Michael Danby (Melbourne Ports, Australian Labor Party, Shadow Parliamentary Secretary to the Leader of the Opposition) Share this | Hansard source

I commend the member for Ryan on this motion to recognise Remembrance Day. I have represented the opposition at ceremonies in northern France on Remembrance Day. I have stood on the beach at Gallipoli. I have represented Australia in a very junior capacity at the Commonwealth cemetery in Berlin. Both my grandfathers served in the First World War. My maternal grandfather, John Peek, served in the 3rd Light Horse and the family are very proud that he was commissioned in the field in 1917. My paternal grandfather, Hauptman (Captain) Bruno Danziger served in the German heavy artillery and won the Iron Cross. Both served on the Western Front, both were officers and both survived; obviously, otherwise I would not be here. Both of my grandfathers had very different fates. John Peek returned to Australia and was honoured, as we should honour all our veterans. I have to record, sadly, that my paternal grandfather, Bruno, and his wife, Margarethe, were murdered in the Second World War in Auschwitz. Nothing compares to standing on the beach at Gallipoli, and when you see those gravestones just by the water's edge it really communicates the sacrifice that Australians made in the pursuit of our national identity.

My part of Melbourne was heavily affected by the war. Up from Beaconsfield Parade, we recently remembered the Anzac girls with a wonderful ceremony for the matron there, Matron Grace Wilson. The Lemnos Greek community organised a wonderful ceremony that was part of the Centenary of Anzac commemorations. Australian personnel were shipped from Port Melbourne. Melbourne was the capital of Australia in those days. A total of 126,753 servicemen, medical chaplains and nurses embarked from Port Melbourne. On 19 October 1914, the first troop ship left from there. You can see those iconic pictures in almost every RSL in the country: pictures on the wall of the Anzacs leaving with all the streamers being thrown and big crowds down below. It was also to Port Melbourne that fewer returned. Almost one-third of the 60,000 Australians who died in the war were Victorians.

As a little boy I remember my grandfather marching to the St Kilda RSL Army and Navy Club outside Luna Park and then going with him up that scary European-style grill elevator to where we used to have the Christmas party for kids.

Representing the opposition, as I said previously, I visited the World War I battlefield at Villers-Bretonneux. I remember walking up the hill and seeing the sandstone wall on which the names of 10,000 Australians who were killed in the First World War and who have no known grave were engraved. I found on that wall the name of my grandmother's brother, David Swan, one of the thousands of Australians butchered in some of the ill-fated military operations, such as the Battle of Pozieres—probably the most disastrous event for Australia in the First World War.

I am very proud of the sculptures we have put in Albert Park. There is one by Peter Corlett to remember Matron Grace Wilson and the wonderful nurses on Lemnos, popularised in the ABC show Anzac Girls. We also have double VC winner Albert Jacka, who was the mayor of St Kilda and whose commemorations I have attended ever since becoming a member. These commemorations do not attempt to glorify war. Most monuments and speakers, including in this House, recall the horrors that war inflicts on soldiers, their families back home and, of course, the civilians caught up in the fighting.

The terrible situation in some parts of the world today is a reminder that war has lost none of its brutality. But these commemorations of the 97th anniversary of Remembrance Day remind us of the sacrifice that Australians have made for our country, for the freedom of other people's countries and for their comrades in arms. The motion for the recognition of Remembrance Day is a valuable reminder of the debt we owe to those great Australians. It is also a useful occasion for remembering those people who are on active service now in places around the world, and those who have made equal contributions in conflicts in the Second World War, Korea, Malaysia, Vietnam and, more recently, the Gulf.

See this speech in context