David Fawcett (Wakefield, Liberal Party) Share this | Hansard source

I rise to draw the attention of the House tonight to an event which took place this Sunday immediately past in Adelaide. I refer to the unveiling and dedication of a Vietnam war memorial at Torrens Parade Ground in Adelaide city. The memorial was unveiled by Lieutenant General Sir Donald Dunstan, who was the Commander of the Australian Force Vietnam in 1971 and 1972. It is the first dedicated memorial in South Australia to the Vietnam War—particularly to the veterans who served in that war and more specifically to the 58 South Australians who made the ultimate sacrifice and lost their lives in the service of Australia during that conflict.

One of the significant things about this memorial is that this was a collaborative effort where a number of ex-service and veterans groups came together and worked very effectively, not only to come up with the concept but to raise the funds and gain the necessary approvals. I wish to congratulate the RSL, the Vietnam Veterans Federation and the Vietnam Veterans Association of Australia as well as the Vietnamese Veterans Association. There was strong support from each element of those communities to bring about this memorial.

In particular I wish to note the efforts of Mr Bill Denny and Dr Ngo, who were co-chairmen of the Vietnam Veterans Memorial Committee, which did the hard yards over a number of years to bring about this memorial. The links with South Australia were further reinforced by the fact that the sculptor, Mr James Martin, lives and works in Adelaide and is himself a Vietnam veteran, having served in Vietnam as a member of the Royal Australian Navy. The memorial itself was financially supported by the Australian government through the Department of Veterans’ Affairs, as well as the state government, the Adelaide City Council and a large number of private and corporate donors, who, over a period of time, supported the vision of having a memorial in South Australia.

The unveiling is particularly notable this year as we have celebrated the anniversary of Long Tan and as we have looked back on the decades that have passed since our veterans returned from Vietnam. Many of them are still struggling through some of the issues about how they were treated by Australians, ex-service organisations, members of the public and the press, who did not value what they did. In some cases they even said that the conflict they had fought in was not a real war. Unlike the gratitude that was expressed to generations that had gone before them and who had fought in other conflicts, they were very much pushed aside and, in some senses, despised by their country.

This has left a significant hurdle for many of them and their families to overcome. In some way, we certainly hope that the erection, unveiling and dedication of this memorial will be the closing of a chapter in this history of Australia and the start of some healing and closure for these veterans who can see that their service and their sacrifice has been recognised by a grateful nation.

Our servicemen yet again are involved in conflicts overseas, locally with RAMSI in the Solomons and East Timor, and in Afghanistan, Iraq and other places. There is a great deal of public debate about how much we should be supporting some of those conflicts. Particularly when we look at the Solomons and we see the actions of that country, people start questioning whether we should have soldiers there putting their lives on the line. In East Timor we see soldiers, particularly people like army aviators with the Black Hawks, who yet again are having a high rotation rate and a high burnout rate, which has a big impact on their families as well as on those servicemen. With the conflict in Iraq and Afghanistan and the varying views in the community, the lesson we need to take out of Vietnam that was encapsulated by the unveiling of this memorial is that, whatever we think of the conflict, we need to give unfailing support to the men and women who serve in Australia’s defence forces and to their families.

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