Craig Kelly (Hughes, Liberal Party) Share this | Hansard source

It gives me a great privilege and honour to stand here in this chamber to speak on this motion on the 100th anniversary of the landing at Gallipoli.

In my electorate we had five separate locations where we commemorated Anzac Day. There was Panania, organised by Gary Murray of the Panania Diggers; Woronora, organised by Barry Grant of the Woronora RSL; at Liverpool in Bigge Park, organised by David Sutherland and Kevin Wass of the Liverpool RSL; for the first time we also had a service at Menai, organised by Andrew Manson of the Menai Chamber of Commerce; and at Engadine, which was organised by the Engadine RSL, coordinated by Jack Abernethy. I congratulate them all on their fine efforts on commemorating that day.

I attended the service at Engadine in my electorate. About two years ago, behind the memorial in Engadine, a Moran health facility was constructed. It is approximately an eight-storey building. I congratulate the Moran Group because on the outside of the building they had placed a large bronze silhouette of a digger so that as the morning light came up and the first rays of sun came through you could see that silhouette standing seven storeys high. At Engadine I think we had some of the largest crowds that the township of Engadine had ever seen. The town square was absolutely chock-a-block with people shoulder to shoulder. The crowds filled back past the road and across the other side to the shops. It is hard to put an exact number on it, but it would have to have been close to 10,000 people—more than double the number of people in past years.

On that Anzac morning in Engadine, we commemorated and we remembered the 750 Australians who lost their lives on that very first day of the landings at Gallipoli. We remembered the eight long months that they continued to fight and we remembered the words of Private Victor Nicholson, who, after witnessing his mate killed at Gallipoli, wrote: 'I didn't cry unless Gallipoli was one long cry. If you cried once you never stopped. There were friends going every day and sometimes every hour of the day—wonderful friends. You cried inwardly. That is all you could do.' And we remembered that by the evacuation in December more than 8,700 Australians had lost their lives. We remembered that those who survived Gallipoli went on to the horrors of the mud, the blood and the gas of the Western Front, where another 46,000 Australians remain buried today. We remembered that by the time the guns of the Great War fell silent more than 61,000 Australians lay dead in foreign fields. We also remembered those 155,000 soldiers who returned home carrying injuries of war and that in the decade after the war, of those who were injured, another 60,000 returned soldiers died after returning from World War 1. Of course we remember the widows and the families who were left to grieve. We also remembered those immortal words, 'Lest we forget', first penned by Rudyard Kipling in the poem Recessional. Those words are a plea. They are a plea that we should never ever forget their sacrifice, their extraordinary courage and their perseverance against all odds. And, we should never forget that the very freedom we enjoy today has not come for free; it has been paid for through their blood and through their sacrifice. So it is a plea that we must be ever vigilant to protect those freedoms that were so hard won.

Millions of Australians turned out on Anzac Day morning. We said we had not forgotten, we said we will not forget and we said that for as long as our flag flies over our great southern land we never will. But in remembering them I think it is fair to ask the question, 'What if there were no Anzacs?' A former Prime Minister suggested that World War I was completely devoid of virtue. I beg to differ. One of the stories goes that we were tricked at Gallipoli by the nefarious British, who sat drinking tea on the beach while the Australians were slaughtered and sacrificed. But the facts remain that Gallipoli is not just an Australian story—there were more French killed in Gallipoli. Remember this is a time when German troops were fighting on French soil and the French were fighting for their homeland, yet France lost more people fighting at Gallipoli than Australia did. As for the nefarious British, they lost over 20,000 troops at Gallipoli compared to Australia's 8,700.

One of the other great myths is that our troops were dragooned into war by politicians or members of parliament. But that overlooks that there were something like 16 serving members of parliament at that time who left the safety of parliament and fought and served in wars. The New South Wales parliament has a plaque that commemorates the deaths of two members of that parliament who left the parliament to fight and who were killed in wars. Because our Anzac Day is not something where we celebrate war and Gallipoli was actually a defeat and a flawed campaign incompetently executed which ultimately, by itself, achieved nothing, perhaps we do not give true respect to what the Anzacs achieved.

