King’s Birthday Honours: Mark Reid recognised for decades spent helping those with HIV and AIDS

After more than 40 years helping people with HIV and AIDS, advocate Mark Reid has been named in the 2026 King’s Birthday Honours list.

Mr Reid has been on the front lines of combating the disease since it first spread in the 1980s.

After his decades of service to the community, Mr Reid has been appointed a member to the order of Australia.

Having helped form the WA AIDS Council, which he is currently deputy chair, Mr Reid has seen a fatal disease turned into one that can be lived with and managed.

“In the first 15 years of that (AIDS crisis) I was involved with working with people directly,” he said.

“I remember I got to a stage where I had gone to over 170 funerals and I just went, ‘I can’t do this anymore, that’s just that’s too many people who died’.

“But then we turned the corner and we weren’t seeing that happening, we were seeing people not getting unwell and we were seeing people really being in a better place, because the treatments were working for them.

“People were starting to go, ‘OK, we’ve actually got a future in front of us’ and that was just breathtaking because it just meant people could start planning to live their best life.”

Mr Reid was diagnosed with HIV over 40 years ago and said the battle with the disease was deeply personal.

Since he has taken on a number of position at WAAC including as held a number of positions including peer support, fundraising, marketing and organising events.

He has also sat on national boards including the AIDS Trust of Australia, National Association of People with HIV Australia and as a representative on the WA Primary Health Alliance.

He recounts the early days where it was an uphill battle to get heard at all, but acknowledges authorities were largely on board with getting on top of the disease.

“In the very early days we were very political in getting HIV positive people to the table, so they actually had a say in their care and their support, and setting organisations like WAAC up enabled us to be able to care for people,” he said.

“In the early days, we were able to do things like care teams so people had the ability to not have to be in hospice, and they could die comfortably at home.

“These days it’s about supporting people with a whole range of different comorbidities living with HIV to support them.”

The award has come out of the blue according to Mr Reid, who was thankful.

“It was an amazing surprise, really, it was just a surprise,” he said.

“When you work and do the things that you do in your life, you don’t do them with the hope of ever being recognised like this for them, so it was a beautiful surprise, really.”

But, arguably the most important part of receiving the honour to Mr Reid is the opportunity to spread the message about the continued need for HIV and AIDS education.

“In the early days when I was involved, we were watching a lot of people die, HIV was an issue that was in the newspaper every day, we’ve moved from it being front page to not really getting mentioned anymore,” he said.

“This honour for me, I suppose, also allows the issue of HIV and the stigma discrimination that people still face to be a little front and centre, which I think it’s probably one of the best things of getting this award, it allows me to talk about that issue again and bring it to people’s minds.”