Alannah Mactiernan (Perth, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Hansard source

This Anzac Centenary has been quite an extraordinary experience for this country. There is no doubt that every community needs stories. We need stories, we need legends and we need those things that bind us and create a sense of shared endeavour and a notion of us being together as we go forward. This is particularly important in an immigrant society. We are a community that has a lot of diverse history. We come together from all different parts of the world. We as Australians need to have a very strong collective identity in order for us to develop that real sense of common purpose that is going to be absolutely essential for us to make a society that is strong, good and create opportunity for all.

There is no doubt that the Anzac story and, indeed, the story of the First World War has been an important part in developing a shared story and a collective identity. I want us to think very carefully about the nature of this story. What are the true lessons and messages that we should be taking from the story? What are the messages are lessons that we can take from that that will ensure that the Anzac legend, the Anzac story and the story of the endeavour of the First World War remain truly relevant and accessible to all of the community and do not become something that has the potential to become exclusive, that this story is not told in such a way that will alienate some of the community and create a sense of division and separateness?

There have been some incredibly positive ways in which this story has been told, and I think there have been ways in which this whole endeavour has been commemorated that, in my view, have been less helpful in doing the job that needs to be done. I started my Anzac exploration, I suppose like all Australians of my vintage, growing up with a lot of stories of Simpson and his donkey, with the Anzac endeavour being very much woven into our primary school history. But it was not until I was around 13 and I discovered CEW Bean's history of the Great War at the library that I really came to have an understanding of what this war was all about. When I read Robert Graves's Good-bye to all that at the age of 15, I began to see that perhaps some of the stories that we had heard about this war may have been somewhat simplistic.

I think it is important to remember that when the horror of this war was still raw in the hearts of Australians—CEW Bean acknowledged this when speaking to veterans in 1931—most of the community wanted 'to obliterate all memory of the Great War, cut it out of their consciousness, if that were possible'. For many, many decades this was not a war to be celebrated; this was a war that had entrenched within it a great tragedy. It was a demonstration that there was perhaps somewhat of a reckless disregard for the lives of ordinary soldiers and ordinary people, a preparedness to keep a war going for a very long time without there being a true understanding of the absolute horror that was being perpetrated on those men who were fighting in the trenches, on those nurses who were there supporting them in a field hospitals and on families across Australia.

I am sure I am not the only person who is always profoundly moved when I go to a tiny town that has a war memorial. On those war memorials are so many names. These war memorials often seem to me to be, as they glitter with quartz, to be the crystallised tears of so many families, wives, girlfriends, fathers and mothers who lost their loved ones. The cataclysmic nature of a population of something less than five million losing 61,000 men, and with somewhere in excess of 110,000 men returning to their land in a damaged and injured form, is beyond our comprehension today. I do not think in all of this commemoration that we should be forgetting that.

I do not think we should be forgetting the need to critique how this war was allowed to begin but, more importantly, how this war was allowed to extend for the amount of time that it did. We should reflect on whether or not enough critique was being given at that time to the fairness and justice of perpetrating this level of chaos within these communities. I really do think it is absolutely important that we are prepared to critique this war, that this does not become a holy war.

It is essential, however, that in doing that we learn the extraordinary lessons that came from that war:

the celebration of the character of those Australians who fought in the Great War and those characteristics that they showed there, setting a standard for courage, endurance, humanity and good humour. Despite all of the horrors that they were confronted with on a daily basis, their ability to nevertheless see humour was quite extraordinary. I think these are great role models for Australians today. We do not have to praise this war and we do not have to believe that this was a war that was fundamentally fought for freedom to admire, respect and draw inspiration from the way in which those Australians conducted themselves during that war.

I know this at a very personal level, and this may sound a bit naff. During the very difficult times—my first four years of building the Perth to Mandurah rail line when it was under a lot of criticism—sometimes I used to think I cannot keep going, but I would think about those men on the Somme who stayed in those horrific circumstances year after year. My thought was that if they can do that, I can do this thing which was infinitely less hard than what they did. I say to our school students, think about this. Do not talk about this war in terms of this protecting our freedom; talk about this war in the way in which these men and women conducted themselves. Draw inspiration from that, and you can use that in your everyday life. This is not something that needs to be confined to the battlefield.

I want to also acknowledge the people involved in our community in commemorating these great events, and my Anzac committee that was made up of Peter Farrell, the president of the Highgate RSL, historian Lenore Layman and Councillor Reece Harley from the City of Perth. I think we have put together a good program; hopefully there is more to come. We have had a rebuild of the Bassendean War Memorial. We have had a fantastic play written, The Dreaming Hill, which has been performed both in Perth and in Albany.

Again, I think this has been a very important occasion. Let us hope that we do not hear talk of Christian martyrs, as unfortunately was a reference at one of our events, but rather that we see this as a story that celebrates the great Australian character, that character, as Sir John Monash, our great and distinguished general, said, that emerged from the democratic traditions that we enjoy, that emerged from the education system that encourages independence and freedom of thought. It is a really important celebration. I want to thank all of those in our community who were involved in this commemoration. Let us hope that we can make sure this is a story that will drive us forward for the next 100 years. Thank you.

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