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

I move:

That this House:

(1) recognises the important role that national servicemen played in the defence of Australia;

(2) acknowledges that Australia owes a great debt to these men who underwent military training and served our nation, many of those on foreign soil, in the Royal Australian Navy, Australian Army and Royal Australian Air Force, in the advancement and protection of Australia's national interests;

(3) further acknowledges that during the:

(a) first national service scheme between 1951 to 1959, approximately 227,000 men served across the three branches of the armed services, providing an important military capability during a period when Australia faced many international security challenges; and

(b) second national service scheme from 1964 to 1972, more than 804,000 men registered for national service, of whom more than 63,000 were called up to serve in the Australian Army, and that during this period, more than 15,000 went on to serve in the Vietnam War, with 201 killed and more than 1,200 wounded; and

(4) thanks the 'Nashos' for their service and encourages the Australian community to remember the service of these men each year on 14 February which is National Servicemen's Day.

There are words of this motion which I would like to read out. Firstly, we:

… recognise the important role that national servicemen played in the defence of—

our great country. We acknowledge:

… that Australia owes a great debt to these men who underwent military training and served our nation, many of those on foreign soil, in the Royal Australian Navy, Australian Army and Royal Australian Air Force, in the advancement and protection of Australia's national interests …

We further acknowledge:

… that during the:

(a) first national service scheme between 1951 to 1959, approximately 227,000 men served across the three branches of the armed services, providing an important military capability during a period when Australia faced many international security challenges; and

(b) second national service scheme from 1964 to 1972, more than 804,000—

Australians—

registered for national service, of whom more than 63,000 were called up to serve in the Australian Army, and that during this period, more than 15,000 went on to serve in the Vietnam War, with 201 killed and more than 1,200 wounded …

We 'thank the "Nashos" for their service' and encourage:

… the Australian community to remember the service of these men each year on 14 February which is National Servicemen's Day.

I would like to add that many of our national servicemen that fought, and the over 200 that died in Vietnam, did so for the right cause. The conflict in Vietnam was one about halting the advance of communism, and in that goal we were successful, because Vietnam became the 18th and last country in world history to turn to communism. For those that do not think that was what the war was actually about, I quote from the Communist Party's official biography of Ho Chi Minh:

Ho Chi Minh … felt the need for active propaganda and organizational work in order to step up the revolutionary movement in colonial countries, including Vietnam. He deemed it his task to spread communist doctrine in Asia in general and in Indochina particularly.

There was a real threat at that time of Vietnam being more than the 18th country that turned communist.

Why should that concern us? Why should we be concerned about countries becoming communist? The history of the last century tells us that 100 million people perished directly at the hands of communist regimes. I read a good quote recently, and I would like to read it into the Hansard. It is a quote from Gary Morson's writing in The New Criterion, in an article called 'The house is on fire!' He said:

Western public opinion has never come to terms with the crimes of Communism. Every school child knows about the Holocaust, Apartheid, and American slavery, as they should. But Pol Pot's murder of a quarter of Cambodia's population has not dimmed academic enthusiasm for the Marxism his henchmen studied in Paris. Neither the Chinese Cultural Revolution nor the Great Purges seem to have cast a shadow on the leftists who apologized for them.

Perhaps the last words should go to Lee Kuan Yew, who wrote in his autobiography:

Although American intervention failed in Vietnam, it bought time for the rest of Southeast Asia. In 1965, when the US military moved massively into South Vietnam, Thailand, Malaysia and the Philippines faced internal threats from armed communist insurgents and the communist underground was still active in Singapore … America's action enabled non-communist Southeast Asia to put their own houses in order. By 1975 (when the Vietnam war ended) they were in better shape to stand up to the communists. Had there been no US—

and Australian—

intervention, the will of these countries to resist them would have melted and Southeast Asia would have most likely gone communist. The prosperous emerging market economies of Asean (Association of Southeast Asian Nations)—

that we know today—

were nurtured during the Vietnam War years.

And we have our national servicemen to thank for that.

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