Mark Dreyfus (Isaacs, Australian Labor Party, Shadow Attorney General) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I rise to speak in support of the Prime Minister's motion. On Anzac Day this year we commemorated a particularly significant anniversary. On 25 April 100 years ago two divisions of the Australia and New Zealand Army Corps landed at a small cove on the Gallipoli Peninsula, now named Anzac Cove in their memory. In the campaign that followed those landings, we would suffer some 26,111 Australian casualties, including 8,141 deaths. The men who survived the Dardanelles campaign would go on to the even greater horrors of the Western Front.

It is sometimes said that this nation was born at Gallipoli. We must remember, though, that at the outbreak of war in 1914 Australia already had its own unique identity. Fourteen years before the landings at Anzac Cove, six British colonies had freely voted to create a nation. It is not often that a nation-state is formed in an exercise of democracy rather than violence. Though it was only just over 100 years since Europeans had occupied Australia—to build a penal colony, no less—by the turn of the 20th century Australia was thriving.

Our capitals bustled with activity. Sydney was a booming city of well over 600,000, with its own culture of business and beaches. Melbourne had, by the latter part of the 19th century, become the richest city in the world, a fact still reflected in our architecture. When the Commonwealth parliament met for its first sitting in 1901 it was in the Royal Exhibition Building in Melbourne which had 20 years before hosted the Melbourne International Exhibition, showcasing Australia to the world. Australia had its own culture. In 1915 Melbourne, Carlton had just defeated South Melbourne the year before for their fourth premiership in our very own sporting innovation—Australian Rules. We had our own arts. Banjo Patterson's iconic The Man from Snowy River was already 25 years old.

And, of course, while Australia might have been a young nation-state when it was caught up in the outbreak of the Great War in 1914, this continent was and is home to the world's oldest continuing civilisation. Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander peoples had lived on this land for many thousands of years. They, too, would be caught up in the maelstrom of global war. Hundreds of Indigenous Australians served in the Great War, and many more would serve in the conflicts to follow.

We did not need to send tens of thousands of young men to the killing fields of Europe to prove ourselves or to forge a national identity. We were not born at Gallipoli. No, on the Dardanelles—and, later, on the Western Front—the young Australian nation suffered a grievous loss. It is a loss that profoundly scarred our nation, a loss that resonated through the decades that followed and a loss that we still mourn now, every year, on Anzac Day.

It is hard now to imagine the scale of that loss. Australia was at that time a nation of just five million, yet we sent 416,809 men to war—around 40 per cent of all Australian men of fighting age—and 60,000 were killed and 156,000 wounded, gassed or taken prisoner. The dreadful loss of Australian men and boys—for very many were only teenagers—is to be remembered for what it was: the wholesale killing of Australians in their prime.

Australia, blessed as it is to be an island nation and far from the cultural and ethnic nationalism that plagued Europe throughout much of the 20th century, could have left the killing fields to the Europeans. But, as war approached, soon to be Labor Prime Minister Andrew Fisher declared, 'Australians will stand behind the mother country to help and defend her to our last man and our last shilling.' We do not now understand this loyalty to the Empire, a sense of Britishness which saw Australia so readily enter a British war. It would be a mistake to apply a modern Australian world view to events a century ago. Those were different times. As LP Hartley wrote, 'The past is a foreign country: they do things differently there.'

Indeed we should remember that at that time, as a matter of law as well as practice, Australia did not have its own independent foreign policy. Australia did not itself declare war in 1914 and we could not have done so. Not until the enactment here in 1942 of the Statute of Westminster did Australia have the constitutional power to declare war independently of Britain. In 1914 when Britain declared war she did so on behalf of the Empire. Even mindful of the times, the loss of life we suffered in the Great War was completely senseless and our entry into a war on the other side of the world was a great folly. The mindless and bloody Gallipoli campaign we commemorate on Anzac Day, the first major combat operation of the war in which Australian forces took part, illustrated that folly.

On the Dardanelles, Australians fought on a hostile battlefield nearly 10,000 miles from Melbourne. After eight months of grinding stalemate, allied forces withdrew. It was a great strategic failure. The greatest success of the campaign was a cunning evacuation. Nonetheless, even in that doomed campaign the Anzac forces distinguished themselves fighting ferociously and bravely against impossible odds.

On 25 April this year I joined thousands of residents of my community at Anzac Day services in my electorate of Isaacs. As with every year I was touched by the diversity and number of attendees. Australians of all backgrounds and ages turned up in droves on a cold wet day to remember and pay tribute. A constituent of mine, Mrs Margaret Diggerson of Chelsea, was successful in obtaining an Anzac Centenary grant to write a book about the men of Chelsea and Carrum who fought and died in the Great War. Titled The FallenMargaret's book examines the lives of 59 men tragically cut short. They left the townships of Chelsea and Carrum for the Great War and never returned.

I would like to read from the entry for Private Henry Deering Mossenton, who fought for the 8th Battalion and later for the 59th Battalion. Private Mossenton was a farm labourer at Carrum, which 100 years ago was a small farming community outside Melbourne, not the densely settled suburb it is today. On 27 September 1915 Private Mossenton wrote to his sister Maud about his experience in the Gallipoli campaign:

Dear Maud,

Just a few lines to say I have been at the front and been under fire at last. It seems a long while since I left home. We were at a place called ANZAC but were only for about two weeks and were shifted back to Lemnos again. I was not in the trenches but was working a good bit on the beach. Two of our chaps got wounded there with shrapnel, one pretty badly poor chap. My mate and I had a narrow escape.

In the same letter Private Mossenton mentions Anzac Cove. He wrote:

It is wonderful when you have a look at the place where our boys landed, for it is just a mass of hills. When you get out of the boat there is only about 20 yards of a sandy beach and then the cliffs start. How our chaps got to the top and took them, well I don't know, for it has been a wonderful piece of work. No wonder they praised our chaps up. I think when I look around all the boys who landed there they ought to get the V.C.

Private Mossenton was evacuated from Gallipoli on 7 January 1916 and went on to fight on the Western Front, where he was reported missing, presumed killed in action, on 19 July 1916 at Fromelles. Henry Mossenton is remembered on honour boards at Chelsea Council, Carrum Fire Brigade, Carrum RSL and the Carrum War Memorial. On reading Private Mossenton's letter to his sister I was struck by his line 'all the boys who landed there ought to get the VC'. I am sure that many soldiers who fought in Gallipoli or on the Western Front felt the same. I think the line really encapsulates the genuine camaraderie and selflessness of the Australian character—then as now.

As a farm labourer in what was then rural Victoria Henry Mossenton would no doubt have little knowledge of the destruction threatening to take over Europe. He would have signed up, along with most of his mates, totally unprepared for the inhumanity and butchery of the Dardanelles and the Western Front campaigns. What Henry Mossenton did understand was the importance of community and of recognising his mates and acknowledging their work.

The Great War was a conflict of little value. It was a war of necessity for allied powers in Europe and a war of imperial loyalty for Australia. It was a war where tens of thousands of young Australian men signed up with little idea of what they were getting themselves into. Australia has entered many wars since, though none as blindly. The Great War was not, as some of the men who suffered through it might have hoped, the war to end all wars, but it was certainly the last war in which Australians would enter with anything less than dread.

I said earlier that Australia was at the outbreak of war in 1914 already a young nation with its own character and cultural identity, but that identity shone through in our wartime experience. Ours is an egalitarian nation. We have no time here for aristocracies and stuffy class distinctions. Australians have a great sense of camaraderie, a loyalty to the collective and a keenness to pull together in the face of adversity.

The Anzac legend has become such a touchstone of our national folklore, not because of the death and destruction at Gallipoli and on the Western Front—a most pointless and despicable waste of youth—but because those Australians who fought and died at war encapsulated what was already in Australia's soul: a generosity, honesty and decency that can only come from the roots of a community formed by a history like Australia's. The diggers at Anzac Cove distinguished themselves above all through their loyalty to their mates, which, despite the passing of a century, Australians today still relate to.

It is important that we commemorate the sacrifice of our diggers but it is just as important to learn the lessons of war and to remember the horrors of conflict. It is my hope that today's Australians never have to live through another world war or the tragedy of losing a generation in its prime. This is not the occasion to glorify violence but the occasion to remember the mindlessness of war and the grievous damage it can inflict on an entire nation. Lest we forget.

Kate Ellis (Adelaide, Australian Labor Party, Shadow Minister for Education) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

The story of Gallipoli will always have a special place in the hearts of Australians—the tragedy, the tales of courage and mateship, the true horrors of war. We know that, through all of this, the Anzac spirit is woven into our history, embedded into our identity and will never be forgotten in our future. This year, the Anzac legacy has an additional point of significance—100 years since the landing at Gallipoli; 100 years since Australian and New Zealand soldiers landed on the shores of Turkey; 100 years since 8,141 Australians fell on that soil, their youth stolen in battle.

While Australia was at that point just 15 years old, from the devastation of our losses arose a distinct unity in Australians to never forget the sacrifice our soldiers made, and 100 years later I am proud to say that the spirit of the Anzac is stronger than ever. I imagine it would have seemed unbelievable back then that a century after those horrific events we would be standing in the national parliament marking them, but we can say that we have truly honoured the phrase 'lest we forget', and we are showing that through this motion in the parliament today. It is hard to imagine what our soldiers faced when they landed at Anzac Cove on the morning of 25 April 1915. In front of them lay a brutal battle, but behind them was the courage to fight for their country. They made the ultimate sacrifice, and it is now our duty to keep their spirit alive, both those who did not return and those who came home bearing the scars of conflict.

Each year I am consistently humbled by the way Australians pay tribute to our Anzacs. Nearly 417,000 men fought in World War I, including almost 35,000 men from South Australia. One of these young men from my electorate of Adelaide was Captain Harold Edwin Salisbury Armitage. Captain Armitage was 20 when war broke out. At the time, he was studying an arts degree at the University of Adelaide. Like everyone who fought in the war, his life and livelihood were put on hold to serve Australia. Captain Armitage enlisted on 24 March 1915 as a private, but quickly received a commission as a second lieutenant and was assigned to the 10th Infantry Battalion. He departed Australia on 20 April 1915. It is noted that it was unusual that he was allowed to embark overseas as military regulations at the time deemed that no officer under the age of 23 years could be taken into active service, but, like so many of his comrades, age was not a barrier and the war awaited him. Armitage arrived on the Gallipoli Peninsula on 2 June, and only two months later he was promoted to the rank of lieutenant—a testament to the respect he commanded and his ability to lead. Unlike so many others, Gallipoli was not the last sight that Armitage would see. He was transferred to a new battalion where he was promoted to captain and given command of his own company. By mid-2016 the battalion was located in Northern France, but the horror of war did not subside. His first action as part of the battalion was in the battle at Mouquet Farm, where, after five weeks of fighting, Australia had suffered 23,000 casualties—its worst ever total in five weeks. The battalion was rested, but the war continued. In February 1917, Captain Armitage was killed during an attack.

From humble beginnings in the suburb of Norwood, Captain Armitage became a respected and distinguished leader and friend to his comrades. He is one of the more than 5,500 South Australians killed in World War I. Sometimes it is hard to think of the best tribute when faced with such momentous loss. Nothing can bring back the sons, brothers, husbands, fathers, wives, sisters and daughters lost in the war. But, as members of parliament, we are privileged to see the best in our local communities right around Australia who play such a vital role in bringing the Anzac spirit to life, renewing and refreshing the memory of those who gave so much to our country.

