unnoticed Budget allocation, Government House has been provided with extra funds to the tune of $2.4 million to head-off what would have been a highly embarrassing stock shortfall of official badges of honour, as police and emergency services workers receive more gongs than ever before.

The Official Secretary to the Governor-General, Mark Fraser, told the Estimates hearing that a number of factors had “contributed to an increase demand within the Australian honours and awards system over a number of years” to the point that Government House was close to running out.

“That inventory has been run down to basically nothing and there is a range of factors, including the introduction of a number of new medals and the broadening of eligibility criteria such as for the National Police Service Medal, which has meant that another 20,000 more police personnel now qualify for the medal, and there has been an increase in the number of awards being issued since 2010 across the honours system,” Mr Fraser said.

The good news is that shortfall means exemplary conduct and national selflessness — or at least the recognition of it — are also clearly on the way up.

Mr Fraser said that just within the Order of Australia, over the last five years the number of awards granted “has increased by 37 per cent” while awards for bravery went up “by 31 per cent”.

“So they are fairly significant increases,” Mr Fraser said.

Pursued by new Labor’s new ACT Senator, Katy Gallagher, about whether there were more nominations creating the extra demand — or just more honours being dished-out and thus making them easier to get, Mr Fraser said it was probably a combination of factors.

The rise in award nominations for the same period as the 30 per cent plus increase in grantings was 16 per cent, a figure that outwardly suggests getting a gong is becoming marginally more common.

No quizzing of the official honours system would be complete without a probing the Abbott government’s attempt to return Australia to the age of chivalry. Asked whether the replenished stocks of awards may potentially contain a “knight and dames mark II” Mr Fraser played straightest of diplomatic bats.

“The current system, which includes knights and dames, provides for up to four appointments per year. Our stock management system would seek to take account of that and be able to procure the knights and dames insignia if and when required,” Mr Fraser said.

The longstanding gender disparity that has for decades produced many more male recipients of official than those given to women honours also came under the spotlight.

“This is indeed a significant issue. The council is well aware of that trend. It is really a reflection of nominations that come in to the council, of which the council has very little control. Of course, the council would very much like to see more nominations from women,” Mr Fraser said.

“There are now 15 per cent more women nominating as a percentage of the nominations than there were previously.”

The creation of relatively new honours, like the National Emergency Medal, is also driving up recipient numbers.

Mr Fraser said the National Emergency Medal had been “distributed in much higher numbers than first anticipated.”

“In terms of the numbers of the National Emergency Medal, we thought that 3,000 medals would be issued originally and about 1,000 each subsequent year, but there have been over 13,700 medals approved and issued under that National Emergency Medal scheme,” Mr Fraser said.

As for the procurement of a Vice Regal Thermomix, the Estimates committee was told that matter was now before an evaluation panel.

“Whilst I now know what a Thermomix is, it has not made me any better in the kitchen,” Mr Fraser confessed.

“We have an internal panel that will be reviewing and evaluating all of those bids and determining the level of expenditure and the items that will be procured,” he said.

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