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

We all recall where we were at the time of significant international events like the assassination of John F Kennedy. I remember being in Brisbane. I was just having my shave and was going out early in the morning to put up posters, the forerunners of core flutes, for the election. I was going to hang them up on the poles out at Nanala of all places, which is very strong Labor territory. I remember driving back to my electorate from Gladstone the day Princess Diana was killed. I actually represented Warren Truss in the courtyard of St Mary's Cathedral for the canonisation of Mary MacKillop, and to see that TV link back to Rome and to be part of that very thing happening on that day in Sydney was marvellous. We all remember, with mixed emotions I am sure, the dismissal of the Whitlam government. I was with an ALP mate of mine in his printing works; he was just beside himself. I never saw a guy so upset as he was that day.

So we remember these things with vivid colour and memory and we remember our reactions at that time. I remember being woken by my wife, Margaret, who is a light sleeper, in the early hours of 12 September, as it was in Australia. M y wife said, 'Something dreadful has happened. Better get up and have a look at the TV,' which I did. My reaction on seeing the first plane going into that building was very similar to that of the member for Cowan. I remember being glued to the television set for the next five or six hours. It had a hellish magnetism: you wanted to walk away from it but you could not leave it alone. You just had to watch what was happening. I remember trying to comprehend the enormity of that outrage and what it might mean for the world as we knew it.

It was interesting this week to listen to some of the journalists and television presenters who were on duty that night. I remember listening to Sandra Sully. She happened to be on duty at that time doing the late news and went on into the night broadcasting the crosses from America. I am not sure if it was she or another journalist who was interviewed and said that she had this dreadful feeling of apprehension that she was watching the start of the third world war. I think we all felt something like that. All of us had that same sense of great apprehension. John Howard, who was the only visiting head of state in Washington on that day, invoked the ANZUS Treaty. We all knew that this was going to be full on, whatever followed. The ANZUS Treaty, of course, pledges all three nations—Australia, the US and New Zealand—to assist one another in the event of an attack.

The scale of the attacks and the devastation and grief visited on the families of those killed and injured in the United States on 11 September, made it a turning point for the world. It was not just the United States that was ravished that day; more than 90 countries lost citizens in the attack on the World Trade Center. The shock and outrage of the attacks was not restricted to the United States; as you all know we lost 10 Australians that day as well. People around the planet watched in horror as the events unfolded, and I think everyone understood that such an audacious and atrocious attack on innocent civilians and landmark sites changed the rules of the game forever. The member for Cowan made a very good analogy: these sorts of people do not conform to the rules. They do not take up arms and fight in a man-to-man contest; they pick on the most vulnerable, the unarmed, women, children and ordinary people going about their daily work.

At 8.46, flight 11 crashed at roughly 790 kilometres an hour into the north face of the North Tower of the World Trade Center. It obliterated floors 93 to 99. Then, a bit over a quarter of an hour after that, at 9.03, flight 175 crashed into the south face of the South Tower, between floors 77 and 85. We saw those gaping holes and the black smoke and then experienced the absolute horror of the collapse of the buildings, knowing how many people would be engulfed in that event. Then, about a half an hour later, at 9:37, flight 77 crashed into the western side of the Pentagon, starting a violent fire. Just short of half an hour later again, at 10:03, United Airlines 93, on its way to somewhere in Washington, was put into the ground, either by the hijackers or by the passengers, 130 kilometres south-east of Pittsburgh in Pennsylvania.

The terrorist attack on September 11 by al-Qaeda resulted in 2,996 immediate deaths, including the 19 hijackers and 2,977 victims. Two hundred and forty-six people died on the planes, 2,606 died in the towers and on the ground in New York and another 125 people died in the Pentagon. All the deaths in those attacks were civilians, bar 55 military personnel at the Pentagon. As the member for Cowan said, it was a gutless attack, in the main on civilians.

Tonight is not the time to conduct a debate on the rights and wrongs of the military actions that have followed since, but, inevitably, the act inspired an unmistakable resolve that this would never happen again and that those who perpetrated this vile act would suffer its consequences. I am a great student of the Second World War, and one quote I really like is that of Admiral Yamamoto, who commanded the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor. After the attack, when his pilots and naval officers were patting each other on the back, he cautioned them by saying: 'I fear we have awakened a sleeping giant and filled him with a terrible resolve.'

Ten years on, as we reflect on those awful events and recognise the scars that horrific day has left on thousands of people, including those families who lost loved ones, we remember that it filled us all with a terrible resolve. Yes, some of the resolve was military in nature; some of it was antiterrorist in nature; some of it involved caring for the families of people who were killed; some of it involved examining our own lives to see how we could change the circumstances that bring these things about.

Last Sunday, most of us would have watched the commemorative ceremonies in the US and here in Australia and thought back to that awful day 10 years ago. I watched as former US President Bill Clinton spoke at the Pennsylvania memorial ceremony and he remarked that the people on flight 93 showed uncommon courage in storming the cockpit to stop the hijackers from crashing the plane into the heart of Washington, DC even though they knew they faced certain death. The former President likened the passengers and crew of flight 93 to the Texans at the Alamo and the Spartans of ancient Greece at Thermopylae who went into battle knowing that they would die but did it willingly to save others. The difference, Clinton said, was that the Spartans and the Texans were soldiers while the heroes of flight 93 just happened to be on the plane. He said—and I thought this was the greatest quote of the day and it is worth putting it on the record:

With almost no time to decide, they gave the entire country an incalculable gift. They saved the Capitol from attack, they saved God knows how many lives, and they spared the terrorists from claiming the symbolic victory of smashing the centre of American government. And they did it all as citizens.

He went on to say:

They allowed us to survive as a country that could fight terror and still maintain liberty and still welcome people from all over the world from every religion and race and culture as long as they shared our values, because ordinary people given no time at all to decide did the right thing. And 2,500 years from now, I hope and pray to God that people will still remember this.

That was the great and frightening event, and we must not overlook the human dimension of this, the terror of those people trapped on the roof of the Twin Towers as they were collapsing; the people who chose to jump rather than to die in an inferno; the firefighters—and this must be one of the great heroic stories of our time—who went in to save others, many times, at their own peril; the ambulance men; the police; the chaplain; the priest who went in and was giving the last rites as he himself was struck down by falling debris; the little kids in the child-minding centre; and the kids who will not have fathers and mothers. I think we were all touched to see them moving around the two reflective pools and seeing the names of the 2,900-odd people who lost their lives. Lest we forget.

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