News Archive

In last Monday's Queen's Birthday Honours List Professor Geoff Riley from UWA Albany was appointed as a Member of the Order of Australia (AM). Prof Riley is the Winthrop Professor of Rural and Remote Medicine in the Faculty of Medicine, Dentistry and Health Sciences at The University of Western Australia and is the (state-wide) Head of The Rural Clinical School of Western Australia. He is well known in the State and indeed across Australia as a teacher of doctors and as an advocate for rural medicine. He has also been centrally involved in the promotion of ethics and professionalism within the Medical School at UWA and was for many years the Associate Dean of The Faculty of Medicine.

He said of his Honour that it was a great thrill personally but also an important acknowledgement of rural doctors and rural medicine in general. "I have been very fortunate to be in a position where I had the opportunity to do some useful things."

Prof Riley said, "These honours are important in the community. They remind us all of our responsibilities to contribute - to go beyond the self. In these days of superficial ‘celebrity' when all it takes is to have a dog in your purse, it's important to have symbols like this that reward meaningful, albeit unselfconscious, contributions to the greater good. Of course there are a lot of people out there doing wonderful things that are entirely unacknowledged. Carers, for example, often make enormous sacrifice for others which is commonly unrecognised."

Media references

Janine MacDonald (UWA Public Affairs)  (+61 8)  6488 5563  /  (+61 4) 32 637 716

Paula Phillips (UWA Albany Centre) (+61 8) 9842 0810