Sharryn Jackson (Hasluck, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I would like to commend the Rudd Labor government and the Minister for Veterans’ Affairs, the Hon. Allan Griffin, in delivering on our election commitment made in June last year to formally recognise and honour the Australian Ex-Prisoners of War Memorial in Ballarat, Victoria as a memorial of national significance. The government has acted by presenting the Military Memorials of National Significance Bill 2008 for debate in the parliament.

This long-overdue recognition demonstrates the government’s pledge to honour the bravery and sacrifice of more than 35,000 Australian POWs held during the Boer War, the Great War, World War II and the Korean War, and it gives further rise to the legacy these men and women have left behind. We as a nation stand forever in their debt and, if the bill becomes law, it will ensure that the POWs who returned home and those who died abroad in the service of this country will be forever remembered. The bill will also provide a stable, consistent and transparent vehicle for the future declaration of other deserving memorials.

In this context, I would like to make special mention of the Midland Peace Memorial in my electorate of Hasluck, which I consider eligible to be accorded status as a military memorial of national significance. The Midland Peace Memorial is located at the historic Midland Railway Workshops. It featured as the Western Australian government’s industrial workhorse for 90 years until it was sadly closed in 1994 by the then state Liberal government. The workshops and the thousands of employees who worked there played a vital role for Western Australia’s economic growth and they helped steer Australia’s war effort during both world wars.

In 1923, the workshop employees banded together to raise money for a memorial to honour the memory of their fellow workers who enlisted, fought and died in the Great War. Some 400 Midland Railway Workshops workers enlisted to fight in the First World War, and 70 died. Despite grudging assistance from their own employer, the workers raised £1,000, largely through raffles and picnics, to build the memorial. I think most members would agree that it was an extraordinary amount of money in 1923 for something such as this. Hundreds attended the unveiling ceremony in December 1925, including all of the dignitaries of the day. The names of the railway workers who died in World War II were later added to the bronze tablets at the base of the column.

The memorial is of an appropriate scale, design and standard. It is suitably dignified and symbolic and in keeping with its purpose and standing as an Australian war memorial. The statue itself comprises a bronze female figure wearing a laurel crown. I must say that there is much local conjecture over precisely who the model for the statue was. A senior Midland resident claims that the girl who modelled for Pietro Porcelli, the sculptor, was thought to have been a 17-year-old Midland resident named Mary Canlon. She was chosen, I am told, for her perfectly shaped arms. She left Midland in her early 20s. Recently Mrs Jean Wymack from the ACT, who was visiting Midland, claimed the model was her aunt Catherine Simmons, who was 16 at the time and was employed at the workshops as a clerk. In any event that is not the memorial’s only controversy. It is considered quite unusual as there is only one other memorial in this country that features a female statue.

Her extended right arm and hand demand silence, her left hand holds a palm leaf and her left foot treads on a sword. Her stance represents peace. The figure is mounted on a classical stone column on a stepped granite base. Bronze tablets inscribed with the names of fallen soldiers who were employed at the Midland Railway Workshops are affixed to the base.

The memorial commemorates the significant involvement throughout Australia’s wartime history and symbolises the strong camaraderie that characterised the workshops in its heyday. Today, the Peace Memorial flies the Australian flag high, and it remains the focal point in Midland for Anzac Day, Remembrance Day and other ceremonial and commemorative occasions. It is located on public land within the city of Swan, nestled back from Yelverton Drive at the Midland Railway Workshops, which are owned and administered by the Midland Redevelopment Authority.

The Midland Redevelopment Authority has refurbished the memorial and its surrounds and installed rose beds, lawns and floodlights. I ask the minister to carefully consider according the Midland Peace Memorial status as a military memorial of national significance. In doing so, it will preserve the proud past of the Midland Railway Workshops and it will ensure the memory and the gallantry of the workers who have served Australia in times of war, especially those who gave their lives in both world wars, is kept alive. And we want that memory and gallantry to be kept well and truly alive.