Diana Taylor honoured with AM on Australia Day

LONG-TIME Geelong sports administrator and lawyer Diana Taylor has been appointed as a Member of the Order of Australia (AM) in the 2024 Australia Day Honours List.

The Highton resident received the honour for significant service to Australian rules football, and to the community of Geelong.

Speaking earlier this week, Ms Taylor said she “wasn’t quite sure” the email from the Governor-General announcing her AM was intended for her.

“I was very surprised, very overwhelmed and just so delighted.”

In more than two decades of involvement in football, Ms Taylor became the first female president of a men’s metropolitan football league, the first woman appointed to the VFL Tribunal and after being appointed as a director of the Geelong Football Club in 2010, is now the club’s vice president – the first woman to hold this position in the club’s history.

“Football, for me, is about people, and is about community, and about building community,” she said.

“It’s also, I believe, Australia’s greatest positive change agent.

“So you put all of those factors together, as well as the fact’s it’s the most exciting game you could possibly go and watch… I love it.”

Ms Taylor’s legal achievements are equally as storied. She worked in multiple top-tier law firms and as in-house counsel for large Australian businesses before establishing her own legal consulting firm in 2009.

After later expanding her legal career into business, she was a Telstra Businesswoman of the Year Award winner in 2016 and was Netball Australia’s inaugural general counsel.

Geelong’s Bernadette Uzelac was also appointed an AM for significant service to the community of the Barwon South West Region.

This includes many leadership, board, and advisory roles across a swathe of organisations over more than two decades.

These include G21, Geelong Business Club, Kardinia Park Advisory Committee, Small Business Ministerial Council, Committee for Geelong, Deakin Business School, Future Proofing Geelong.

There were six Medals in the Order of Australia (OAMs) awarded to people in Geelong today (Friday, January 26). They are:

• Norlane’s John Stephen Bligh, for service to Australian rules football
• Rippleside’s Wayne Geoffrey Buttner, for service to the print media, and to the community
• Highton’s Dr Joan Benjamin, for service to tertiary education
• Highton’s Cyril James McMaster, for service to Australian rules football in the Barwon South West Region
• Grovedale’s Ian Douglas Thomson, for service to the community through a range of organisations, and
• Geelong’s David Maynard Greenwood, for service to the performing arts, and to business.

Anyone can nominate any Australian for an award in the Order of Australia.

If you know someone worthy, nominate them now at gg.gov.au