In my electorate of Adelaide, which I am so proud to represent in this place, I was overwhelmed with the variety of ways which our local community marked 100 years of Australian service. There were amazing tributes showcasing that the spirit of mateship is as vibrant as ever. I would particularly like to congratulate the 15 schools and organisations in the electorate which received Centenary of Anzac grants to commemorate the anniversary. From the City of Prospect's A City At War exhibition, showing a snapshot of the city during World War I, to Gilles Street Primary School creating a history trail of sites in the city of Adelaide, these projects will mould the way that our electorate understands and marks Anzac Day into the future. Ultimately, the best tribute comes in the form of our children, in our future generations nourishing and enlivening what the spirit of Anzac means to modern Australia. As parliamentarians, we have an opportunity to ensure that our children are educated in Australia's history and how these events have shaped Australia into what it is today. As shadow minister for education, this is a responsibility I take seriously. I want to see that every student has an understanding of these important events going forward.

Earlier I spoke of Captain Armitage, who in a letter home from Gallipoli wrote that he had seen many sights. He wrote:

... pleasing, horrible, awe inspiring, hellish, but as far as I can say, the effect has only been to broaden my experience, [and to] make me a little more serious.

I think that this resonates with the impact of this war on Australia in general. It changed us, it devastated us, but through the pain we saw stories of courage, stories of mateship and stories of pride. On the 100th anniversary of Gallipoli, I am proud to say to those who fought so bravely, who supported so selflessly, and who lost so much: the light of your memory has not dimmed, and will not dim, in the lives of Australians. We continue to remember. We continue to reflect on the importance of this campaign and we continue to ensure that the role in forging a modern Australia will never, ever be forgotten.

Mr Tony Burke (Watson, Australian Labor Party, Shadow Minister for Finance) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

Other speakers have gone into some detail about the Gallipoli conflict itself. But I would like to reflect on the way that Australia remembered the conflict, because that in itself I believe, has been what has more than anything shaped the national character.

Prior to Gallipoli, the general pattern around the world had been that war memorials, when built, would honour the great generals; they would commemorate those leaders in battle. It is also the case today, in the battles where we do honour each and every member of our armed services, that when we lose somebody we have a commemoration here in the parliament. We then go on to a particular form of military honour when the plane returns home. And then, when the military funeral takes place, the most senior people from government attend.

Gallipoli occurred at a time when even had we wanted to return the remains of each of our soldiers the sheer scale of the carnage made it impossible. For family members, there was nowhere to leave flowers. For family members, in a world where travel was nearly impossible, there was no prospect of ever being able to go to visit the gravesite—and, if it were visited, it was extraordinary difficult to know which gravesite was the right one. It was out of this is that the tradition of suburban war memorials completely took off.

We need to remember that the previous conflict, the Boer War, resulted in a total of 109 war memorials around Australia, but at the end of the First World War there were 1,455. These provided the places where people could leave flowers. These provided the places where family members could stop and reflect, and hope and pray.

But these were also the places where Australia decided that we would not simply remember the generals; we would not simply remember the politicians or the national leaders who sent people into battle. We would remember each and every life. For each and every one of those individuals, the memory was very much of the soldier citizen—of the digger—of the ordinary Australian, who was not necessarily somebody who had chosen to devote their entire life to the armed forces but was somebody who had been willing to risk their entire life for their nation and for everything at that point in time that they believed their nation stood for, both within our own national borders and around the globe.

When we talk about the national character—the Gallipoli spirit and spirit of mateship—it is true that that was there on the field. But what must also be remembered is that the way we remembered Gallipoli changed our national character. Very early on ceremonies began around Australia, and very early on monuments started to be built. And at that point Australia started to recognise a number of things. In the first instance, Australia decided that the egalitarian nature of our society would extend to the egalitarian nature of our memory, and that every single person whose life had been lost would be remembered with the same authority and dignity. We also made a decision at that point that there would be a place for that memory wherever Australians lived. You cannot find a town—and often you do not have to look for anything that you could seriously call a town—where you are not able to find a local war memorial. Almost without exception, those war memorials carry the words: lest we forget. It was said at the time with a level of hope—hope that people believed we would in fact never forget those who had risked and given their lives. But that hope could never be proven until we got to the point where no-one who had fought there was left among us.

In remembering the centenary of the Anzac we do not simply remember the battle. We do not simply remember the way the nation changed and the way we decided to commemorate the battle and the individuals. A century later we also proved one further thing and that is that when we hoped with the words 'lest we forget' that their sacrifice and their memory would forever be part of the national character, we were right.

Kelvin Thomson (Wills, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

On Anzac Day this year I was in Royal Melbourne Hospital, having undergone a double bypass following a heart attack, and I was horrified to be missing out on the Anzac centenary. I was, however, very glad to be in Melbourne, and in Australia, where we have outstanding cardiac surgeons, like Professor James Tatoulis, and specialists, like Dr Rod Warren, who did an outstanding job of looking after me.

On Anzac Day 2012 it was a very different story. I was at Gallipoli. It was quite something: cold, though not as cold as I had been warned to expect; at times silent, eerie, calm, quiet, tranquil—a far cry from the noise and chaos of 97 years earlier. The place has vegetation that is a bit like inland Australia, with those prickly, spiky acacias and needlewoods that we have. But its topography is different. Where our coastal dunes are gentle, Gallipoli has steep, abrupt climbs. Soldiers making the trek up had bloodied hands from grabbing the spiky vegetation as they climbed the slopes. But if they abandoned the vegetation for the open areas they were easy targets for the Turkish marksmen firing from the tops of the hills.

Winston Churchill had resolved on a land attack on the Ottoman Empire after his naval forces were rebuffed and unable to penetrate the Dardanelles. According to the Allies' plan, British and French divisions were sent to the south of the Gallipoli Peninsula and simultaneously the Anzac corps would land to the north. As is well known, the Turkish troops succeeded in defending the Gallipoli Peninsula and the Dardanelles. The loss of life was unspeakable. By the time the Gallipoli campaign ended, more than 44,000 Allied soldiers had died. This included 8,500 Australians and 2,700 New Zealanders—one in four men who landed on the peninsula died there. The Turkish losses were even greater—almost 87,000 Turks died during the conflict. If Gallipoli was a defining moment for the Australian nation, it was an even more defining moment for the Turkish nation.

I remember very vividly the warmth of the welcome we received from our Turkish hosts. They have done a remarkable thing by naming the landing place Anzac Cove, but it is consistent with the great words of reconciliation from the Turkish commander and leader Mustafa Kemal Ataturk, uttered after the war, and consistent with the battlefield stories of soldiers fighting by day and exchanging food and cigarettes by night, and returning wounded enemy soldiers to the other side—stories of great courage and mutual respect.

The Australian parliamentary delegation which I was a member of received a tour of the battlefield sites two days before Anzac Day. On 24 April we attended the Turkish international service and many other services besides. We attended the Turkish centre which tells the Gallipoli story, which is both high-tech and poignant. We visited cemeteries. I am sure the House knows that war is not an orderly business, so you end up with a lot of unmarked graves. At the French memorial at Morto Bay, a lot of the headstones did not say much more than 'Mort pour la France': Died for France. Indeed, but dead all the same.

I saw many unmarked headstones 'Mort pour la France'. I was overcome by the senselessness of it all, the waste of so many young lives. And I know that the survivors of World War I from Australia and other countries did not come away enthusing about war as noble and wonderful, as romantic adventure. Most came away thinking it evil and terrible—the stench of death, of decaying human flesh, hard to erase from their nostrils. Many could not bear to talk about it. And those who did, did so as much as anything because of their instinctive understanding that people who do not learn from their history are condemned to repeat it.

I have been particularly impressed to see the interest of younger generations in keeping the Anzac spirit prominent in my electorate of Wills and right around Australia. Young people have played a key role in Wills Centenary of Anzac events. I would also like to acknowledge Wills veterans, like Wal Appleby, who organised an Anzac Day morning service and breakfast at the St Alban's Anglican Church in West Coburg. He did that for many years. During the Second World War, Wal had been a confidential personal assistant to the founder of Legacy in 3rd Division headquarters. He was awarded the British Empire Medal. At the age of 94, Wal visited Papua New Guinea to reminisce and visit some of the places he had seen in active service in the 1940s. He recognised the importance to ex-service men and women of the younger generations' interest in maintaining the traditions of Anzac Day. It is great that young people acknowledge what was done during the war, and their desire to continue this tradition is a most generous and welcome gesture. I hope and believe that the St Alban's Anglican Church will be able to continue this tradition into the indefinite future.

My electorate of Wills made a profound contribution to the First World War. In Brunswick over 3,000 men and women enlisted in the AIF and Navy to serve. A number won prestigious military honours, including Lieutenant William Symons of the famous 7th Battalion, who won the Victoria Cross at Gallipoli. Over 500 Brunswick locals are buried far from Australia's shores. The loss of so many locals had a huge impact on the community. Their names are recorded in bronze in the Soldier's Memorial Hall at the Brunswick Town Hall. Of the Coburg enlistments, many won battlefield honours, including the local parish priest, Father William Devine, who won the Military Cross and the French Croix de Guerre for bravery.

Of those who returned to Brunswick and Coburg, many were severely wounded, broken and traumatised by their war experiences. They made terrible sacrifices and many never recovered. After the First World War memorials, thousands of them rose up around Australia in a tidal wave of unparalleled public tribute. Here Australia moved away from the notion of the classical hero. It is not the great individual who we remember. Australia remembers the men, and above all their character, not the individuals. There was no statue to any individual soldier before 1936, when Simpson was unveiled in Melbourne. Even then, the work is titled The Man with the Donkey, and what is honoured is not so much warrior prowess but rather selfless service.

Deputy Speaker, our generation has a responsibility and a duty to remember those who served in that first worldwide conflict of the 20th century that changed the face of Europe. Our Australia and the world that existed in 1913 was no more when the fighting ceased in 1918. It was a great honour and privilege to commemorate Gallipoli at Gallipoli. I have also had the honour on quite a few occasions to represent my parliamentary leader at the shrine on Anzac Day, at the dawn service or at the Anzac Day parade. I know that the important thing is not really where we commemorate Gallipoli and Anzac Day but that we do it. Whether it is at Gallipoli or at the shrine or here in parliament or in Coburg at the Coburg West Anglican Church, the thing is that we do it, that we do not forget. For that, we owe a debt of gratitude not just to the Anzacs, who helped forge the identity and character of a young nation, but to people like Wal Appleby and the other men and women of St Alban's, who year in, year out, have done their bit to make sure that we do not forget.

When we gather every year to retell the Anzac story and the crowds who gathered to hear it get larger rather than smaller, I think it is because this story defines us as Australians. It tells us who we are and where we have come from, and each generation needs to hear it and to retell it. I think there is a second reason also. It is that each generation has its own battles to fight, its own challenges to confront, and, in facing those challenges, courage and character are just as important as they were at Gallipoli. In the face of modern threats like terrorism, it is very easy for people to be passive, to throw their hands up in the air and say: 'What can I achieve? The challenges are so massive and I am but one person.' But this was precisely the situation facing the Anzacs at Gallipoli. I believe the courage and character they showed back then is not some museum piece to be taken down, dusted off and admired once a year and then put back on the shelf. It should inspire us to fight the battles of our own time. The Anzac legend endures because we have need of it today and because our children will have need of it tomorrow.

