Ewen Jones (Herbert, Liberal Party) Share this | Hansard source

It was only a short time ago that I was walked from a morning tea down to the parade ground to farewell 2RAR as 800 men and women were in the process of being deployed to Afghanistan. I was walked down and back by the same warrant officer. On the way back we talked. He was near retirement. I asked, 'Did you serve in Vietnam?' He said, 'Well, as a matter of fact I did. I was very young then.' I said, 'Did you get a send-off like this?' He said, 'We got nothing, mate. We got nothing on the way out and we got nothing on the way back.' What a great change we have seen and it is for the people who served in Vietnam that we see this change. The people who served in Vietnam and went through what they had to go through in this most unpopular war have seen the way Australians have changed and now re-embrace the members of the Australian Defence Force.

Townsville is very lucky to be Australia's garrison city. We are very proud of that. But it has not always been the case. Up until the Somalia conflict in 1990 it was them and us. There were whole suburbs of people segregated. You would not go anywhere near the AJs. You fought with them in the pubs; you fought with them on the streets. When they came back from Somalia it was the Townsville Bulletinthat started calling them 'our boys'. From there, the city and the ADF have made a concerted two-way effort to change the relationship between the men and women of the ADF and the city. I want to say how proud I am to be associated with the men and women of the 3rd Brigade of the 5th Aviation Regiment at the RAAF base and the Navy contingent in Townsville. We are truly lucky to have them in our city. We are very proud of them. They live amongst us; they go to our schools.

Everyone has focused on Vietnam, today being the anniversary of the Battle of Long Tan. We should never shy away from that being a truly remarkable achievement. Whether it be the big battles of Long Tan, Coral-Balmoral or Binh Ba, we should not take away from the skirmishes that went on all over the place and it should not just be about the people who were there in conflict. I have a good friend who was a captain in the Army at that time—he is now a retired brigadier—who called artillery onto his own position to defeat the enemy. That was a very brave thing to do. I have mates who had to sleep next to artillery for the first three nights they were there. They did not sleep at all but now they can sleep through anything. If you can sleep through an artillery barrage going on outside your tent you can sleep anywhere. I have friends who came back from Vietnam as shattered men. I have friends who came back from Vietnam saying it was the greatest time of their lives. I have friends who served in the jungle and friends who drove armoured personnel carriers. I am part of that lucky generation from the end of the baby boomers to the beginning of the generation Xers who has not had to serve in a war. We missed conscription. It was terrible to watch people being conscripted, with some trying to get out of it, along with the rage in the streets that went with it.

To everyone who had anything to do with it, including the people who continue to have something to do with it, such as the Vietnam Veterans' Counselling Service, the Department of Veterans' Affairs, the Department of Defence and the wider community, I say: let us make sure that we recognise our Vietnam veterans. They are now becoming almost the elder statesmen of Anzac Day. Let us turn Anzac Day into a celebration of what these men and women did for their country. A lot of them did it without volunteering.

I cannot let this opportunity go without referring to the people who lost a brother, a son, a husband or a father. There are lots of people floating around who have had people killed in that conflict and they will always carry those scars with them. No-one wants to go to war, but soldiers train for it. They train hard. You should go to the 3rd Brigade and watch those guys from 1RAR and 2RAR and the rest of the guys go through their exercises. It becomes muscle memory. They are battle-ready. They are ready to go and they want to go.

I also must use this opportunity to reinforce the fact that these people went to Vietnam and we had a government that changed the way that their pensions were indexed. We have an opportunity to right a terrible wrong for Vietnam veterans, and for other people who have served at least 20 years in the Defence Force, by correctly indexing the Defence Force Retirement and Death Benefit scheme. It has broad based approval from both sides of the House; we just cannot get it across the line. Let us not lose this opportunity to right this terrible wrong.

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