The Western Australian Citizen of the Year Awards were first presented in 1973 by the Western Australia Week Council, later renamed Celebrate WA, to provide the community with an opportunity to honour the achievements and contribution of their fellow citizens.
Each year, the State's most prestigious Awards acknowledge remarkable individuals and organisations that motivate and inspire others through their vision, leadership, talent, humility and spirit of community service.
Talented and dedicated recipients of all the awards are positive role models and exemplary Western Australians who have worked tirelessly for the community in which they live. Through their achievements they have reached their goals, inspired others and promoted pride and confidence in Western Australia.
Western Australian Citizen of the Year Awards are presented annually in the following categories:
- Arts, Culture and Entertainment
- Community Service
- Industry & Commerce
- Indigenous Leadership Award
- Gold Swan
- Governor's Award for Regional Development
- Professions
- Sport
- Youth Arts
- Youth
- Burswood Youth Scholarship (previous to 2011 known as Bendat Family Foundation Perpetual Youth Scholarship)
- Wesfarmers Indigenous Youth Scholarship
- Sir Ronald Wilson Leadership Award
- Children and Young People Lifetime Achievement Award
- Sir Charles Court Inspiring Leadership Award
Award recipients may choose to use the post-nominal CitWA after their name.
Past recipients include: Author Tim Winton, St John Ambulance, Sir Charles Court, burns specialist Dr. Fiona Wood, The Health Department of W.A, ericaamerica designer Lucas Bowers, sporting legend Wally Foreman and classical guitarist Mili Davies.
Famous quotes containing the words western, australian, citizen, year and/or award:
“Sir Walter Raleigh might well be studied, if only for the excellence of his style, for he is remarkable in the midst of so many masters. There is a natural emphasis in his style, like a man’s tread, and a breathing space between the sentences, which the best of modern writing does not furnish. His chapters are like English parks, or say rather like a Western forest, where the larger growth keeps down the underwood, and one may ride on horseback through the openings.”
—Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862)
“Beyond the horizon, or even the knowledge, of the cities along the coast, a great, creative impulse is at work—the only thing, after all, that gives this continent meaning and a guarantee of the future. Every Australian ought to climb up here, once in a way, and glimpse the various, manifold life of which he is a part.”
—Vance Palmer (1885–1959)
“There is only one art, whose sole criterion is the power, the authenticity, the revelatory insight, the courage and suggestiveness with which it seeks its truth.... Thus, from the standpoint of the work and its worth it is irrelevant to which political ideas the artist as a citizen claims allegiance, which ideas he would like to serve with his work or whether he holds any such ideas at all.”
—Václav Havel (b. 1936)
“Even an attorney of moderate talent can postpone doomsday year after year, for the system of appeals that pervades American jurisprudence amounts to a legalistic wheel of fortune, a game of chance, somewhat fixed in the favor of the criminal, that the participants play interminably.”
—Truman Capote (1924–1984)
“The award of a pure gold medal for poetry would flatter the recipient unduly: no poem ever attains such carat purity.”
—Robert Graves (1895–1985)