Janelle Saffin (Page, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Hansard source

I rise to speak in strong support of the motion put forward by the honourable member for Parkes and commend him on bringing it before the House so that some members get an opportunity to speak to it. It is a commendable motion and one that I know all members would wish to lend their support to. I am happy to agree to the amendments to the motion. When it came to researching the subject, I can say that it was very difficult to get an accurate picture of numbers of service personnel from World War I and World War II or even information on entitlements from the Department of Veterans' Affairs. There were conflicting numbers, so I can understand that the honourable member for Parkes moved the amendment to try to get the numbers as accurate as possible, given we are dealing with inaccuracies in a framework. I looked at figures from the Australian War Memorial as well, but they are a work in progress.

I thank the Parliamentary Library for the great research that they did for me; I am going to rely on it heavily in my contribution today.

This motion is about respect, honour and recognition. This was something that I knew about but, having read and reread some of the research, I can only imagine how soldiers must have felt when they went off to be a soldier with their mates, either in the theatre of war or serving in some capacity, and then, having been in the Defence forces, stepping back into everyday life and suffering the discrimination that they suffered. It would have made even the most generous person feels some degree of bitterness. I know it was difficult for the Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people to get into the Defence forces. If you read the Defence Act you will see there were certain prohibitions there which were relaxed because they wanted people to join, and there were different pay and conditions. They were discriminatory and not based, as far as I could tell from the research, on any legal grounds. I found that the numbers, which the honourable member for Parkes has put in the amended motion, are consistent with the later work that I found.

As to the First World War, paragraph 61(1)(h) of the Defence Act 1903 exempted from service in time of war persons who were 'not substantially of European descent'. So that Defence Act frustrated Aboriginal people's attempts to enlist, but those recruitment policies were relaxed after heavy losses in 1916 and 1917.

Another thing that happened—and I remember hearing about this and I remember talking to various people about it—was that after the war there were various parts of Aboriginal reserves, which used to be called missions, that were awarded to returning veterans as soldier settlement blocks, and in the records it shows only one Aboriginal veteran is known to have received a soldier settlement block. It was quite shameful that that happened. Reading it, I thought that that must have been a very difficult situation.

At the start of World War II, the Defence Act barred the conscription of full-blooded Indigenous people because it held that, since they were not enfranchised citizens, Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islanders should not be compelled to defend Australia. The three services of the ADF had certain regulations which also could prevent persons who were not substantially of European descent from enlisting. However, despite this, some Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander men managed to enlist because they wanted to serve their country. The same thing that happened in World War I happened in World War II—there was a fair amount of discretion on the part of those dealing with enlistment and there was relaxation of rules, with the medical staff relaxing them, and that allowed a lot of people to get in. I will read something from the secretary of the Prime Minister's Department. It says, 'regarding the non-acceptance of full-blooded aborigines, I am to state that when this instruction was issued it was decided that no action was to be taken to discharge full-blooded aborigines who had already been accepted'. It goes on like that, and there were other such letters and instructions.

During World War II, the Torres Strait Light Infantry Battalion was formed was formed to defend the Torres Strait, and it had about 745 Indigenous Australians enlisted. That was in August 1943.

I would say there that nearly every able-bodied Torres Strait Islander male had enlisted by 1944, but they did not receive the same rates of pay or conditions as white soldiers; there was a lot of research done on that. It was the same with the formation of the Northern Territory Special Reconnaissance Unit that was created: the research that was done, particularly through the Parliamentary Library, shows that there were 51 Indigenous people who were in that unit, and they were paid three sticks of tobacco per week and only supplied with Army rations when on training. When on patrol, they were expected to find their own food. The unit existed for about 16 months before being disbanded. Similar units were formed on Melville and Bathurst islands and on the Cox Peninsula, and they were used in much the same way as the Northern Territory Special Reconnaissance Unit. There was the same sort of pay and conditions, and I was told that the Melville Island men were given very small act of grace payments during the 1960s. I remember that, from 1983, the Hawke government made the decision to pay veterans of these units compensation and proper disability pensions for their service, so there are certain actions that have been taken since. If you read the history of that, you can see that that has been done over a period of years. It was in 1991 that the Australian government awarded back pay and service medals to surviving members and families of particular units from Melville and Bathurst island, the Cox Peninsula et cetera, and I was pleased to see that happen. After the end of the war the services reinstated the ban on enlistment, but by 1949 the Army had changed that practice.

I was looking at how many Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people from my area were enlisted, and so far we have come up with eight from the Lismore, Casino, Kyogle, Grafton and Armidale area. Most of them enlisted in the Lismore area. I am just doing a little bit more research on that. I know some of the families I am reading about in here. I will not mention the names, because I have not had the opportunity to speak with the families yet, but it was really nice to see some of the names there and I realise who some of the families are. I know some of the families and know how proud they are of those men who were serving in the world war—and, of course, some of them never returned; they paid the ultimate sacrifice.

I will just finish in the last few seconds I have by again commending the honourable member for Parkes for bringing this motion to the House. I thank you. (Time expired)

See this speech in context