Paul Neville (Hinkler, National Party) Share this | Hansard source

This afternoon, Lieutenant Colonel Harry Smith received a letter from the Prime Minister regarding the reinstatement of original gallantry recommendations for 12 veterans of the Battle of Long Tan. Would anyone in this parliament be surprised that not only did the Prime Minister turned down Harry’s request that the honour be reinstated but that it took fully six months for the Prime Minister to respond to Harry’s original correspondence of November last year? Bear in mind that between then and now Harry had written two follow-up letters and neither of those was acknowledged either.

My taking up the cudgels on this matter would come as no surprise to those who know me. I have spoken on this topic before and I will continue to do so until a satisfactory conclusion is reached. This matter has dragged on for a number of years, following the 2008 review by the Honours and Awards Appeals Tribunal, which reinstated the original award recommended to Lieutenant Colonel Smith—he was Major Smith at the time of the action. He received the Star of Gallantry, which is the equivalent of the Distinguished Service Order. Upgraded with him were two of his platoon commanders: Dave Sabben and Geoff Kendall, who were awarded the Medal of Gallantry, the equivalent of the old Military Cross. However, 12 other men from D Company did not have reinstated their original gallantry recommendation—three medals for gallantry and nine commendations for gallantry, the commendations being the equivalent of mentions in dispatches. This is something that Harry Smith and I want to see reconsidered.

For the record, the causes he is promoting are those of Delta Company’s Lieutenant Gordon Sharp, posthumously because he was killed in the action; Bill Roche; Ian Campbell; Geoff Peters; Barry Magnussen; Neil Bextrum; Allen May; Noel Grimes; and Bill Moore; and the APC Reaction Force’s Adrian Roberts, Frank Alcorta and the late Ron Brett, who died after the war. All these were seminal characters in the Battle of Long Tan. It is hard not to think that these men have been and continue to be treated with disdain by this and previous governments. In fact, in his response, the Prime Minister goes to great lengths to reiterate the awards already presented to the members of D Company and praises Lieutenant Colonel Smith’s efforts to gain recognition for his men. He then shamelessly goes on to say:

The government’s policy is to adhere to the Tribunal’s finding. I am confident that the Tribunal’s recommendations in the case of honours and awards for the Battle of Long Tan are based on sound reasoning and I do not intend to seek to have them overturned … I reassure you of the government’s commitment to honouring our Vietnam veterans.

Consider this: if the six-month delay in responding to Lieutenant Colonel Smith’s correspondence—along with the very content—was not enough, it seems that our government has not even informed the New Zealand government of an Australian unit citation for three New Zealanders who fought in that Battle of Long Tan. It is almost unbelievable.

One of these men—gunnery officer Morrie Stanley, who is terminally ill with cancer—is meant to be presented with his award this coming weekend. Lieutenant Colonel Smith is travelling there for the ceremony and he informed me that as of this morning the New Zealand government still had not had an official letter from our government saying that the award has been approved. I find that inconceivable. I hope there is some explanation for it.

Many observers have suggested that the Battle of Long Tan, if decorated along the UK system of similar awards, would have received something like: two Victoria Crosses, 10 distinguished conduct medals, 10 military medals and 20 mentioned in dispatches. Smith recommended 23 awards—being the commanding officer of the company—but only nine were awarded. Such a state of affairs makes it hard not to agree with Harry Smith when he says, ‘Long Tan may be an historic battle, but it is an absolute shambles in terms of awards.’ And so it is.

The treatment of our troops when they came back from Vietnam—by all of us, I am not being partisan in this—was disgraceful. But what is worse is that the shameless way those troops were treated has still not been corrected and could be corrected. There were 726 awards over the 10 years of Vietnam. Nearly half of them were MIDs—mentioned in dispatches. Only 61 went to private soldiers in the front line. Of these, only 35 received medals. There were only 35 medals that went to privates in 726 awards! To my way of thinking, this is an utter disgrace.

In the First World War seven per cent of troops received awards. In the Second World War, it was 2.8 per cent. In the Korean War, again it was 2.8 per cent. But in Vietnam, it was 1.7 per cent. Some of these people have been recommended: Harry Smith; two of his colleagues whose awards he had upgraded by the tribunal, Sabben and Kendall; one for whom he is recommending a posthumous award, Cameron Sharpe; and an APC reaction force lieutenant, Roberts. Not one of them went to Duntroon. Four of them were Portsea graduates and one was a national service officer.

I find it almost inconceivable that these people, who were forced to go there—and they were forced to go there by a government of my colour, so I take my share of blame in this—did not receive appropriate awards. Smith himself did, and the two he fought to get their awards for did, but not the others. A DSO was awarded to the brigadier for his able and personal direction of the battle. He did not attend the battle. A DSO went to the lieutenant colonel who arrived after the battle and was there for the three or four days afterwards when the Vietcong had gone.

In that battle, the Australians faced somewhere between 2½ thousand and 3,000 troops, and not all of them were Vietcong. Some of them were North Vietnamese regular troops and some were local regional troops. There was another regiment in reserve. That night, it is now acknowledged, they planned to knock off the Australian base at Nui Dat. Had it not been for Harry Smith and his D company, who took them on in the rubber plantation at Long Tan, God only knows what would have happened that night. It could have been our worst disaster since the Second World War, but I will not speculate on that—I will just say this: why weren’t those last 12 properly acknowledged when everyone else, the commanding officers and so on, got their honours? Two tribunals have looked into this. Furthermore, 37 DSOs were awarded to senior officers during the Vietnam War: one to the Navy, 10 to the Air Force and 26 to the Army. It seems that these 12 that Harry fights for have not received their just rewards.

I beg to disagree with the Prime Minister. This will never rest. Every time we put our hands on our hearts on Long Tan Day, or Vietnam Veterans Remembrance Day, and do not correct this, it is a denigration of the work of all those troops who went to Vietnam. I will not abide it and I will not rest until it is corrected. Madam Deputy Speaker, I seek leave to table the names and ranks of the people that Lieutenant Colonel Harry Smith has recommended for awards.

Leave granted.

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