Between 1975 and 1979, the Canberra Australia Day Council named four Australians of the Year. Prime Minister Gough Whitlam lent his support to the Canberra award when he presented the inaugural honour to Major General Alan Stretton, the commander of the emergency response to Cyclone Tracy. The Canberra council also made good use of the federal parliamentary press boxes to promote its award to the national media. The Victorian council was singularly unimpressed that a rival Australia Day organisation had copied its idea – in 1977 it described its own winner, Dame Raigh Roe, as 'the real Australian of the Year'. The impasse was only resolved when the Fraser Government created the National Australia Day Council (NADC) in 1979. The Victorian council willingly transferred responsibility for its award to the new national body, while the Canberra council agreed to discontinue its rival program. In 1982, the Victorian council was further sidelined when that state's Australian Labor Party government led by John Cain created a new Victorian Australia Day Committee within the Premier's Department, which joined the NADC's official national network.