Considering what the Anzacs achieved, I think it is important to remember why we became involved. We became involved because a militaristic Germany invaded a neutral Belgium. It is well documented in a couple of history books: The Rape of Belgium: the Untold Story of World War 1 by Larry Zuckerman; Rehearsals: The German Army in Belgium, August 1914 by Geoff Jeff Lipkes; and German Atrocities 1914: A History of Denial by John Horne and Alan Kramer. Those books document how German forces looted and destroyed much of the countryside of Belgium, killing innocent civilians including women and children. We know from the atrocities that there were close to 6,000 innocent Belgian civilians who were killed by German troops. So the question we had back then was: should we allow the Kaiser and his armies to conquer France and Britain? Or should we stand with Britain and its dominions and take a stand against German militarism? I believe our history shows that we had no alternative but to stand and fight.

What would have happened if there had been no Anzacs? Close to home, in the Pacific theatre, if there had been no Anzacs the German colonies at the time, including German New Guinea, would have been occupied by Japan. Because of the Anzacs, Japan only occupied the colonies up to the equator. It was Australia that occupied German New Guinea and the surrounding islands. If there had been no Anzacs, as we went into 1930 with a militarist Japan, we would have had German colonies on our doorstep. How would the Battle of the Coral Sea and the battle of Kokoda have been different if Japan had been in possession of German New Guinea after the First World Year?

We can never forget the efforts of the Australian troops on the Western Front and the difference they made. Historians tell us that the Germans came very close to winning World War I, and so we should be remembering the military genius of General John Monash. The efforts of General Monash and the troops on the Western Front made a crucial difference; although they comprised just 9.5 per cent of British forces in France, they captured 18.5 per cent of the German prisoners, 21.5 per cent of all the territory gained, and 14 per cent of the guns. It was Monash's military genius that thwarted the German attacks. After the war, German commander Erich Ludendorff remembered the allies' attack in his memoirs. He said:

Our fighting machine was no longer of real value. Our capacity for year had suffered harm even if the far greater majority of our divisions fought bravely. August 8 marked the decline of our military power and took from me the hope that...we could restore the situation in our favour … The war had to be ended.

In 1921, Marshal Foch, the French general during the war, said:

… the passionate valour of the Australians served as an example to the whole world. You saved Amiens, you saved France. Our gratitude will remain ever and always to Australia.

It was British Field Marshal Bernard Montgomery who said of Monash:

I would name Sir John Monash as the best general on the western front in Europe.

Our troops in World War I on the Western Front made a difference, and they could have made the difference between winning and losing. In considering the question, 'what if there were no Anzacs?' the history of the world would be quite different. At the end of World War I we could have seen the European continent dominated by a militaristic Germany, ruled by the Kaiser. We would have seen a France depleted and perhaps a France that would have followed Russia down a communist path. We would have seen Germany controlling Belgium, Luxembourg, Holland and the Channel Ports. It would have been a completely different world, with the Japanese on our doorstep. What difference could this have made to our world?

One thing that history has taught us is that freedom counts. Freedom counts in many respects, because freedom allows the individual to own property, the rule of law allows entrepreneurial activity, and that is what creates the wealth. I will give a few examples of things that have happened to improve our world since World War I which may not have happened if we had not had those freedoms. If we look at infant morality, back at the time when World War I started, 70 children out of every 1,000 died within their first year of life. Today that number is down to four per 1,000. Since the start of the 21st century, four million children have been born in Australia. Over the past century, through innovation, wealth creation, better standards of health and better standards of living and prosperity, the improvement in child mortality means that there are 280,000 children alive today who would not be alive if we had the rates of infant mortality that existed at the time of World War I. If we look at maternal mortality, we have lifted that through improved living standards, improved health standards and greater wealth creation. For the four million children born in this century there would be 24,000 mothers would have died in child birth if we had not lifted those maternal rates of death. Simply: freedom counts. Our world would be a completely different place today if not for the Anzacs. We owe them a great legacy and that is something we should never, ever forget.

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