Andrew Leigh (Fraser, Australian Labor Party, Shadow Assistant Treasurer) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

Leon Gellert, aged 23, signed up to fight in the Australian Imperial Force 18 days after the outbreak of the war. He did so, as he put it, dancing and singing. Like so many other young Australians, Gellert reacted to the idea of war with a mix of naivety, confusion and courage. He was inspired by the romance of collective purpose and the adrenalin of combat. And, even after experiencing the chaos of the battlefield, traces of that enthusiasm persisted.

Gellert translated his experience into poems that some have celebrated as the best English language poetry of World War I. Here is his Before Action:

We always had to do our work at night.

I wondered why we had to be so sly.

I wondered why we couldn't have our fight

Under the open sky.

I wondered why I always felt so cold.

I wondered why the orders seemed so slow,

So slow to come, so whisperingly told,

So whisperingly low.

I wondered if my packing-straps were tight,

And wondered why I wondered……Sound went wild………

and order came…… I ran into the night,

wondering why I smiled.

It is plain here that the experience of war made Gellert curious to himself. He could record his thoughts and sensations but not entirely understand them or understand even what it meant to be a man who was smiling in the midst of the chaos of battle.

That experience of confusion in the heat of battle is one which is common in stories of warfare. As Captain George Mitchell of the 10th Battalion recorded in his diary:

My breath came deep. I tried to analyse my feelings, but could not. I think that every emotion was mixed—exultation predominating. We had come from the new world for conquest of the old … The price of failure we knew to be annihilation, victory meant life. But even so whispered jests passed around.

Captain Mitchell shared Gellert's puzzlement at the odd mix of paradoxical inclinations ratcheted up under the conditions of conflict.

Gellert was eventually evacuated from the theatre of war, after a shrapnel wound led to septicaemia and dysentery. He later revisited the field of battle, at this time an abandoned scene of an epic struggle—a veritable graveyard. He writes:

The guns were silent, and the silent hills

had bowed their grasses to a gentle breeze

I gazed upon the vales and on the rills,

And whispered, "What of these?" and "What of these?"

These long forgotten dead with sunken graves,

Some crossless, with unwritten memories

Their only mourners are the moaning waves,

Their only minstrels are the singing trees

And thus I mused and sorrowed wistfully

And he speaks of the great battalions who sleep by the shore. This mourning for the dead men opens up to include the entire natural landscape. There is a romance that lingers, and there is a place for that. But, as the journalist Charles Bean saw, there is a need to remember the individual soldiers in their particularity. As military historian Jay Winter has observed:

States do not remember; individuals do, in association with other people. If the term "collective memory" has any meaning at all, it is the process through which different collectives, from groups of two to groups in their thousands, engage in acts of rememberance together.

On the 100th anniversary of the landings of Gallipoli, we are remembering those who have fallen silent—a generation none of whom are with us today. But we remember through the great institution of the War Memorial. It was set in train in 1918 when Charles Bean recognised a need to conserve and curate the wartime experiences of our troops.

Bean's account of the Gallipoli landing was delayed by official approvals. Reports of the English war correspondent Ellis Ashmead-Bartlett became the defining account of the landing. He was not present for the landing, but his account has had a major effect on the myth making around Gallipoli and was the focus of many re-enactments which became the footage that featured in newsreel reports of the landings. In Ashmead-Bartlett's accounts, we see the happy young warriors, exhilarated because they had tested themselves and not been found wanting:

No finer feat has happened in this war than this sudden landing in the dark, and the storming of the heights, and, above all, the holding on while the reinforcements were landing.

He speaks about them as 'raw colonial troops'.

Bean, by contrast, would not allow himself this overstated rhetoric. He felt the need of telling things straight. He fought the desire to embellish, much to his credit. But even Bean did not think his readers would tolerate an entirely frank account of soldiers under fire. He wrote privately:

The success of an army like ours chiefly depends on what proportion of these strong independent-minded men there is in it. And in the Australian force the proportion is unquestionably undoubtedly high—may account to 50 per cent or more. I have seen them going up against a rain of fire and the weaker ones retiring through them at the very same time—the two streams going in opposite directions and not taking the faintest notice of one another.

By Bean's calculations, if one in two of your troops were sufficiently resolute to advance under fire, you had the markings of an unusually successful army. He could see that a proper report of war would register human frailty and heroism in equal parts. This is, of course, reflected in the way in which we now look back upon World War I, where we see the errors of Winston Churchill in the landing, the success of Kemal Ataturk in anticipating the landing point, the great enduring sadness that echoes down the ages and the knowledge now that the terms of the 1918 armistice were largely available two years earlier, in 1916.

As we mourn the men who were lost due to the mistakes that were made, we remember those individuals through the War Memorial, inspired by Charles Bean. As he wrote in 1918:

… on some hill-top – still, beautiful, gleaming white and silent, a building of three parts, a centre and two wings. The centre will hold the great national relics of the A.I.F. One wing will be a gallery – holding the pictures that our artists painted and drew actually on the scene and amongst the events themselves. The other wing will be a library to contain the written official records of every unit.

Bean had hopes from the beginning that the memorial would incorporate a roll of honour, listing all of the Australians who died in war. The list was to have been arranged by town of origin so that visitors to the memorial—which is the No. 1 place for visitors to Canberra—could easily find the names of the dead from their own town. But the scale of the casualties and the cost constraints imposed on the building defeated those plans.

Bean urged that the memorial not refer to 'trophies'; he preferred the term 'relics'. He urged that the captions and text should not use derogatory terms; it should refer to 'Germans' not 'Huns' and to 'Turks' instead of 'Abduls'. The avoidance of sloganeering and stereotyping ensures that, in the words of Professor Winter: 'States do not remember; individuals do, in association with other people.'

In Canberra, we remember Michael Scannell, who attended Gungahleen School in Lyneham. He landed in Gallipoli in May 1915 and served there until September when he was admitted to hospital with dysentery and diarrhoea. We remember Charles Lee, who was born in Canberra. He enlisted in Pound Hill, Queanbeyan, previously in Weetangera. He served in Gallipoli with the 7th Light Horse Regiment from May 1915 until he contracted appendicitis. We remember Ernest Murray, who enlisted in Canberra and who received a bar to the military medal for actions on 30 October 1917 when he set about clearing comrades of his who had been wounded by the bursting of a shell. We remember Standish O'Grady, who attended St John's in Canberra and served at the 18th Battalion, which landed in Gallipoli on 19 August 1915. He was killed while charging up Hill 60 on 22 August, just three days after landing.

We remember of course, too, those extraordinary words of Kemal Ataturk:

Those heroes that shed their blood and lost their lives … You are now lying in the soil of a friendly country. Therefore rest in peace. There is no difference between the Johnnies and the Mehmets to us where they lie side by side here in this country of ours … You, the mothers who sent their sons from faraway countries, wipe away your tears; your sons are now lying in our bosom and are in peace.

Clare O'Neil (Hotham, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I am so grateful for this opportunity to speak about the 100th anniversary of landings in Gallipoli. It is, in fact, one of the real privileges in my two years in this House to be able to make such a contribution. I say that because I very genuinely believe that Anzac, and the story of Anzac, matters, and that Gallipoli very much matters. I will speak about some of the reasons why I really believe that.

I also believe that it is very important that, when we talk about war, we do not gloss over the horrors and the realities of the experience of being in a war. As members of parliament, in particular, I think it is important for us to really reflect on the realities of this experience because we, in this chamber, hold the power to send our young men and women off to war. In thinking about making some remarks today, I have been reflecting about what it must have been like for the young men. There are some accounts that I want to share with the House. They are diary entries from soldiers who were there at the Gallipoli landing. The first entry is from an anonymous soldier. He said:

Arrived with the rest of the fleet. It was pitch black … everyone is in a state of eager excitement. Transport boats are lowered, all men are lined up on deck and the orders issued … At 3:10am countless numbers of small craft push off shore … the whole side of the mountain seems to be sending forth tongues of flame and bullets rain upon us—seven in our boat are killed and God knows how many in the others. Fifty yards from sand and to wade ashore with the feeling that you are one of the first to put foot on Turkish soil … silent forms lay scattered on the beach everywhere …

In reading through the accounts of these young men—and they are mostly men—one of the great tragedies is how different the sense of expectation about landing at Gallipoli, which they had been led to believe, would be from what actually happened. Another young soldier, Athol Burrett, says:

Imagine our surprise when instead of finding open trenches we saw only holes in the ground at intervals of 10 yards or so … a few men managed to get down the holes into the trench. Many of us just rushed over the front line and got into the rear trenches right among the Turks. Then started the most gruesome, bloody, and fierce hand-to-hand fighting of the whole war.

For foreigners who come to Australia and hear us talk about Anzac, I think it is often a source of real confusion to them—that we could, with all of the absolute horrors that were occurring on the shore in Turkey, celebrate this as a national event and as a foundation moment for our country. But when you read on further and look more into other accounts, the way that the young people at Gallipoli responded to what must have been the most shocking adversity that any of us in this House could imagine is something so extraordinary to behold.

I will read now a letter from Private Roy Denning. He says:

In the early hours of the morning of the 26th April 1915 I heard the officers going along amongst the men, saying ‘stick to it lads, don’t go to sleep’ and the cheerful reply would be ‘No sir, we won't go to sleep’, and my heart swelled with admiration. I knew what the ordeal of the strenuous day before had been, and knew what pluck and determination was necessary to keep awake and alert throughout the long weary hours of the night, therefore I thought I was justified in being proud of being Australian … give me Australians as comrades and I will go anywhere duty calls.

Many of us in this House have had the privilege of studying Australia's history at some of the great universities around our country, and I am one of them. As history students we are taught constantly that romanticism is to be avoided at all costs. I completely agree, because if we do not really understand how events occurred then we cannot learn anything from them.

But when you look into the history of Gallipoli, one of the most exciting, happiest kinds of feelings that you get from it is that all of the romanticism that we associate with this event in our history actually has a foundation in truth. These accounts really speak to that. The sense of egalitarianism that we so celebrate amongst one another as Australians really was there at Gallipoli, whatever account you read—whether it is Australians reporting on how Australians treated one another or soldiers from other countries talking about how the Australians related to one another in the trenches—there is this constant theme of mateship and friendship, and the fact that there was never the vast chasm between officer and soldier that we saw in so many foreign armies.

You hear and you read real accounts about the incredible bravery shown by these soldiers in the face of extraordinary bad luck and adversity. In a way, I think, when we look back on Gallipoli, the idea that this was the moment when these qualities were infused with what it was to be Australian really is true; this is really actually what happened there.

