Tony Abbott (Warringah, Liberal Party) Share this | Hansard source

I rise today to acknowledge the opening by our Prime Minister and the French Prime Minister on 24 April of the Sir John Monash Centre at Villers-Bretonneux. This was announced in April 2014 by the Abbott government, and the winning design was announced in April 2015, again by the Abbott government, and I'm delighted that this has now come to fruition.

Much of the past four years has been spent remembering the service and sacrifice of our forebears a century ago. The Great War was convulsive for our country, just as it was for the wider world. From a population of less than five million, some 400,000 Australians volunteered, 330,000 Australians served overseas, 155,000 were wounded and 60,000 never came home. Gallipoli, understandably enough, has dominated our imagination, but it was the Western Front where the great Australian effort was made: almost 300,000 Australians served and almost 46,000 died. Nowhere on earth is more richly sown with Australian sacrifice as our Great War historian Charles Bean has said.

In the last six months of the war—we don't normally remember this—it was the Australian Army, the first Australian Imperial Force serving together for the first time under the leadership of General Sir John Monash which turned the tide of war and changed the course of history. The Battle of Amiens, which was planned by Monash and largely fought by Australians, was the black day of the German army and it set up the victories to come. Over the last six months, Australian forces—less than 10 per cent of the total British army—secured more than 20 per cent of the gains in that decisive period.

So it's good that Villers-Bretonneux will now no longer simply be a place of pilgrimage but it will be a place of learning, a place of understanding and a place of inspiration to generations of Australians yet to come, to do great things in a good cause. We say every Anzac Day, 'Lest we forget.' Thanks to this Monash centre, we will remember.

It's important to acknowledge the fine work of the French government, which managed to speed the approvals necessary to get this project done in record time. Michael Ronaldson, the Minister for Veterans' Affairs who drove it, and Paul Kelly and Patrick Walters, the distinguished journalists from The Australian, who first reminded us we that we lacked in France an Australian museum like the British one near Pozieres and the Canadian one at Vimy Ridge. Most of all, we should remember John Monash and the Australian soldiers whose imperishable story will henceforth be much better known.

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