Kelvin Thomson (Wills, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Hansard source

On Anzac Day this year I was in Royal Melbourne Hospital, having undergone a double bypass following a heart attack, and I was horrified to be missing out on the Anzac centenary. I was, however, very glad to be in Melbourne, and in Australia, where we have outstanding cardiac surgeons, like Professor James Tatoulis, and specialists, like Dr Rod Warren, who did an outstanding job of looking after me.

On Anzac Day 2012 it was a very different story. I was at Gallipoli. It was quite something: cold, though not as cold as I had been warned to expect; at times silent, eerie, calm, quiet, tranquil—a far cry from the noise and chaos of 97 years earlier. The place has vegetation that is a bit like inland Australia, with those prickly, spiky acacias and needlewoods that we have. But its topography is different. Where our coastal dunes are gentle, Gallipoli has steep, abrupt climbs. Soldiers making the trek up had bloodied hands from grabbing the spiky vegetation as they climbed the slopes. But if they abandoned the vegetation for the open areas they were easy targets for the Turkish marksmen firing from the tops of the hills.

Winston Churchill had resolved on a land attack on the Ottoman Empire after his naval forces were rebuffed and unable to penetrate the Dardanelles. According to the Allies' plan, British and French divisions were sent to the south of the Gallipoli Peninsula and simultaneously the Anzac corps would land to the north. As is well known, the Turkish troops succeeded in defending the Gallipoli Peninsula and the Dardanelles. The loss of life was unspeakable. By the time the Gallipoli campaign ended, more than 44,000 Allied soldiers had died. This included 8,500 Australians and 2,700 New Zealanders—one in four men who landed on the peninsula died there. The Turkish losses were even greater—almost 87,000 Turks died during the conflict. If Gallipoli was a defining moment for the Australian nation, it was an even more defining moment for the Turkish nation.

I remember very vividly the warmth of the welcome we received from our Turkish hosts. They have done a remarkable thing by naming the landing place Anzac Cove, but it is consistent with the great words of reconciliation from the Turkish commander and leader Mustafa Kemal Ataturk, uttered after the war, and consistent with the battlefield stories of soldiers fighting by day and exchanging food and cigarettes by night, and returning wounded enemy soldiers to the other side—stories of great courage and mutual respect.

The Australian parliamentary delegation which I was a member of received a tour of the battlefield sites two days before Anzac Day. On 24 April we attended the Turkish international service and many other services besides. We attended the Turkish centre which tells the Gallipoli story, which is both high-tech and poignant. We visited cemeteries. I am sure the House knows that war is not an orderly business, so you end up with a lot of unmarked graves. At the French memorial at Morto Bay, a lot of the headstones did not say much more than 'Mort pour la France': Died for France. Indeed, but dead all the same.

I saw many unmarked headstones 'Mort pour la France'. I was overcome by the senselessness of it all, the waste of so many young lives. And I know that the survivors of World War I from Australia and other countries did not come away enthusing about war as noble and wonderful, as romantic adventure. Most came away thinking it evil and terrible—the stench of death, of decaying human flesh, hard to erase from their nostrils. Many could not bear to talk about it. And those who did, did so as much as anything because of their instinctive understanding that people who do not learn from their history are condemned to repeat it.

I have been particularly impressed to see the interest of younger generations in keeping the Anzac spirit prominent in my electorate of Wills and right around Australia. Young people have played a key role in Wills Centenary of Anzac events. I would also like to acknowledge Wills veterans, like Wal Appleby, who organised an Anzac Day morning service and breakfast at the St Alban's Anglican Church in West Coburg. He did that for many years. During the Second World War, Wal had been a confidential personal assistant to the founder of Legacy in 3rd Division headquarters. He was awarded the British Empire Medal. At the age of 94, Wal visited Papua New Guinea to reminisce and visit some of the places he had seen in active service in the 1940s. He recognised the importance to ex-service men and women of the younger generations' interest in maintaining the traditions of Anzac Day. It is great that young people acknowledge what was done during the war, and their desire to continue this tradition is a most generous and welcome gesture. I hope and believe that the St Alban's Anglican Church will be able to continue this tradition into the indefinite future.

My electorate of Wills made a profound contribution to the First World War. In Brunswick over 3,000 men and women enlisted in the AIF and Navy to serve. A number won prestigious military honours, including Lieutenant William Symons of the famous 7th Battalion, who won the Victoria Cross at Gallipoli. Over 500 Brunswick locals are buried far from Australia's shores. The loss of so many locals had a huge impact on the community. Their names are recorded in bronze in the Soldier's Memorial Hall at the Brunswick Town Hall. Of the Coburg enlistments, many won battlefield honours, including the local parish priest, Father William Devine, who won the Military Cross and the French Croix de Guerre for bravery.

Of those who returned to Brunswick and Coburg, many were severely wounded, broken and traumatised by their war experiences. They made terrible sacrifices and many never recovered. After the First World War memorials, thousands of them rose up around Australia in a tidal wave of unparalleled public tribute. Here Australia moved away from the notion of the classical hero. It is not the great individual who we remember. Australia remembers the men, and above all their character, not the individuals. There was no statue to any individual soldier before 1936, when Simpson was unveiled in Melbourne. Even then, the work is titled The Man with the Donkey, and what is honoured is not so much warrior prowess but rather selfless service.

Deputy Speaker, our generation has a responsibility and a duty to remember those who served in that first worldwide conflict of the 20th century that changed the face of Europe. Our Australia and the world that existed in 1913 was no more when the fighting ceased in 1918. It was a great honour and privilege to commemorate Gallipoli at Gallipoli. I have also had the honour on quite a few occasions to represent my parliamentary leader at the shrine on Anzac Day, at the dawn service or at the Anzac Day parade. I know that the important thing is not really where we commemorate Gallipoli and Anzac Day but that we do it. Whether it is at Gallipoli or at the shrine or here in parliament or in Coburg at the Coburg West Anglican Church, the thing is that we do it, that we do not forget. For that, we owe a debt of gratitude not just to the Anzacs, who helped forge the identity and character of a young nation, but to people like Wal Appleby and the other men and women of St Alban's, who year in, year out, have done their bit to make sure that we do not forget.

When we gather every year to retell the Anzac story and the crowds who gathered to hear it get larger rather than smaller, I think it is because this story defines us as Australians. It tells us who we are and where we have come from, and each generation needs to hear it and to retell it. I think there is a second reason also. It is that each generation has its own battles to fight, its own challenges to confront, and, in facing those challenges, courage and character are just as important as they were at Gallipoli. In the face of modern threats like terrorism, it is very easy for people to be passive, to throw their hands up in the air and say: 'What can I achieve? The challenges are so massive and I am but one person.' But this was precisely the situation facing the Anzacs at Gallipoli. I believe the courage and character they showed back then is not some museum piece to be taken down, dusted off and admired once a year and then put back on the shelf. It should inspire us to fight the battles of our own time. The Anzac legend endures because we have need of it today and because our children will have need of it tomorrow.

See this speech in context