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.
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“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)
“And year by year the landscape grow
Familiar to the stranger’s child;”
—Alfred Tennyson (1809–1892)
“When Western people train the mind, the focus is generally on the left hemisphere of the cortex, which is the portion of the brain that is concerned with words and numbers. We enhance the logical, bounded, linear functions of the mind. In the East, exercises of this sort are for the purpose of getting in tune with the unconscious—to get rid of boundaries, not to create them.”
—Edward T. Hall (b. 1914)
“The Australian mind, I can state with authority, is easily boggled.”
—Charles Osborne (b. 1927)
“... any citizen should be willing to give all that he has to give his country in work or sacrifice in times of crisis.”
—Eleanor Roosevelt (1884–1962)