1984
CITATION
MR. CHANCELLOR:
Peter Henry Kannel has made an outstanding contribution to tertiary education in Australia over many years, as economist, as Vice-Chancellor, as a member of the Australian Universities Commission, as Chairman of the Commonwealth Tertiary Education Commission, and as an educator of the highest renown.
He taught Economics in Melbourne after the war, became Gollin Professor of Economics and Dean of the Faculty of Economics in 1950. In 1957, he spent two years as Visiting Professor at Queen's University, Belfast, before becoming Principal-Designate, and later the first Vice-Chancellor at the new university at Flinders. Through the sixties and seventies, his outstanding administrative acumen was recognized by his appointment as Chairman or Member of a long succession of Government Committees and Boards.
He served for five years as Chairman of the Interim Council of the fledgling University of Papua New Guinea, becoming Foundation Chancellor in 1969.
This intensive series of appointments must have left little time for leisure, but he made the opportunity to write, in collaboration, three important works on Economics. They remain standard works, having gone into revised editions and translations.
Mr. Chancellor, for his outstanding contribution to Education in Australia, I present to you Peter Henry Kannel, Companion of the Order of Australia, Commander of the Order of the British Empire, Bachelor of Arts of the University of Melbourne, Doctor of Philosophy of the Universities of Cambridge and Adelaide, Honorary Doctor of Laws of the Universities of Papua New Guinea and Melbourne, Honorary Doctor of Letters of the Universities of Flinders and Murdoch, Doctor of the University of Newcastle, Fellow of the Academy of Social Sciences in Australia, Fellow of the Australian College of Education, for the award of Doctor of Laws, honoris causa, to which he has been admitted by the Senate of the University.