Joanna Gash (Gilmore, Liberal Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

During the recess I had the good fortune to be invited to a luncheon celebration of the 60th anniversary of the War Widows Guild of Australia. Up until that time, whilst I knew many of the women who are members, I had no real appreciation of the organisation. I was mightily impressed by this stalwart band of women who have bonded as a result of the deaths of their husbands through war. Sitting and talking with them, I gained a sense of quiet dignity tempered with a resolve one only finds with survivors: they have done it tough and they have survived.

The movement really started with General Vasey, who was one of Australia’s finest and best-loved soldiers. His concern for his men and their dependants caused him to ask his wife to do all she could to help the wives and widows who had been left behind. Mrs Vasey had helped to establish the AIF Women’s Association and was therefore already heavily involved in work of this kind. After the death of her husband, she started to fight for the thousands of war widows who were living in near poverty on a pension which had remained unaltered, save for a total rise of three shillings, from 1916 to 1945. In 1945, Mrs Vasey formed the War Widows Guild in Victoria and, by 1947, the guild became an Australia-wide organisation and a recognised force in the fight for better conditions for war widows and their families.

Today the guild has some 13,000 members, 700 of which are aged 90 or over. They are patriotic Australians but, more than that, they are mothers, grandmothers and wives who have remained loyal to the memories of their departed husbands. The luncheon in Nowra was attended by members from all over the Shoalhaven area and was held at the picturesque Nowra Golf Club on the banks of the Shoalhaven River. The video they showed portrayed just how the years had changed the War Widows Guild. It was thought provoking and humorous and left me feeling a little ashamed that I was not aware of the good deeds done by this organisation. We have groups in Ulladulla, headed by Rona Finch; in Nowra, headed by Marjorie Bear; and in the Bay and Basin area with Anne Wells. Their focus is to work for the betterment of the mutual membership and to gain improved benefits for war widows, especially affordable housing. From the guild grew Vasey Housing, which later went its separate way in providing housing for war widows and later for single male veterans as well.

But, like every other fraternal organisation formed for a common purpose, the camaraderie that grew from the involvement and participation in the guild now bonds these ladies. Their motto is:

We all belong to each other. We all need each other. It is in serving each other and in sacrificing for our common good that we are finding our true life.

This pledge was extracted from an Empire Day message from His Majesty the late King George VI in 1949. Their badge is made of silver and was designed and introduced in 1959 by Andor Meszaros. It features a kookaburra, an industrious and cheerful bird who mates for life and is fearless and aggressive in the defence of its young and of the area of territory it regards as its own. The kookaburra goes for what it wants and fights for its family. ‘Isn’t that what we are doing?’ Mrs Vasey once asked the girls. The bird also has a unique call—not a song but a laugh, a chortle of rollicking mirth. It was a call to win the war widow back to laughter. I suppose that personifies the ladies of the guild. I am very proud to have made their acquaintance on Monday, 13 March. When they celebrate the 60th anniversary formally in June this year, my heart will be with them. I am proud to know them. (Time expired)