If you want to know about honours and awards for civilians, go to the It's an Honour website.
If you want to see historical service records, go to the National Archives of Australia website.
Information cannot be provided in relation to medals issued to individuals unless an application has been submitted. If you are not able to download and print an application form call the Directorate of Honours & Awards' telephone enquiry line on 1800 111 321.
If you want to check on the progress of an application for a medal, call the Directorate of Honours & Awards' telephone enquiry line on 1800 111 321.
Replacement service awards will only be issued to the entitled member or ex-serving member who earned the awards. The relatives of deceased members cannot receive replacement awards.
Service awards can only be re-issued when the originals are lost, stolen or damaged. Replacements will not be issued if the awards have been sold or given away. Medals are re-issued when two months has elapsed after the date of loss in order to allow adequate time for recovery.
The applicant is required to certify that no compensation has been received for the loss, and that no compensation will be claimed. A replacement award may be issued once only at public expense. Any subsequent claims will be considered on their merits.
The application for replacement awards is accompanied by a Statutory Declaration detailing how, when and where the loss occurred. Click here for an application form.
If you want to replace the medals of a deceased member, you can obtain a list of their entitlements by applying to the Directorate of Honours and Awards. This will enable you to purchase replica awards from commercial military memorabilia outlets.
Recently some medal mounters have been adding unauthorised medals to their clients’ medal sets. The medal mounters claim that the person is entitled to the additional awards. The only agency which has the authority to determine eligibility for Defence medals is the Department of Defence.
All medals in the Australian system are issued with a miniature medal as part of the boxed presentation set.
Imperial medals, including the Vietnam Medal, were not issued with miniatures. Miniature Imperial medals can be purchased from medal dealers.
If you want to know about badges and uniform embellishments such as colour patches enquire through Service channels.
The Directorate of Honours & Awards receives regular requests for recognition of United Nations (UN) service, often years after the actual service was rendered. Queries are also received by the United Nations headquarters in New York.
On 19 November 2004 the UN Department of Peacekeeping Operations (DPKO) promulgated the policy on the retrospective issue and replacement of UN medals which is as follows:
Initial retrospective issue and replacement of UN medals must be supported by an 'Application for UN Medal' or an 'Application for Replacement UN Medal'.
Applications must be certified by the relevant national authority, and must be submitted through the national authority’s Permanent Mission to the UN to the Military Adviser DPKO. (In the case of the ADF, the national authority is the Directorate of Honours & Awards.)
Initial retrospective issue of UN medals must be requested within one year of departure from the mission area.
Medal replacement is limited to five years after a peacekeeping mission has closed and all replacements are at the cost of the individual applicant.
DPKO noted that many of the applications received for both initial issue and replacement did not meet these requirements.
DPKO advised that as of 1 December 2004 any application for initial retrospective issue or replacement of UN medals that did not comply with the UN medal policy stated above would be rejected.
The UN has also recently clarified the policy regarding the use of numerals to be attached to the ribbon of the UN Medal.
There is a misconception that the numerals are added to the ribbon of the UN Medal to recognise 'additional tours' with a specific mission.
In fact, the numerals are issued to recognise actual consecutive number of days served rather than multiple 'tours'.
The initial qualifying period for the UN Medal is normally 90 days of consecutive service.
The numeral '2' is awarded after an additional 180 days consecutive service following the initial qualification for the medal; the numeral '3' is awarded after an additional 180 days of consecutive service after the qualification for the numeral '2', and so on in blocks of 180 days.
Web page last updated 29 February, 2012