Branches & Regional Groups :: Our Patron

His Excellency Professor David de Krester AC is the current Governor of Victoria and Patron of the VIC Branch.

Professor David de Kretser was sworn in as Governor of Victoria on 7 April 2006. Named an Officer of the Order of Australia in 2000 for services to medicine, the Governor became a Companion of the Order shortly after taking office.

Victoria’s new Governor, Professor David de Kretser, has something in common with a growing number of Australians: he wasn’t born in this country. For the first nine years of his life, he lived with his family in Sri Lanka. He arrived in Australia with his parents and elder brother in 1949, and still remembers the kindness of a family friend – “an Irish lady who had been a friend of my uncle”, he recalls – who took the family in after their arrival.

“Tremendous acts of kindness like that change the way you think about a country and settling in,” Professor de Kretser has said. Not surprisingly, a concern for the needs of migrants promises to be a major theme of his term as Governor.

When Professor de Kretser was invited to speak to Premier Steve Bracks last year, he had no idea it was because he had been selected as Victoria’s next governor.

“I thought I was going to talk to the Premier about science and technology”, he said in a recent interview. “To get offered the governorship, it takes the wind out of your sails a bit. I think he described to somebody else I looked shocked, which I was.”

In accepting the post, Professor de Kretser has had to leave behind most of his work as a medical doctor and researcher. While the step was reportedly a difficult one for him to take, the Professor has already found that the role of governor provides him with a new forum to discuss the health issues he has studied for so long.

Professor de Kretser is also keen to promote volunteerism and community spirit. In his inauguration address, he emphasised the need for “communication, compassion and courage” in any successful society. Victorians, he said, should strive “to communicate with those who do not have English as their first language” and to “extend their compassion [to] each other and those disadvantaged in our society”.

“It takes courage,” he said, “to recognise that our society is not perfect and that we need to work together to improve.”

The Order of Australia Association, Victoria Branch, is delighted that such a distinguished “migrant, medical practitioner, scientist, educator, husband, father and grandfather” has agreed to be our Patron.

To foster love of and pride in Australian citizenship and to uphold the high principles and prestige of the Order of Australia
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