One of the other things that I felt, reading a lot of these letters and accounts, is that while we can reflect with good feelings about the Australian spirit when we think about how soldiers treated one another, there is no doubt that so many of these soldiers did not come away with a great love of war. That was really the feeling that you got from these letters; that there was a real sense of sadness about the loss that they saw around them. I think we saw that with the conscription debates that were had in 1916 and 1917. Something historians often comment on is that they believe one of the big differences between the 1916 vote, which was very narrowly lost, and the 1917 vote, which was much more strongly lost, was that so many soldiers had returned to Australia and shared their experiences of what it was like to be in war, and they did not want to see other young Australians have to go overseas and fight like they had. There were many marks left on these young men that stuck with them for life, and we owe them something very significant for that. What we owe them, of course, is never to forget their service.

I was lucky, like all in this House, to spend a great deal of time commemorating the event of the 100th anniversary of the landing in Gallipoli with my local community. One of the things that we did was to go to our local RSLs and talk to veterans about their memories and recollections of war. They were not World War I veterans, but they were still great servicemen. We talked to Francis Meyer, who is 98 years young and full of life, who is a founding member of the Clayton RSL. He talked a lot to us about how Anzac Day, on which he recalls his own service record, is a real time of reflection for him and a moment when he can pay tribute to his fallen mates. I want to mention Tom Dusting, who was 92 years old and, very sadly, lost to this world just a few weeks ago. We talked to Tom and you could hardly come across an Australian with such a keen sense of humour and such a fighting spirit. Again, Tom told us that on Anzac Day he often thinks about his fallen mates. It was a really important opportunity to pay respect to the people in my community who had served their country in military service.

I want to mention the really strong feelings of bipartisanship in my local area in how we commemorated this event. I have lots of people from different sides of politics who represent my local area. In all of these events we shared the wreaths that we laid in front of the memorials. I hope I speak for everyone when I say that when we are commemorating service and thinking about war and our nation's history, these are things that all of us on all sides of the House can celebrate together.

I say again that, as members of parliament, it is important for us to understand this history, to think about it and to really realise the enormity of what we are doing when we send young Australians off to war. Gallipoli is important for lots of reasons, but one of them is that 8,000 young Australians lost their lives fighting on a foreign shore, and we should never forget that.

I will finish by again quoting from a letter that a young soldier wrote after the war. He said:

Thinking over the times I have been through, and of the pals I have fought with and whom I have lost, I feel proud that I was one of them in the big venture, they laid down their lives in. I need hardly say, that this life being as it is, devoid of all that a man holds dear in life, and that makes life worth living has not altered me. I have witnessed joy at its highest, sorrow at its deepest, my views on life, comradeship etc has broadened. I think I am telling the truth when I say that I also know the principals on which a man's life can be based … It is easy enough under normal conditions to live rightly, but on active service, a man being months at a time among horrors unspeakable, and away from the soothing influences of home life, it is very hard, and one must learn by experience and I am sure it is the best way of forming the base to the life one wishes to live.

This is the Anzac spirit, which I am so proud has become synonymous with all that is Australian. Lest we forget.

Nick Champion (Wakefield, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

It is a great honour to follow the member for Hotham in what was a very eloquent address to the parliament. She is correct: it is impossible to speak of the Centenary of Anzac without thinking very carefully about our losses and with great sadness. At our very infancy as a nation it was the very flower of Australian manhood that was thrown into what was the slaughterhouse of a European war—a war that was produced in large part by a failure of statesmanship, a failure of diplomacy and a failure, I think, to avoid war at all costs. There is a phrase that Europe 'sleepwalked' into a war.

We know that Anzac holds a dear role in our nation's history, because we became aware of the great cost of war. When you hear about Lone Pine or the Nek, you know that those battles preceded the terrible battles that occurred on the Western Front—like Pozieres and Fromelles—terrible days in Australian history.

The most successful part of the ANZAC landings was actually the withdrawal, the evacuation, of the troops on 19 and 20 December. But that was only after 26,111 Australian casualties and 8,141 deaths. So we are very aware, I think, of the true costs of war and we are very aware of those ANZAC values of liberty, justice, mateship and democracy that were exhibited every day of our time at Gallipoli. Whenever I have had to speak at welcome home parades or, indeed, farewell parades for 7 RAR or 92 Wing, both at RAAF Base Edinburgh in my electorate, I have always talked about those Australian values, which run from the Gallipoli landings right through every military engagement in our history.

We know that this was a very important time in our nation's history, so it was important that its centenary was marked with respect and, under the auspices of the Australian government, in a bipartisan way that included the community. In my own community, I was very fortunate to have a great Anzac Day 2015 committee: Tony Flaherty and John Allen from the Two Wells RSL, Bill Chappell from the RAAFA, Matthew Reschke from the Salisbury RSL, Bruce Naismith from the Barossa Light Horse Historical Association, Roy Crabb from Stanley Flat Soldiers Memorial Hall Inc. and Graeme Pulford from the Auburn/Clare Districts RSL sub-branch. All of those individuals helped me. In fact, they really ran the show and made sure that we had respectful and well-attended Anzac Day events in my electorate. I had the great pleasure of going to the Salisbury RSL, who always run a great Anzac Day event. This year it was so well attended, there was a very big crowd of people paying their respects.

I was lucky enough later on to go to the Freeling versus Kapunda footy match, which is always a grudge match. I used to play footy for Kapunda, for the Bombers, so it was great to be there with some of my old friends, likes Dominic Shepley, who plays a big role in the Freeling Football Club and helped to organise the events there.

I was lucky enough to go out to Wasleys to attend their event as well. That went off without a hitch, except during the minute's silence, when a rabbit ran through the middle of the crowd. It was very Australian, particularly as the rabbit ran straight past my blue heeler, who was sitting in the crowd with my wife—a very Australian experience.

Over the last year, we have all been educated about not just Gallipoli but World War I, and about all of the different stories in our electorates, including the personal sacrifices that were made. One of the most interesting stories that I came across was about a fellow called Charles Yells, who was a labourer in Kapunda, my home town. He enlisted in the Australian Imperial Force on 29 September 1914, joined the 9th Light Horse Regiment and, on 11 February 1915, embarked for Egypt. Charles Yells's fame came from the fact that he was assigned special duties: instructing Lawrence of Arabia and his Arab squads in the use of the Lewis gun. So he was instrumental in the early Arab insurrections against Ottoman rule in Egypt and across the Arab world—a very important contribution, I think, from someone in my home town. There was also James Woods, born in Gawler, who joined the AIF in 1916. For his actions while on patrol near the Hindenburg line, he won the Victoria Cross, a great honour.

I had the great fortune to go to the parade of the 3rd/9th Light Horse, the South Australian Mounted Rifles. The Barossa Light Horse Historical Association were there in exactly the same garb as our WW1 soldiers and with their horses, like those our soldiers would have departed with. It took you back to a different type of Australia. The 3rd/9th Light Horse's origins can be traced all the way back to those Gallipoli landings, and they are very proud of their heritage.

I was reminded of some of the great contributions made by Australians. We have talked about the backgrounds of the Anzacs, about how they were shearers and bushmen; but they were also members of the Australian Workers Union. In Charles Bean's The Story of ANZAC, he recorded:

The newspapers stated that by April, 1915, there had been enrolled 12,000 shearers and station hands, members of the Australian Workers Union …

Among them was Albert Jacka, a member of the Victorian Riverina branch of the Australian Workers Union, who won the Victoria Cross. It is said that an Australian Workers Union ticket was found on the Pozieres battlefield. When the 1917 annual convention of the AWU came around, of the membership of 70,000, almost 30,000 were enrolled in the armed forces. So we remember those bush workers, farmhands and station hands—really, as I said before, the flower of Australian manhood—and we wonder what might have happened, what contribution they might have made, if their lives had been unspoiled by war.

It is natural, I think, at these times to ask, 'Was it all worth it?' As I said before, World War I was a failure of diplomacy and a failure of statesmanship. But we have to ask ourselves: would Europe have been in better hands had it been dominated by Prussian imperialism, the Kaiser and the rules of aggression rather than the rule of law? That is the question we must consider whenever we ask ourselves: was that great sacrifice worth it?

It is important on Anzac Day to not be blind to the losses and to remind ourselves of the words of John Gorton, who, when he came home from World War II, made a very famous speech at an event for returned servicemen. He said:

I want you to see an army; regiment on regiment of young men, dead. They say to you, burning in tanks and aeroplanes, drowning in submarines, shattered and broken by high explosive shells, we gave the last full measure of devotion. We bought your freedom with our lives. So take this freedom. Guard it as we have guarded it, use it as we can no longer use it, and with it as a foundation, build. Build a world in which meanness and poverty, tyranny and hate, have no existence. If you see and hear these men behind me—do not fail them.

That is a fitting epitaph to all our servicemen who have fallen in battle, and we owe it to them to use the freedom that they have bought us as they have paid a bitter price to build a better world for all Australians.

Bruce Billson (Dunkley, Liberal Party, Minister for Small Business) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

It is a privilege to be able to add to the very thoughtful and poignant remarks of my colleagues on this motion commemorating the 100th anniversary of the landings at Gallipoli. The motion acknowledges this significant landmark. It is an anniversary in the formulation of our national character as much as anything. It also pays its respects to those who fought so gallantly, to the 9,000 who died, to those who were wounded and to those who continued with their service to head to the Western Front and other areas, where they saw tragedies that no eyes should have to see. It also recognises that we were collaborators with the brave military personnel from Great Britain, France, India and Newfoundland. They fought alongside our Anzacs as our allies. This motion also acknowledges what a profound time this was for our then-combatants and now collaborators—the people of Turkey—who also suffered greatly during these episodes.

This motion draws attention to what was a terrific day when our nation commemorated the 100th anniversary of the Anzac landings. My own community of Dunkley participated in full measure. There were thousands of people at Frankston Park, the home of the Dolphins, for a dawn service. There were hundreds and hundreds of people at other dawn services, including the one I attended in Mornington in my own community. Even later on in the day, the follow-up service at Frankston was extraordinary because of the number of people who attended and the respect and thoughtfulness with which they participated. We were inviting people to think back 100 years to 4.29 in the predawn on 25 April 1915 when the Turkish outpost signalled the alarm, which was barely discernible in the dark waters off Ari Burnu, a small plateau jutting out into the Aegean Sea. Rowboats were carrying Australians and New Zealanders to the Gallipoli shoreline. A minute later the first boatloads reached the rough shingled beach and courageous, patriotic and expectant men clambered out. They faced a steep cliff and were immediately under fire.

It is hard to imagine what they experienced but I have seen what they saw. As a former Minister for Veterans' Affairs it was a great honour and a privilege to represent Australia at the 91st Anzac Day commemorations in 2006. I saw the landscape and imagined the extraordinary challenge that confronted those courageous men and the great passion that the Turkish soldiers had that drove them to protect their land. I traversed the extraordinary memorial park, a landscape where each step could have been part of a burial location, for so many lives had been lost and such was the chaos that the orderly laying to rest of remains was not possible. It is quite an extraordinary place.

It was an extraordinary honour and a privilege to attend the Turkish international ceremony at Mehmetcik Abide, the French service at Morto Bay and the Commonwealth service at Cape Helles on Anzac Day. I also attended the dawn service at the Anzac commemorative site. I was very fortunate and quite blessed to be able to deliver a reading there. I then attended and made a contribution at the Australian service at Lone Pine and followed that up with the Turkish 57th Regiment service and the New Zealand service at Chunuk Bair. It was an incredible story of many nations' history and the legacy interwoven from so long ago but still respected with such reverence each year.

