Mark Butler (Port Adelaide, Australian Labor Party, Shadow Minister for Environment, Climate Change and Water) Share this | Hansard source

I thank the government and, I am sure, the cooperation of the opposition for continuing the debate on this important motion in this chamber rather than the Federation Chamber. I think it is an appropriate mark of respect for such an incredibly important occasion.

As we all know, a little more than 100 years ago thousands of Australian and New Zealand soldiers were pouring onto the shores of Gallipoli on the morning of 25 April 1915. The landing force on that day was dominated by battalions from the outlying states, including my state of South Australia, which had been joined with the New Zealand battalions to form the Australian and New Zealand Army Corps or ANZAC. Over the course of that single day 16,000 Australian troops went ashore. More than 2,000 of them were killed or wounded before the day ended. And the carnage continued: 1,000 men of the 16th battalion, including my great-grandfather, landed on 25 April. Just eight days later, of the 1,000 men who had landed, fewer than 300 answered the rollcall.

These were not professional soldiers, as we understand that term today; these were everyday Australians who had walked off the farm and out of the factory to answer the government's call to serve their country overseas. Australia then was a nation not yet 15 years old and numbering fewer than five million souls, but over the course of that war more than 400,000 men answered the call to arms, almost half of Australia's men then between the ages of 18 and 44. For eight long months the Anzacs were thrown at machine guns and artillery with horrendous results. In military terms, the campaign was a catastrophic failure. I read that one Australian soldier from Gallipoli described it 'as the absurd sacrifice of young men by old men sitting in stuffed chairs in London'.

By the end of that year the Allies were forced to retreat. Almost 9,000 Australian troops had been killed and 19,000 were wounded. Those who survived, including my great-grandfather, were redeployed to face fresh horrors on the Western Front in Europe. In the face of all that carnage and adversity, the Anzac troops demonstrated qualities that came to define their two young nations. They fought bravely and they revealed a spirit of courage, persistence, mateship and even good humour—a character that the rest of the world associates with Australia today. It is because of that extraordinary spirit shown by those extraordinary men that Gallipoli is regarded as Australia's coming of age, but it was an awful coming of age.

The impact of the First World War on our country is hard to comprehend today. In a nation of fewer than five million people, 60,000 Australians were killed and 170,000 were wounded. Imagine Australia today losing 300,000 of our men in the prime of their life and a million or so returning home wounded. One in three women at the time never partnered. For a generation known as the maiden aunts there simply were not enough men. Many of the families of returned servicemen, including my great-grandfather's family, welcomed home husbands and fathers who were physically and mentally broken, haunted by their experiences in the trenches. They often did not survive for more than a few more years.

This year there was an especially strong effort by the community of Port Adelaide and communities across our nation to recognise and commemorate the 100th anniversary of the landing at Gallipoli. The Port Adelaide community embraced the Anzac Centenary by organising a range of events, exhibitions and memorials. Many of them were underpinned by the centenary grants that were initiated by the Gillard government and continued, I am happy to say, by the Abbott government. Seventeen organisations in my electorate of Port Adelaide were successful recipients of an Anzac Centenary local grant. They included RSLs, schools, museums, churches and community organisations. There was an incredibly impressive variety of projects organised to commemorate the Centenary of Anzac. I will give just a few examples.

The Semaphore and Port Adelaide RSL and their President, Glen Murray, previous presidents and committee members delivered a re-enactment of the Gallipoli landing at the Semaphore dawn service. RSL member Daryl Mundy worked with a local filmmaking organisation, Living Stories, to create a moving tribute to those who landed at Gallipoli. The stories were taken from actual letters written by Adelaide servicemen who were there at the landing on 25 April. They were brilliantly narrated by Alberton Primary School students.

I have the honour of emceeing that event every year. The memorial service is across the road from my office. My great-great-uncle Charlie Butler laid the memorial stone in 1924 on behalf of the RSL, so it is a particular privilege for me to be able to emcee that event. Like services across South Australia, and I imagine across the country, the Semaphore and Port Adelaide service this year was the largest ever. Well more than 10,000 local community members attended that service. I talked to people who have been attending for decades and who remember that, 25 or 30 years ago, 20 or 25 people would rock up to a service. That service is now attended by thousands and thousands. It was not just an Australian memorial, I am happy to say. As happened last year, spontaneously New Zealander members of our community at the end of the service performed a haka ceremony that was incredibly well received by the local community.

In addition to the Semaphore and Port Adelaide RSL service, Mount Carmel College students worked with local artist Mandi Glynn-Jones to paint the extraordinary mural that I had the privilege of launching at that college. Whitefriars schoolteacher Amanda Taverna worked tirelessly, along with her husband—she was honest enough to say—to create a wonderful memorial garden for the school community. I know that other RSLs and other service organisations organised commemorative marches. The West Croydon and Kilkenny RSL, with the assistance of the South Australian Museum, unveiled a World War I time capsule that had been put in place in between the two world wars.

Other Anzac Centenary grants projects included the Salisbury RSL unveiling a silhouette of a World War I soldier. There were a number of moving World War I exhibitions and memorials organised by different parts of the Port Adelaide museum district, including the South Australian Maritime Museum, the South Australian Aviation Museum and the National Railway Museum, as well as other organisations like the Naval Association and the Merchant Navy Association, which for understandable reasons are located in the port community of Port Adelaide, St Paul's Anglican Church, St Alban's Anglican Church and local schools, not just Whitefriars and Mount Carmel College that I have already mentioned but also the Alberton Primary School, Largs primary schools and Nazareth primary school.

In addition to memorials and events that were underpinned by the Anzac Centenary local grants program a number of other organisations organised off their own bat other wonderful projects to embrace the Anzac Centenary commemoration. They included St Bede's Church in Semaphore, which organised a service of remembrance and a World War I exhibition, with particular outreach to local primary schools I know. Local artist, and frankly local legend, John Ford, curated the Lest We Forget – 100Years of the ANZACSpirit art exhibition at the Port Community Arts Centre. The Salisbury Council, which was particularly active during this period, and the Salisbury RSL hosted one talk every month about different aspects of the Anzac experience, over the course of an eight-month educational campaign. The Vietnam Veterans Association, a very important part of the Port Adelaide community, also held a commemorative ceremony.

I particularly want to thank members of the Anzac Centenary local grants committee in Port Adelaide, who worked very closely with me, and with my office, to assess each application. Their advice and their knowledge of the local community and the events that we were commemorating were both invaluable. I would particularly like to take this opportunity to thank Sue McKenzie from the Port Adelaide Enfield Council for her contributions and efforts towards the work of this community. Thank you to the many hundreds of people who volunteered their time and worked on the projects that commemorated the centenary of the Anzac landing. Without their ongoing support, many of the projects would not have come to fruition. Lastly, but certainly not least, can I thank all of those thousands of members of the Port Adelaide community who took time, whether it was on the day itself or in the surrounding weeks, to commemorate the extraordinary service and sacrifice of the Anzacs.

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