Award to far right political candidate will trigger closer scrutiny of honours system at Senate estimates

This article is more than 1 year old

This article is more than 1 year old

The decision to award a Queen’s birthday honour to a robot sex expert and former far right political candidate is facing a challenge, and is set to trigger broader scrutiny of the Australian honours system at a Senate estimates hearing.

Last week Prof Adrian Cheok, who advocates sex with robots, was made a member of the Order of Australia for “significant service to international education”.

Guardian Australia reported that Cheok has faced accusations of poor conduct towards his peers in the past. In 2017 he was accused in an open letter by organisers of an academic conference of using “aggressive, belittling” language towards another professor.

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The Digital Games Research Association Australia chapter president, Brendan Keogh, says he intends to challenge Cheok’s award because of his conduct on social media.

“He’s not a worthy recipient due to his track record of abusive behaviour towards other academics in his field,” he said.

Keogh cited the incident in 2017 where conference organisers issued a formal apology after Cheok made personal attacks on Twitter against academics who had raised ethical concerns about his research.

Cheok also attracted controversy last year as an organiser of the international conference on advances in computer entertainment technology when he invited Steve Bannon, the former White House chief strategist and former executive chairman of the rightwing website Breitbart, to be a keynote speaker, the Chronicle of Higher Education reported.

Rogelio E. Cardona-Rivera (@recardona) I hope @FDGconf organizers address the clearly toxic behavior that one of their Keynoters is displaying. This is unacceptable. #FDG17 pic.twitter.com/GuN4kZdM5D

There were 1,374 nominations for the Queen’s birthday awards and 993 were handed out in 2019. In 2015 there were 748 nominations and 519 awards.

The Labor senator Kimberley Kitching has said she will ask officials from the governor general’s office about the due diligence process at a Senate estimates hearing in Canberra.

“Obviously there is heavy scrutiny of nominees to ensure they are deserving recipients,” she said.

“In this day and age it’s necessary that scrutiny of nominees’ social media accounts is also undertaken. You would assume this would be the case, but in this example it is unclear. We’ll be seeking to have a full understanding of the processes that were undertaken at the next estimates.”

The Australian honours and awards secretariat sits underneath the governor general’s office.

It has 17 staff to research nominations and in the past five years the process has become more efficient after moving from paper to digital forms, a spokesman said.

“The secretariat advises nominators that it takes between 18 and 24 months from receipt of a nomination to the announcement of an award, and this remains true,” he said.

“While nominations are processed as quickly as possible this does not supersede the requirement to ensure that the [decision-making council] has as much relevant information as possible to inform a recommendation. This means that if further research or work is required on a nomination it will be held over to a subsequent meeting of the council.”

The Order of Australia Association, which promotes the awards and hosts networking events for recipients across the country, said the dramatic increase in nominations was due in part to more people being aware of the awards and a desire for more female recipients.

Its national chairman, Barry Nunn, said Australians should have faith in the integrity of the honours system.

He was reluctant to discuss Cheok’s case, saying it was not the association’s place to comment on whether someone should or should not have received an award.

“Doesn’t matter how good the system is there will always be irregularities,” Nunn said.

“Occasionally somebody pops up and questions are asked … There will be a few that are questionable I guess in some people’s minds. That’s inevitable.”

Professor Adrian David Cheok (@adriancheok) AUSTRALIA'S worst politician Penny Wong! pic.twitter.com/8YJ7zXSCcn

Asked if he was a worthy winner of an Order of Australia, Cheok told the Guardian: “Yes. Absolutely.

“I was awarded an Order of Australia based on my work as a computer scientist and electrical engineer who has made world-pioneering inventions in augmented and virtual reality, AI, and robotics.

“With the academic h-index of 45 I am ranked in the top 0.05% of all computer scientists in the world and leading in Australia.” (The h-index measures the productivity and citation impact of an academic’s publications).

Cheok dismissed suggestions his award might be challenged.

“I expect nothing will happen because this is about creating a perception and getting an emotional public reaction rather than dealing in precise facts,” he said.

“I also recognise the leftist media are keen to brainwash Australians to accept destructive ideologies that undermine the values that our country was founded upon, and that some of us cannot freely speak about without being labelled an incorrect term.”

He reiterated his support for freedom of speech and said the Order of Australia was not an award from North Korea.

At the May federal election, Cheok got 868 votes in the lower house seat of Boothby in South Australia, running for Fraser Anning’s Conservative National party.

Cheok and Anning said they were setting up a graduate school which would teach “Trumpism” and “Bannonism”. The website was set up about 6 June but Cheok and Anning said it was just a draft.

Facebook Twitter Pinterest Photograph: Fraser Anning's Conservative National Party

There have been 45 awards withdrawn since 1975.

The governor general can terminate awards if there is a conviction for a criminal offence under Australian or overseas laws, the awardee has “behaved or acted in a manner that has brought disrepute” to the awards, information in the nomination was false or misleading, or if additional information comes to light.