I should acknowledge the work and the collaborative efforts of the Department of Veterans' Affairs, the Turkish officials and the Governor of Canakkale, His Excellency Mr Orhan Kirli, who I was able to meet. They worked to make sure that erosion was not causing an extraordinary impact on the Gallipoli Peace Park. They worked together—once combatants, now collaborators—to make sure that the Anzac battlefield is properly cared for. It was extraordinary to go into the communities around the Peace Park and see the story of one nation's history playing out through the eyes of Turkish men and women—some young and some old—and to know it is such a huge part of our national story. That is something I will never forget.

Our own community turned its mind to that story and our commemorations started long before the 100th anniversary. We effectively had a genealogy expo at the site of the mechanics hall. We held the expo on the very same day that 100 years earlier the local newspapers and civic leaders had encouraged and extolled young able men to offer themselves to serve. At that very hall people had come together to sign on for what was understood to them to be their patriotic duty and potentially an adventure. Our nation contributed to that in a most extraordinary way. That was very moving.

Not many people realise that the first act of war was on the Mornington Peninsula, in our own state of Victoria a year earlier than the landings at Gallipoli. On 5 August 1914, just hours after World War I was declared, the first shot in the British Empire was fired from Fort Nepean. We still search for that shell in the mouth of Port Phillip Bay—it is a local endeavour that many are turning their minds to, to see whether they can find it. There we were on the Mornington Peninsula to prevent the German merchant vessel SS Pfalz from leaving Port Phillip, thankfully with no loss of life. The seamen on SS Pfalz turned around and that was one less ship available to the enemy. If anyone is wanting to get behind a great philanthropic enterprise, we are still searching for that shell.

The story that followed was that, from a population of 4.9 million, by the end of the war 417,000 men, many from our community, had volunteered and enlisted, and there were many women as well, in support of the war effort. There are great stories; there was extraordinary service. When you look back on the personalities that are remembered not only from that anniversary of the Gallipoli landing but from our military service that followed, it is incredible how we honour those who have displayed their compassion. Even to this day you see images of Australian military personnel with their weapons upturned; they are leaning on the butt of their firearm in a moment of reflection—it is not a moment of triumph; it is one of lost mates and compassion. It says a lot about our engagement in military activities when we ask for no more land than enough to bury our dead. It is an interesting part of our history.

We have Simpson and his donkey—Private John Simpson Kirkpatrick landed at Gallipoli on 25 April 2015 as a field ambulance stretcher-bearer. He previously had been shovelling coal in merchant ships, and he remade himself after making some probably less than spectacular choices earlier in his life. For 20 days he did nothing other than show care and compassion to wounded Australian soldiers before he himself was struck down. We think about John Monash, another great Victorian and a great Australian. His wisdom, his civil engineering background and his understanding of tactics and technology brought what could have been long and bloody battles to a very quick end. The genius of Monash was confirmed on the Western Front on 4 July 1918 in the Battle for Le Hamel. As the Minister for Veterans' Affairs I think I was the first Commonwealth minister to put finances in behind the Anzac Day commemorations on the Western Front, understanding its importance. Boy, hasn't that taken off, with the participation and commitment of this government to create a John Monash interpretive centre. He said the battle would take 90 minutes, and it took 93 minutes, bringing to an end what could have been a horrible conflict. Again, compassion was the story of 'Weary' Dunlop.

This was part of what we commemorated in the Dunkley community on that 100th anniversary—not just what happened at Gallipoli but the characteristics and the statement of who we are that emerged from that contact, and then we reminded ourselves of our commitment to all those who have served and our desire to celebrate them for their care and compassion, making sure that what they gifted to us we do not give away.

Brendan O'Connor (Gorton, Australian Labor Party, Shadow Minister for Employment and Workplace Relations) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

This year marks 100 years since the landing at Gallipoli, a day that history will never forget. On 25 April 1915, thousands of Australians, some quite young, landed on the shores of Turkey at Gallipoli. It was a place then unknown to most Australians but it is one of great significance today. There were 60,000 men who went off to war and never came home. Today, in this place, I take this time to remember those men who made the supreme sacrifice in the service of the nation. I remember their families too—parents, siblings, wives, husbands and children who lost someone they loved. It is also important to remember the ones who returned wounded or carrying the hidden scars of the traumas of war. Their story, their Anzac story, will always be our story, a part of who we are. The First World War shaped our identity as a people and as a nation.

World War I, and the Gallipoli campaign in particular, has come to exemplify powerful Australian values of mateship, sacrifice, loyalty and pride in being Australian. The Anzac Centenary is one of the most important commemorative events to take place in the lives of current generations. It is important to pause and reflect on the courage and immense sacrifice of those who fought in defence of our nation It was an honour to join the Melton community for the dawn service on Anzac Day to pay tribute to those men and women who have fought and died in the service of our nation, during not only the First World War but all wars, conflicts and peacekeeping operations. It was encouraging to see so many people there—around 500, with hundreds and in some cases thousands at other events around and beyond my electorate— to pay tribute to our Anzacs, particularly during the Centenary of Anzac, a time of special significance.

I spent the remainder of the morning at the Caroline Springs RSL, enjoying a breakfast with veterans and the families of veterans from my electorate as we remembered the brave individuals who have served, and continue to serve, our nation during times of war and peace. Both in my local community and in services like these across the nation, Australians gathered together to give our eternal gratitude to the sailors, soldiers, airmen and women, past and present, who have given so much for us and our country. Particularly on this 100th anniversary we remember the bravery and sacrifice of all who served in the First World War. To honour those men and women, I held a morning tea in my electorate office to honour local veterans from my community. I was able to recognise 20 local veterans and relatives of veterans to honour their service to Australia and remember the sacrifices they have made and the courage it takes to defend our nation. I was able to present certificates to the veterans and their relatives that have served in the Second World War, the Korean War, the Vietnam War, the war in Afghanistan and the Indonesian Confrontation and peacetime operations in Timor Leste. The military experiences of the recipients spanned across decades and continents, but the constant is the honour, recognition and gratitude their service deserves.

I was also proud to be able to provide 12 organisations from my electorate with grants to commemorate the service and sacrifice of Australian service men and women in the First World War. I was pleased to be able to open and launch some of these projects, funded through the Australian government's Anzac Centenary Local Grants program, with more still to come. Several local schools have built commemorative garden, and I was able to open the Anzac memorial garden at Brookside Primary last month.

I will be launching a DVD, entitled Our Community Remembers, put together by the Partners of Veterans Association of Australia, Victoria, Melton Sub-branch. I will also be launching the website 'Just Another Pair of Socks' by the Melton Family History Group, which provides information on those from the Melton area who enlisted during the First World War. And just last week I opened a new war memorial in the appropriately named Diggers Rest. The name Diggers Rest for this community came from the prospectors who were heading to the Goldfields in the mid and late 19th century. What an appropriate term, Diggers Rest, and how appropriate to have a memorial there to reflect on the sacrifice and to provide an opportunity for people to visit that memorial. The names of those who were lost are enshrined on that memorial. We had a remarkable day; I was privileged to be part of that.

I would like to note that one of the people inscribed on the Diggers Rest memorial is Nurse Helen Bowie, born at Jacksons Creek, Diggers Rest. She was one of the first women to join Lady Dudley's first Australian field hospital in France. She was a surgical nurse and, I am told, a golfer of repute. The Age from 21 December 1915 quotes her as saying:

We all worked at top pressure.—

This is in the field hospital in France.

We all worked at top pressure.

We scrubbed, swept washed and polished without any thought of rest or food...

We did over 70 major operations in the hospital in the first week. We began work at 8 o'clock in the morning, and worked until one o'clock the next morning. There was no time to leave the theatre to have a meal, so we had to be content with cocoa and sandwiches which were hastily eaten at the door of the operating theatre.

Her story forms part of our shared history. And the story of the others noted here—their Anzac stories—will always be our story, a part of this nation's history.

This year, we remember not only the original Anzacs who served at Gallipoli and the Western Front, but commemorate more than a century of service by Australian servicemen and women in wars, conflicts and peacekeeping operations. Australians have fought and fallen in Europe and Africa, in Papua New Guinea through to Korea, Malaya, Vietnam and, more recently, Iraq and the mountains of Afghanistan, defending nations and keeping us safe. We salute their service. We honour their memory. And, at the going down of the sun and in the morning, we repeat Australia's solemn promise: we shall remember them. Lest we forget.

Steven Ciobo (Moncrieff, Liberal Party, Parliamentary Secretary to the Minister for Foreign Affairs) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

It is one hundred years since the First World War and it is, in particular, the defining moment of our nation. When I speak at schools and when I have the opportunity to discuss Australia's history with constituents at various commemorative services, I often reflect, as many Australians do, on the role that Gallipoli played in defining our nation. The fundamental values that were etched in the blood that was spilt on the soil and in the sand at Gallipoli are the values of loyalty, mateship, service and sacrifice; and they are the ideals that are still held high today.

Out of a small population of around 4.9 million back in 1914, a total of some 417,000 men volunteered and enlisted to fight with the Australian Imperial Forces. Of those, around 323,000 served overseas and, for those who served overseas, there a casualty rate, tragically, of 64.8 per cent. That was one of the highest casualty rates of all the Allied forces. From the spilt blood, from the injuries and from the mental anguish that was endured by a generation of early Aussies, this great nation in so many different respects was forged.

Especially on Anzac Day this year, we were able to come together in our millions across this great brown land to reflect on the service and sacrifice of our forefathers. On the Gold Coast, in my electorate of Moncrieff, the reports were of tens and tens of thousands of Gold Coasters who took time to pay their solemn respects to those in World War I and every subsequent conflict—to those who put their lives and bodies on the line so that we as a nation can continue to enjoy the many liberties that we do.

I had the tremendous honour this Anzac Day of representing our nation at the Kranji War Memorial in Singapore. Even there, there were thousands of Australians who came to the dawn service to reflect on the sacrifice made by Australians and others. In the heat of the pre-dawn in Singapore we were able to reflect on the many theatres of war where Australians lost their lives or paid the high price of injuries in defence of our nation and in defence of our way of life. It was a privilege for my wife Astra to be able to represent me in my electorate and to fly the flag, so to speak, at the various commemorative services.

Whether it was at the Southport RSL, Surfers Paradise RSL or Nerang RSL, the fact is that across the coast and across my electorate people came together to reflect, as I said, and to solemnly consider those who have gone before us. I have been particularly pleased on this, the 100th anniversary of Gallipoli, as part of the government's program to provide support to local communities, to have been able to provide some funding for a number of local ex-service organisations and other groups that have had ideas and initiatives about how we can instil in the next generation of young Australians a great respect for what it was that our forefathers went through on the battlefront as well as the very heavy payment that was made by their loved ones who remained here in Australia.

I was particularly pleased to have been involved in a number of initiatives. The Nerang RSL moved to provide a service that involved an educational immersion experience for young Gold Coast children. I know that it has been a popular exhibit as Gold Coast kids have had the opportunity to experience what it was actually like to be in a trench. They have been able to experience the darkness and the sounds of shelling and artillery as they walk through a replica trench and can pause to reflect and consider what others went through.

Likewise, the Mudgeeraba Light Horse Museum have an outstanding exhibition that reflects both a display on quality horsemanship and other historical artefacts that students can look at and can learn from. They also have engaging activities, a dedicated booklet and other initiatives like that which enable them to reflect what our forefathers went through.

