Directorate of Honours and Awards staff have developed processes to ensure you receive your long service award as quickly as possible.
An automated PMKeyS system captures and reports information relating to permanent ADF members. This system produces lists of ADF personnel who have reached a long service medal milestone, and have not already received their award.
Occasionally, however, a member may be missed if they have broken or transferred service. If this applies to you, you may need to call DH&A on our toll-free telephone inquiry line on 1800 111 321.
To further assist us to get your long service award to you as quickly as possible, you should ensure your details, especially your unit address details, remain up to date on PMKeyS. Out of date information, or missing information, is a main factor that can contribute to some of the delay in the delivery of your award.
If you are an ADF member, you can view your award progress through PMKeyS. This facility includes all awards, not just long service. Check the 'My Qualifications' facility on PMKeyS.
Assessing reserve service for long service awards is very time-consuming and requires a great deal of manual gathering of data. There are a range of different qualifying requirements for effective service relating to specific periods of time for each of the Services. A great deal of data, such as training days, parades attended etc, is only available in hard copy. As you can imagine, this adds significant time to the assessing process.
You can help us to efficiently and quickly assess your eligibility for a long service award by providing as much detail with your application as possible. Please provide details of your training days, parades and camps attended for each year of service by enlistment year.
We regret making these requests of you, but there is no other efficient way to gather this information.
A common myth surrounding long service awards is they should be available for presentation on the day the milestone is reached. This is simply not possible. You have to have completed the required period of service before you can be eligible. Then, the Governor-General must individually approve your entitlement to the award. The Governor-General does not have the power to approve the award before you have completed the required period of service. In most cases, approval will occur by the calendar month following your milestone date.
Once approved, your medals are sent to our contracting company for engraving and despatch to you. Using a contractor has significantly improved dispatch times.
This section provides information on long service awards made to Australians since 1975. Before the introduction of the Australian system of honours and awards Australian personnel received Imperial long service awards.
Initially the National Medal was introduced within the Australian system to replace all existing Imperial long service and good conduct medals, not only for the ADF but for members of other uniformed services such as police and ambulance personnel as well. In 1982 the National Medal was replaced for ADF personnel by a group of awards to uniquely recognise ADF service:
The Committee of Inquiry into Defence Related Awards (CIDA) of 1994 noted some anomalies arising from having separate awards for particular categories of service and recommended that a single long service award be introduced for all members of the ADF. In 1998 a new long service award, the Defence Long Service Medal (DLSM) was introduced. Members who qualified for the earlier Defence Force Service Awards (DFSA) were given the option of continuing to accumulate service towards clasps to those awards or replacing them with the DLSM. The latter option allowed members with a mix of service in the various categories who may not have received a medal or clasps to reflect that service to have their total service recognised.
The long service medals are worn in the position notified by the Governor-General in The Order of Wearing Australian Honours and Awards.
Images are shown on this site with the obverse (front) shown with the ribbon attached. The reverse (back) is shown without the ribbon. The reason for this is to avoid any confusion with the correct display of the ribbon.
Medals included in this section are:
The source documents for Defence Force Service Awards (DFSM, RFD and RFM) and the DLSM are:
CAG S78 dated 27 April 1982 (DFSA Letters Patent and Regulations)
CAG S352 dated 10 July 1998 (DFSA Letters Patent and amendments to Regulations)
CAG S160 dated 30 March 2000 (DFSA Letters Patent and amendments to Regulations)
CAG S352 dated 10 July 1998 (DLSM Letters Patent and Regulations)
CAG S160 dated 30 March 2000 (DLSM Letters Patent and amendments to Regulations)
CAG S2 dated 3 January 2002 (DLSM Letters Patent and amendments to Regulations)
DLSM consolidated regulations including CAG S2You can search for an award name by selecting the following:
Web page last updated 12 January, 2012