Andrew Hastie (Canning, Liberal Party) Share this | Hansard source

I support and commend the member for Goldstein for moving this motion on Remembrance Day. It is very important that we remember those who have given their lives in the service of our country. In Australia we have remembrance everywhere. We have memorials, we have plaques; most small country towns have a memorial at the heart of their township which reminds us of the sacrifice that many have made.

I was struck by the amount of sacrifice this country made in World War I when I first visited the Western Front in 2004 with a group of Australian Defence Force Academy cadets. I was one of those cadets at the time. We visited Passchendaele, the Somme and Villers-Bretonneux—the mayor there popped champagne for us, very generously. We got to go to the school and Moquet Farm. It was the first time it had really hit me how much blood and treasure this country committed in World War I. There were 60,000 war dead.

Prime Minister Billy Hughes, at the Paris Peace Conference, stood up to President Woodrow Wilson and demanded heavy reparations from Germany—only to be denied by the President of the United States. He then replied: 'I speak for 60,000 war dead. Who do you speak for?' Well he might have said those words, because it is not until you get over there that you really appreciate how significant that sacrifice was.

Many young men who might have become parliamentarians, who might have returned to Australia and become doctors or teachers or factory workers, fathers, husbands—all those things that we look forward to in life—were denied these at a very young age. I think of all the women, some of the nurses who perished and the many nurses who served for four years treating our wounded. They are often overlooked, so it was greatly satisfying a couple of weeks ago to remember the nurses of Bangka Island who gave their lives 75 years ago. They were massacred—21 of them—by Japanese soldiers in a brutal war crime.

Then I think of those who survived the war, those who were crippled—psychologically, emotionally, mentally—with wounds that never heal. I think of my own grandfather in World War II who was shot on 31 March 1945 and kept alive only by a US medic aboard the plane he was flying and then a US surgeon on Morotai Island. He is someone who was scarred by that moment. He would never admit it and he never really talked about it, but I am sure he suffered from what we would call PTSD today.

At home in Canning we have remembrance all throughout my electorate. The township of Byford has a wonderful war memorial, and I was part of the ceremony there on Anzac Day last year. There is Pinjarra in central Canning. At Mandurah we have a beautiful war memorial overlooking the water. And then there are little towns like Coolup with only a couple of hundred people. Coolup is a town that has given much in the service of this country.

I think, particularly, of two constituents of mine, Mr and Mrs Bernie and Myrna McDonald, whose son gave his life on 30 August 2012: Lance Corporal Mervyn John McDonald of the 2nd Commando Regiment. Every time I see them I am reminded of that sacrifice. Lest we forget.

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