One of the more well-known schools on the Gold Coast is the Southport school, or TSS. I was pleased to be able to support TSS's initiative with respect to the compilation of a book that was produced in part with funding that I was able to deliver. It reflects on the contribution made by a number of former TSS students. Out of the 61,500 or so young Australians who were killed in action in the First World War, approximately 52 were TSS students or old boys from the school.

One of them was 24-year-old Private Arthur Beresford. He wrote of the excitement and sense of adventure the troops felt when leaving Australia. He said:

The ship was the S.S. "Omrah" of the Orient Mail Line, was fitted up perfectly for us and throughout the whole voyage, we all had a good time …

He was wounded at Gallipoli after landing on 25 April and evacuated to England for a lengthy period of hospitalisation, treatment and convalescence. His service eventually spanned almost the entire period of the First World War, until his death in Europe in 1918.

Southport born Lieutenant John Hockin was one of the many to fall during the first charge in France. Others, particularly Private William Robertson, wrote saying how brave he was. Only a few got to the German lines, and they never got back—he was among them.

Captain Leslie Blake wrote to his brother Will:

One is like a mole in this dammed country nothing but live in dug-outs—they get on your nerves after a time … Hell! I'll have a dug-out instead of a house when I get back, I hope to live and never see one again …

Leslie was fatally wounded on 2 October 1918 by shellfire when in charge of ammunition wagons near the railway between the villages of Nauroy and Estrees. Another Gold Coast born and raised student who was killed was Lieutenant Norman Freeman. He grew up in Southport and was killed in action in Messines, Belgium, at 21 years of age.

I want to commend and congratulate all of those who were involved in the commemoration that took place on the Gold Coast across so many different RSLs, providing the opportunity for tens of thousands of Gold Coasters to pause and reflect. We will build off that solid platform with a number of initiatives that are focused, unapologetically, upon ensuring that the next generation of Australians—the young, impressionable minds of Australian students today—have the opportunity to learn so much more in a very real sense about the contribution that our forefathers made in various campaigns and on various battlefronts around the world.

We are still a relatively young country. We have a small population. Unlike so many other countries, the fact is that one of the unique traits of Australian culture is that we do not celebrate outstanding military victories. Instead, we solemnly commemorate an outstanding military defeat. That is not because it was a strategy we can necessarily be proud of but because of the blood that was spilt, the injuries that were felt and, most importantly, the values that were forged on the sand that day at Gallipoli. These are values that all Australians hold near and dear to their hearts. These are values that represent our entire nation. Lest we forget.

Rob Mitchell (McEwen, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

This year marks the 100th year of remembrance of the Gallipoli campaign. We ask, 'Why do we remember Gallipoli over so many other events?' Many more Australians fought and died on the Western Front in Belgium and France later in the Great War, as the First World War was known at the time. So why remember this event? Some say it was the birth of our nation on the battlefield—a place where Australians began the long-held and long-revered Anzac legend. What happened to the first Australian volunteers who landed at Gallipoli helped form attitudes and beliefs about our nation and national character. The campaign became a symbol of Australian national identity—honour, sacrifice and pride—as a reference to those who gave up their lives so we may live ours.

The landing in Anzac Cove on 25 April 1915 was catastrophic, as was the entire Gallipoli campaign, which claimed the lives of 8,709 Australian men. Out of this campaign, the Anzac legend was born. The battle of the landing itself lasted from 25 April to 3 May, when Australians and New Zealanders, assisted by Indian Army troops and the British Royal Naval Division, drove back a number of strong Turkish counterattacks and formed a defensive line in the unhospitable terrain.

In the official history, Charles Bean, an Australian war correspondent, wrote about the rough country of the Gallipoli peninsula. He described confusing slopes, perpendicular crags and gorse-like scrub. He said:

The growth was stubborn, and, in the steep gravelly waterways with which the hillside was scored, it was as much as a strong man could do to fight his way through it, to say nothing of carrying his heavy kit and rifle.

By the end of the first day the Turkish defenders held the high ground. Charles Bean went on to say:

Bullets struck fireworks out of the stones along the beach. The men did not wait to be sent, but wherever they landed they simply rushed straight up the steep slopes.

After his experience of Gallipoli in the First World War Charles returned to Australia determined not to let the sacrifices of the men be forgotten and he became a driving force in the development of the Australian War Memorial.

The Gallipoli Peninsula saw other fierce battles, such as Lone Pine, or what is known to the Turkish soldiers as the ridge of blood. Australian soldiers so far from home were fighting for their lives and for those few acres of precious advantage. In three days of hand-to-hand combat more than 2,000 Australians and 5,000 Turkish had died there. Seven of the nine Victoria Crosses awarded to Australians at Gallipoli were won there alone. For a young nation this is why 25 April has become the focal point, as we remember all those who have served this country throughout all wars.

My electorate of McEwen has a long, rich military history in the Mitchell Shire. I am honoured to represent the Puckapunyal Army base, which was used as a mobilisation and training area during World War I. It is the home of the famous Light Horse Park, the Military Heritage Weekend and of course the Vietnam Veterans Commemorative Walk. This year was a special year as our communities paid tribute to the 100th anniversary of the Great War and the Anzac landings. We launched the book There was a soldier who wandered far away, which was written by talented local Karen Christensen. It talks about, for example, the story of Lieutenant Leslie Cecil Maygar, the very first Australian to win the Victoria Cross. He was born in Wandong. It is the stories of our local men and women, as written about in this book, which really show our inherent and strong connection to the Anzac story. With this year's marking of the centenary of the First World War it is especially important for our generation and future generations to remember our Anzacs.

The last of our veterans from the First World War have all since passed on, but their story will live on through us. I am extremely proud to say also that my electorate has a large Turkish population, who have made Australia home. Every year I attend the Turkish community's Anzac dinner. We sit together and remember not as enemies but as brothers and sisters. I believe something unique came out of Australia's conflict with Turkey. We did not go away seeking revenge, full of hatred. Instead, a mutual respect grew that blossomed into a friendship. So today we break bread and we remember those who fought the infamous campaigns. We gather as two strong friends with a 100-year history of strong and committed friendship, forged from mutual respect and a shared desire to better the lives of our nations.

For two different reasons Gallipoli became important to both nations as a means of nation building—Australia forged its identity through loss and sacrifice and Turkey, through its success, provided support for the commander who went on to found modern Turkey, Mustafa Kemal Ataturk. Mustafa Kemal Ataturk wrote a tribute to the Anzacs at Gallipoli—the famous words: 'Those heroes that shed their blood and lost their lives ... You are now lying in the soil of a friendly country. Therefore rest in peace.' The words of Ataturk have lived through the ages, probably the strongest words of reconciliation to a former foe ever spoken.

My own family has a strong connection to the battles at Gallipoli. My hometown of Whittlesea's honour rolls list the names of family ancestors who served in World War I and II. Thanks to Brian Membrey, who compiled the Shire of Whittlesea's Great Honour Roll, I can read some of the names. Frank Kummer was killed on 25 October 1917 of wounds in France. He was the brother of Harold MacNee, DCM and Military Cross, who also fought gallantly throughout the First World War. Then there is Kenneth MacNee. Kenneth MacNee's death in casualty lists appeared under Whittlesea, where the memorial has another variation with incorrect spelling. It was noted that he was a nephew of the Mitchell boys. Research later revealed that they were the sons of Councillor Charles Mitchell. MacNee was wounded in the head and the right forearm in August 1916 and repatriated to England before rejoining his battalion in February 1917, when he was killed in action.

Keith Mitchell died on 25 April 1915 on the Gallipoli Peninsular in Turkey. An eyewitness said that he was shot through the neck on the first ridge around 300 yards inland. He was originally classed as missing in action until a court of inquiry held in January the following year claimed that he was digging trenches for the stretcher bearers leading onto Anzac Beach, and he was taken to a dressing station but he passed away.

Victorian RSL President Major General David McLachlan says the Turkish were an honourable enemy. The Turkish RSL subbranch was put in place because of the special relationship between Australia and Turkey. David says that First World War veterans saw the Turkish soldier as being an honourable enemy. That is why we proudly meet every year with the Turkish subbranch of the RSL, chaired by my good friend Ramazan Altintas.

There are many stories. Anzac was our first story in a long history of Australian battles. Let us go forward and look at the Korean battlefield. Reg Saunders, the first Aboriginal commissioned officer in the Australian Army, led his company of diggers down from a bloody Korean battlefield. 'At last,' Saunders wrote, 'I felt like an Anzac and imagine there were 600 others.' The 3rd Battalion Royal Australia Regiment was gallant in retreat at Kapyong Valley. It had played a magnificent part in the battle. It made sacrifices: 32 diggers were dead. On a hill across from Kapyong Valley the 2nd Battalion fought the Chinese onslaught. There were many people there on that day but, importantly for me, there was Leo Whidbourne who, along with the other four Bren gunners, received an American citation for the work that they did in defying the 10,000-strong Chinese onslaught.

The Korean War was largely overlooked in the 20th century. It is remembered only as the forgotten war. In recent times, however, there has been a remarkable change. On the veterans' calendar is Kapyong Day. PM Gillard rightly described it as a crucial battle, placing it alongside Tobruk in the annals of Australian military history. Leo Whidbourne was the grandfather of my family friend Sharon Dopper.

We go on to those in Vietnam. We pay our respects to the 62,100 men and women of this country who put their hands up to fight in the Vietnam War. Over the past few years I have come to know and appreciate many of their stories. It reminds me of the sacrifices that they made. It was one of the poorer episodes in our nation's history. Our young men and women who responded to the government's call to arms were somehow held responsible by many for the political decision to enter that war. The protests that should have been aimed at the government did hurt our men and women and also their mates who had returned home. There is no escaping that, even if it was not the intention of the Australians who protested at that time.

I have read a lot of books in relation to the Vietnam battles and one of the things I appreciate was a story by David 'Stretch' Bryan. Inside Northcote High School is a small brass plaque dedicated to the memory of a former student. That former student, Les, was a good friend of David and was the first Nasho killed in Vietnam. 'Stretch' wonders today whether present students even notice the small plaque or know about the life it represents—the life of a former student, a brave soldier, a friend and a Nasho. We owe the families and friends of all those who fought in our name a great deal of honour. Every year I remind crowds at our service: 'When you see a person with medals on their left breast, go up to them, shake their hand and say thank you, for without them and their courage and sacrifices we may not be here to do what we do today.' The story of Anzacs on the beaches of Gallipoli is the first chapter in the stories of our fighting men and, as much as we would like to close the book on conflict, sadly each and every day new chapters are continuing to be written.

Mark Coulton (Parkes, National Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I rise this evening to add my words to the motion recognising a significant milestone in our nation's history: the 100-year anniversary of the landings at Gallipoli. There have been many fine words spoken in this place and others about that milestone. It is interesting to note that the battle at Gallipoli, while ultimately unsuccessful, is the defining moment in time when Australia became an independent nation. The reputation of the Australian soldiers was laid down and has been built upon in generations since.

