Craig Laundy (Reid, Liberal Party, Assistant Minister for Industry, Innovation and Science) Share this | Hansard source

I rise today to speak in support of this very important motion moved by the member opposite. I congratulate her on doing so. It is a year after the Centenary of Anzac, but the commemoration of Remembrance Day—and of all days related to battlefields around the world where Australians have served, fought and died—is, ultimately, extremely important. Remembrance Day harks back to the end of World War I and the signing of the Treaty of Versailles. I often think about the impact that World War I must have had on an infant Australia, with some 250,000 people dead out of a population of around five million at the time, if my memory serves me correctly from last year's Centenary of Anzac celebrations. Those numbers are indeed chilling.

I was one day taking a drive on the back road from Gundagai to Wagga, which passes through towns like Wantabadgery, Nangus and Oura on its way. I have long been a believer, when I pass World War I and II tributes and memorials, in stopping to have a look. You are talking about country which would have been so sparsely populated in 1914. The beauty of marrying a local is listening to her father's tales of those days—her family goes back seven generations in the area—and it turns out that a large proportion of the New South Wales light horse came from that part of New South Wales.

I will never forget stopping at Wantabadgery and looking at a particular war memorial. On the plaque were around 95 names of young men in their teenage years to early 20s that had died serving this country, fighting for this country for the freedoms we enjoy, in that period from 1914 to 1918. Just think for a minute about the impact that would have on a local community, a town like Wantabadgery, which today has in the vicinity of 400 people in it. I do not know what it had in 1914, but losing 95 people out of it would have not just decimated the local town that day but also impacted on that town for future generations to come. The succession plans of local farming families were thrown out of whack, because those young men would have taken up the family farm and moved forward, would have married, would have had children and would have invested back in their families in that local community. All of that was decimated.

So, yes, the numbers are staggering, but, when you drill down to the impact it had on Australia in 1914, you are talking about five per cent of the population. If you extrapolate those numbers to today, with some 23 to 24 million people here, you are talking about 1 to 1½ million people in comparison. The numbers, when you move them forward some 101 years, are staggering.

In today's modern society, we take warfare as being so mechanical, happening at the end of bombs dropped from planes and tanks and what have you. In those days it was labour intensive and it was deadly. It was frontline trench warfare. It was Gallipoli at the start and the Western Front from there. It has moved all the way around, unfortunately and sadly, to other theatres of war in the last 101 years.

But I agree with my friend the member for Kingston, Amanda Rishworth, when she said that this is an important time for politicians in their local community. I know that the Concord Repatriation General Hospital has its Remembrance Day ceremony later in the week. We still call it 'the Repat', although it was handed over to the state government in the early nineties. It is always a great time for the community to come together and for us as members of parliament to show our support, not only for the men and women in today's armed forces, whether they are here or serving abroad, but also for those who in the last 101 years have been prepared to place their lives on the line for the freedoms we enjoy in this country, of which there is no greater example than we as politicians getting to exercise democratic freedom in this magnificent place. Congratulations, Amanda.

See this speech in context