Australia Day Council chairman Adam Gilchrist has urged the nation to abandon its obsession with celebrity culture in favour of "Australians of substance". More than 30 former Australians of the Year last night gathered for a commemorative dinner at Parliament House in Canberra with Governor-General Quentin Bryce to mark the 50th anniversary of the awards. Personally I could not agree more, what a great message.Racing driver Jack Brabham, one of the earliest winners of the title, mixed with Aboriginal advocates Mick Dodson and Lowitja O'Donoghue in the black-tie clad, bemedalled throng; entrepreneur and adventurer Dick Smith with Nobel laureate Peter Doherty. Soldiers, sportsmen and scientists were there -- and everyone in between. "How important these men and women are to us in imagining who we are and we might be," Ms Bryce said, "in giving us picture, never a prescription, of what it means to be Australian. Gilchrist praised the winners as "role models of substance" and a bulwark against the culture of celebrity.
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