I would like to speak on behalf of the constituents of the Parkes electorate who contributed much in that conflict. The men from the bush were ideal candidates to be soldiers. At that stage they had great skills in horsemanship, bushmanship and survival in the bush, and they were mostly crack shots, so they were ideal people to sign up and, indeed, did so in large numbers. Right across my electorate, in towns, villages and in places where villages have disappeared, their memorials still stand. Some of the more significant incidents that happened in the First World War started in my electorate and are now legends. I cite the Cooee March, which started at Gilgandra. About 36 local men started walking towards Sydney to join up. Along the way, where they camped and stopped and at public ceremonies and meetings, other people joined them. By the time got to Sydney, their numbers had swelled to over 200. I ask people to go back to that time. Can you imagine the son of a family one day, as the Cooees came to town, joining up on the spot and marching off to war, basically with that much notice? Many of them did not come back. The Cooee March will be re-enacted in a month or two. I recognise the work of Brian Bywater and others in Gilgandra who have worked so tirelessly on this re-enactment. The Lions Club of Gilgandra organised fundraising to purchase a statue—a wonderful work of bronze by Brett Garling—to commemorate the Cooee March. It now stands proudly in the town square of Gilgandra as a permanent reminder of the great significance that Gilgandra and the Cooees had in the First World War.

Right across western New South Wales and the area I represent, on memorials there are sad reminders of great sacrifice. In my home town of Gravesend, a small village where I grew up, there are the names of the three Heath brothers who were all killed in the First World War. Can you imagine in this day and age having three brothers going off to war and none of them coming home? In Bodangora, which 100 years ago was a much more thriving mining community—now there are just a couple of houses—is a memorial with 60 names of people who signed up for the First World War. Nineteen of those men lost their lives. Can you imagine that, in a small rural community, 19 of the people who signed up did not come back?

With a grant from the federal government, the people at the Great Cobar Heritage Centre wrote a book about the soldiers from the Cobar area. Once again, like stockmen, miners made ideal candidates for soldiers in the First World War. Several of the miners from Cobar who joined up ended up joining the tunnelling squad that was made famous in the movie, Beneath Hill 60, a couple of years ago. Some of the soldiers who tunnelled and were part of that infamous World War I history came from Cobar. There are stories of the effects on those men from the battlefield and the issues that they had when they returned home.

Some got on with their lives and thrived and got married and raised families. Sadly, many of them could not adapt. Many of them came back without any real support. Sadly, many of them became victims of alcoholism and other things, and quite a few of them took their own lives in the years after the First World War. It is a salient reminder that we need to keep in mind when we are talking about our current returned veterans.

The other group of soldiers that we do not talk much about are the Aboriginal soldiers. There was a large number of Aboriginal people who joined up in the First World War. It is interesting, because 100 years ago these men had no rights as Australian citizens. They were classed as 'fauna' by the country at the time. But during their time as soldiers, for the first time in their lives they were treated as equals. In the accounts that I read, there was no colour barrier in the armed forces. These men were well regarded as very good soldiers. Sadly, when they returned things had not changed, and it took many years after that before we got some form of equality.

In Bourke there is the grave of a decorated Aboriginal soldier. I think his cousin, who did not make it home, is buried in a cemetery in England. I would like to commend the work of Councillor Vic Bartley, himself a Vietnam veteran—an Aboriginal man—who has worked tirelessly to recognise these soldiers of the First World War and to restore their graves to the prominence that they deserve.

This was a tragic moment in Australia's history. Out of a population of 3½ million, 60,000 deaths and 160,000 casualties are statistics that are hard to comprehend. How, as a nation, we got back on our feet when the cream of our young people were taken from us in a faraway land is another story in itself. It has been my privilege to speak here tonight on behalf of the people of western New South Wales and to acknowledge the sacrifice of previous generations.

Anthony Byrne (Holt, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

It is a great honour to rise tonight to speak on the Prime Minister's motion on the 100th anniversary of the landings at Gallipoli. What prompted me, in particular, to speak at this late time was the fact that, as I understand it, the speeches and the names of those who spoke will be taken to the War Memorial and bound. There is a particular reason that precipitated me to speak, which I will touch on later.

This motion that commemorates and honours those who served our country at Gallipoli and in other theatres of conflict, and the speeches I have heard, is a key to understanding what makes us Australian. The Gallipoli story, the story of our Anzacs, is part of the Australian story—the Australian narrative, an ongoing narrative. When listening to the speeches of many of my colleagues I reflected on how Anzac Day has been viewed over time and how it is being viewed now. I am very heartened by how it is viewed now because it is somewhat different to how it was viewed when I was going to school at Christian Brothers College in Adelaide in 1979.

There was a particular book that had been written about Anzac Day, called The One Day of the Year. It was a pretty dark book. It framed Anzac Day as a day where war was being glorified and war was being commemorated. To our family, the Mackereth family—my mother's family—the fact that that was how Anzac Day would be portrayed was quite disheartening. It was disheartening for my mother's family, because my mother's father had served on the Western Front and had been gravely injured.

My reflections of Anzac Day are informed by a picture on the mantelpiece of my grandmother's home in George Street, Parkside. As a young man—my grandmother died in 1979—I used to wander into the lounge of a very small two-bedroom home in George Street Parkside, and there above the mantelpiece was a picture of a young man, a very well-put-together, handsome young man in the Australian uniform, before he went overseas. He was 22 years old when he left these shores. He was a young man with a very bright future—he was staring into the future as an optimistic young man. I have recently been looking through the National Archives records of his service. The person I am talking about is my grandfather, William Harold Luxton Percy Mackereth, who served in the 16th Infantry Battalion. He served and was gravely injured in 1916. He was blown up, effectively, in Pozieres in the Somme valley.

I heard from my mother the stories of what happened to this young man who went over there. My grandfather died in 1949. I never met my grandfather. I know my grandfather only through the stories of my grandmother and my mother's brothers: Bill Mackereth, who has passed away, Lancy Mackereth, Maxy Mackereth, Johnny Mackereth, Terry Mackereth, Shirlie Mackereth, Betty Mackereth and my mother, Coleen Mackereth, now Byrne. I heard about a wonderful man. My grandmother Kathleen Winnifred Daly married him in 1920, after he had been repatriated, having spent 12 months in a hospital in England as a result of being gravely injured. There was no glorification of war from my grandfather. He was a young man that had served his country and had spent 12 months in a hospital in Britain after he had been blown up in 1916. When that person came back, he was a very different person to the one that left the shores to embark on, I guess, that great adventure. I looked at the oath to be taken by the person being enlisted. This is the certificate of the attesting officer:

I, William Harold Luxton Percy Mackereth swear that I will well and truly serve our sovereign Lord the King in the Australian Imperial Force from 5th August 1915 until the end of the War, and a further period of four months thereafter unless sooner lawfully discharged, dismissed, or removed therefrom; and that I will resist His Majesty’s enemies and cause His Majesty’s peace to be kept and maintained; and that I will in all matters appertaining to my service, faithfully discharge my duty according to the law.

SO HELP ME GOD

That was in Adelaide, South Australia. I wonder what was going through that young man's mind, basically 100 years ago, having signed a copy of this piece of paper. Then I wonder what was in that young man's mind when he came back a shattered individual. He had 13 operations on an arm that they wanted to amputate, but he refused to allow it to be amputated. I used to read about books like The One Day of the Year and others that were said to have glorified war—not to my family they did not, not to my family at all.

When I told my mother that I was going to speak about this today, she wanted me to say to this place, for the Hansard and therefore for history, that he was a very good man. Notwithstanding the very grave injuries that he had to his upper and lower body, he was a good husband to his wife and a wonderful father to his children, but he suffered. The previous speaker, the member for Parkes, spoke about how people dealt with post-traumatic stress disorder and what happened. My grandfather would basically lock himself away for three days and drink and drink and drink until he got through that episode, and then he would walk out. Funnily enough, when you asked, 'Did my grandfather ever talk about it?' like a lot of people that served in the First World War in Gallipoli and elsewhere, he never spoke about it. He never spoke about what he actually went through—bits and pieces perhaps to my grandmother, but that is it. The sons and daughters of this man never really knew. We have had to find out, through research, exactly what he went through.

It is important for me, on behalf of my family, to say how much we valued his service to our country. We are sorry in a sense that we are not there to be able to pay appropriate respects. But I hope, through this contribution that I have made the behalf of the Mackereth family, that we do, that he will be remembered. He never really fully secured ongoing employment post his return to Australia. For the Mackereth family, I hope that this statement offers them some comfort and some gratification that their father and grandfather will be remembered.

The story of our servicemen in the First World War is an essential part of the story of Gallipoli. I give credit to former Prime Minister John Howard for the work that he did in reshaping the country's narrative; we have landed in the right place when we have a discussion about what Gallipoli means to the Australian people, to our country and to our country's future. When I look through the prism of Anzac Day and the legend of Anzac, I remember a couple of incidents. I had the privilege of being invited to fly onto the deck of the USS Carl Vinson in 2003. I flew on with a gentleman that was in battle fatigues. After five attempted landings we finally got onto the deck of the Carl Vinson. It is a 340-metre ship, a big ship, which can carry 75 aircraft. The USS Carl Vinson launched the first strikes on Afghanistan from its decks post September 11. It has significant meaning for the American people.

When we finally landed, we got off the plane and the gentleman in battle fatigues was surrounded by the Americans. That gentleman was Duncan Lewis, then Brigadier General commanding the SAS, with whom we had troops in Afghanistan, and now Director-General of ASIO. The warmth and regard that the Americans had for the Aussie soldiers, for the Anzacs—as the commander of fleet said—for the Anzac spirit, says everything about the incredibly rich legacy that our Anzacs have given to our country, and now we remember them appropriately.

From me to the Mackereth family, thank you for the service of William Harold Luxton Percy Mackereth. The Anzac spirit animates our discussion about what it means to be an Australian. He was part of that, and I know now that we can give him appropriate memory for the service that he gave to our country.

George Christensen (Dawson, National Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

Gallipoli 1915: a campaign often credited as being the birth of our nation. April 25: the day our soldiers stood tall, prepared to make the ultimate sacrifice. It was the day our soldiers created the legend and a reputation as formidable foes in battle. Many men from throughout my electorate of Dawson, from the towns of Mackay, Proserpine, Bowen, Ayr, Home Hill and Townsville, answered the call to serve their country. Many made the ultimate sacrifice and many were inflicted with physical and psychological wounds that had a huge impact on their lives. But every man and every woman who served deserves the highest respect.

Tonight I would like to honour the memory of but one man, Billy Sing, a young man from Proserpine, who used his bush skills to carve out a fearsome reputation at Gallipoli as the crack sniper of the Anzacs. The Australian War Memorial tells his story. It notes that a fellow soldier who was often Billy's spotter described Billy as:

… a little chap, very dark, with a jet black moustache and a goatee beard. A picturesque looking mankiller. He is the crack sniper of the Anzacs.

Billy, who was born William Sing in 1886 to an English mother and a Chinese father, had a tough life on the land, but he became a talented horse rider and shooter. When the war broke out, word has it that, like many young men, he rushed to sign up. He would have been about 28 years old at the time. Later in the war, there was a resistance to recruiting non-white Australians, but, as Billy was one of the first men to enlist, he did not face any discrimination, and he was promptly accepted into the 5th Light Horse Regiment. The Australian Light Horse Association also note the great contribution of Trooper William Eddie Sing. They note:

William Edward Sing, like most of his fellow members of the Regiment, had grown up and worked with horses in the Australian bush. Part of their cumulative stock-in-trade was an ability to ride well, estimate distance carefully, track strayed stock and animal pests, and to fire both rifle and shotgun accurately.

