LAA 2024: Phil Carswell

In 2024 Humanists Australia awarded its first Lifetime Achievement Award (LAA). The LAA is awarded to an Australian who over their lifetime has made an outstanding contribution to public life, consistent with Humanist principles and values, and who passed away in the 12 months prior to the close of award nominations in that year.

The 2024 Lifetime Achievement Award is awarded to Phil Carswell OAM, in recognition of his lifetime of activism and achievement, working alongside diverse cohorts of people to promote human rights, equality, natural justice and the empowerment of those who are victims of discrimination, powerlessness and stigma. 

Phil Carswell with HA Member Geoff Allshorn in Melbourne, circa 2019 (photo courtesy G Allshorn)

LAA certificate for Phil Carswell

His arenas included student, state and national politics; women's and gay activism; and helping to lead Australia's response to the HIV/AIDS epidemic in the 1980s and 1990s. 

He was also a pioneer of the marriage equality movement and married his husband overseas before Australian law had reformed. 

Other forums included working within Health Departments in both Victoria and Queensland. 

His personable approach indicated that his priority was always people and not politics or process, and he was responsible for contributing to both cultural and institutional reform across the nation and beyond, where the Australian model of activist empowerment became a world leader.  

He was also a lifelong unionist and was very active in working for education and empowerment.