The Light Horse Association note that Billy Sing's considerable skills with a rifle were well-known locally long before the outbreak of World War I. I note that Billy was a member of the Proserpine Rifle Club and a leading kangaroo shooter in the region.

He was sent to Egypt in December 1914, and then he went on to Gallipoli in May 1915. It was at a position that was called Chatham's Post that Billy Sing began in earnest to earn his lethal nicknames: 'the murderer' and 'the assassin'. Every morning, in the darkness before dawn, Billy would find a place to hide and watch over the Turkish soldiers in their trenches. The Australian War Memorial says that once Billy and his spotter were in position and had settled in the true discipline of rigidly maintaining a quiet and motionless patience began. This was not a job for fidgeters. Snipers rarely get a second shot at a specific target. To avoid becoming the target of the Turkish snipers, the Australians would stay in their position until nightfall.

The ANZAC war diary for 23 October 1915 states:

Our premier sniper, Trooper Sing, 2nd L.H., yesterday accounted for his 199th Turk. Every one of this record is vouched for by an independent observer, frequently an officer who observes through a telescope.

Billy's fame spread beyond the soldiers at Gallipoli, and his tally was written about in the Australian, British and American press. The Turkish army were also well aware of Billy's reputation. In an effort to eliminate him, they brought in their own crack shot—a man who became known to Australians as 'Abdul the Terrible'. It has been reported by wartime journalist Ion Idriess that Abdul the Terrible claimed the life of Private John Simpson Kirkpatrick, or 'that man with the donkey'.

Abdul came very close to fulfilling his mission of wiping out the little Aussie sniper from Proserpine. In August 1915, a single bullet fired from the Turkish side passed through spotter Tom Sheehan's telescope, and through his hands, mouth and cheek, before hitting Billy in the shoulder. In the end, it was Billy who shot and killed Abdul. The Turkish army immediately retaliated, aiming its heavy artillery at Billy's hiding position and completely destroying it. Fortunately for the little Aussie sniper and his spotter, they had already evacuated to their unit trenches. For his efforts on Gallipoli, Billy was mentioned in dispatches by General Sir Ian Hamilton. He was awarded the British Distinguished Conduct Medal in 1916, as the inscription on his medal states, for:

Conspicuous gallantry from May to September 1915 at Anzac as a sniper. His courage and skill were most marked and he was responsible for a very large number of casualties among the enemy, no risk being too great for him to take.

The Australian soldiers were evacuated from Gallipoli in December 1915, and Billy was sent first for training in England and then to fight in France as part of the 31st Battalion. The type of warfare on the Western Front was very different to that on Gallipoli. It is unlikely that, as a sniper, Billy spent much of his time on the battlefield; nevertheless, his skills were put to good use. In 1917, he was recommended for, though not awarded, the Military Medal for his actions leading an antisniper fighting patrol at Polygon Wood, in Belgium. He was again mentioned in dispatches for gallantry, this time by the Commander of I ANZAC Corps, General Birdwood. In 1918, he was awarded the Belgian Croix de Guerre.

Billy's health suffered during his service, and he was frequently hospitalised to treat ailments ranging from serious infections to influenza. He was wounded on a number of occasions. One gunshot wound to the leg caused him problems for years. In 1917, while recuperating from his illness, in Britain he had a stroke of luck. Billy Sing married Elizabeth Stewart, a 21-year-old waitress from Scotland. Little is known about her or her marriage, and it is not even certain that she accompanied him back to Australia.

Billy returned to Australia in July 1918 as a submarine guard on board the troopship SS Boonah. Shortly afterwards, he was permanently discharged as a result of being unfit for duty due to ongoing chest problems. He returned to that little town of Proserpine this great hero of the ANZACs—this crack sniper; 'the murderer', as they called him. He came home and it was to a hero's welcome, which included the presentation of a purse of sovereigns from well-wishers.

Whether or not Elizabeth had accompanied Billy back to Australia, it is known that they were permanently separated by the time he took up a soldier settlement farm a few years after his return. Sadly, that farming venture failed for Billy, as did an attempt to strike it lucky in the Miclere gold fields that were near his property in Clermont, which is west of Mackay. I suppose for our region, sadly, that is where the story of Billy Sing ends. Having no luck with the farm and no luck with mining, he moved to Brisbane in 1942 to be near his only surviving sister, Beatrice. A year later, he died of heart failure at the age of 57—in poverty, as I understand it. This hero of the war—the crack sniper of the Anzacs—died in poverty.

All that remained of this one-time famous sniper was a miner's hut, worth around £20, and five shillings found in his room in a boarding house. There were no signs of medals or awards. Billy was buried at Lutwyche Cemetery in Brisbane. His headstone highlights his skills as a sniper. It reads:

His incredible accuracy contributed greatly to the preservation of the lives of those with whom he served during a war always remembered for countless acts of valour and tragic carnage.

It is fitting that, during the Centenary of Anzac, Billy Sing has been honoured again. His story has been carved and gold plated into a black granite slab at the Brisbane cemetery where he lies. The memorial was unveiled on 19 May this year, the anniversary of Sing's death. It recognises not only Billy but also all Chinese-Australians who served their country. Whatever the future holds for us, as Australians we owe a great debt to the original Anzacs. We honour them on this day, and we remember them. Lest we forget.

Sharon Claydon (Newcastle, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I am honoured to speak on this motion regarding the Anzac Centenary. I rise to pay my respects to the 60,000 Australians who fought in the Gallipoli campaign, the nearly 9,000 who died, the 20,000 who were wounded and the thousands more who carried the unseen scars of war for the rest of their lives.

At dawn on 25 April 1915, some 16,000 Australians and New Zealanders—the first Anzacs—surged ashore at Gallipoli in a place we now call Anzac Cove. We were an infant nation—the federation of Australia born just 14 years prior. As Paul Keating has reflected, the bloody battle at Gallipoli helped to 'distinguish us, demonstrating what we were made of'. He said:

Our embrace of a new sense of human values and relationships through these events, gave substance to what is now the Anzac tradition …

Those Australians fought and died not in defence of some old world notion of competing empires and territorial conquests but for the new world – the one they belonged to and hoped to return to.

On Anzac Day this year, tens of thousands gathered at ceremonies and memorials across the electorate of Newcastle to pay their respects to our past and present servicemen and women. At dawn, some 43,000 people packed on to Nobbys Beach for the region's largest service, hosted by the Newcastle City RSL sub-branch. The service had a very special guest—a woman who was almost recognising her own centenary of Anzac. Elva Nairn, of Adamstown Heights, took up her usual position in the front row at the service for her 99th Anzac Day. Born just six days after our men stepped foot on the shores of Gallipoli, Elva rose again this year at 2 am to secure her treasured spot in the front row at Nobbys Beach, wrapped in a woollen scarf and beanie with a knitted poppy fastened to her coat. Of those gathered, she said:

… you could have heard a pin drop. You only have to look at all those people and know that the spirit is still alive, especially the younger people.

Elva celebrated her own centenary just six days after the service, and I look forward to seeing her in the front row again next year. Dawn services were also held in Shortland, Stockton, Hamilton and Beresfield, where large numbers of Novocastrians gathered to pay their respects. Other services were held at Cooks Hill surf lifesaving club, Merewether, Adamstown and Lambton. Many observed that the City of Newcastle was 'alive' all day and, as Elva recalled, so too was its Anzac spirit.

It is often the personal stories, however, that draw the deepest connection to the sacrifice of war. I would like to share with the House a remarkable story that was told at an Anzac service I attended at Callaghan college, Waratah, a high school in my electorate. The story was told by a teacher at the school, Julie Woollard, in loving memory of her father's cousin. John Woollard, known as Jack to most, enlisted in 1916 in Maitland, alongside Captain Clarence Jeffries VC, who was awarded a Victoria Cross. With the 34th Battalion, Jack headed to the battlefields of Europe. I would like to read an extract from a letter that young Jack wrote to Julie's grandparents from somewhere in Belgium, dated 2 August 1917:

Dear Uncle,

Many thanks for the long and interesting letter of May which I received yesterday.

I can imagine you all comfortably settled in your new home and wouldn't mind if I could drop in for an hour of two but I hope to call on you some day after the war.

Remember me to Edith and your bonnie boys. I am sure you will train them up to be good honest men who will never bring dishonour on their father's name. I am doing my bit to keep the name good.

I have just come out from a spell behind the line after 32 days in the trenches. I spent 9 days in the front line which I entered for the first time exactly on my birthday and I have had the good fortune to come through all without a scratch and apparently none the worse for this stint, although I was in many a hot "strafe" by the enemy's artillery and under shellfire all the time, while I suffered no small amount of hardship and bad times generally because of the frequent wet weather we had to put up with.

I was surprised to find how much a man can stand without serious consequences in the way of loss of sleep and wet feet with his nerves at high tension continually.

I fancy you learnt some of those hard lessons in your droving days.

I was on a Lewis gun team so I was stationed at the most advanced parts of the line in our sector, and for periods of 24 hours on three different occasions, our team with another and some bombers, held a strong point about 50 yards in advance of the front line. One night there was a strafe on by Fritz's artillery when we had a hot time but he missed us all, although his high explosives, pineapples, Ninnies, shrapnel and whizzbangs dropped very close. Although the bursting shells have a way of putting the wind up men yet there's a grand thrill in it all which makes the blood run as long as you don't get hit.

A few of our men were killed and a large number wounded, and put out of action with shell shock as Fritz kept up a continual bombardment of our own sector as it was more advanced than the rest of the line.

Two days after we came out there was a big advance along our front extending from the river Lys to the coast so we just missed out on the 'hop over the bags'. As far as we know we will have a few weeks rest before going back into the trenches.

Today I commenced a course in Signalling, learning the Morse code, so I suppose the next time I go into the trenches I will go, not as a Lewis Gunner or rifleman but as a signaller which will be more in my line as all messages are sent by telephone while the wires remain unbroken, and by Morse lamp if the wires are out.

The weather here has for some days past been unpleasantly wet and rather cold, in spite of the season. I am afraid we are in for a cruel time if we have to spend a winter here.

No one will hail the day of peace with more real joy than the boys of the front and I know it now. So, in the hope that that glad day will soon come and that He who watches over all and slumbers not, nor sleeps, will care for you and yours and me and mine and shortly bring us all together again in peace and happiness.

I am,

Yours fervently, Jack

Tragically, Jack was one of 25,000 men who died during the Battle of Passchendaele, in Belgium, just two months after writing this letter. He never got to see his uncle's new home or those bonnie boys or rejoice in that day of peace he and so many others longed for. I thank Julie and the Woollard family for kindly sharing Jack's story. It is the personal stories of men like Jack that help shape the Anzac legend as we know it today. As Paul Keating, many years later, was to so astutely observe:

What the Anzac legend did do, by the bravery and sacrifice of our troops, was reinforce our own cultural notions of independence, mateship and ingenuity. Of resilience and courage in adversity.

We liked the lesson about supposedly ordinary people; we liked finding that they were not ordinary at all. Despite the fact that the military campaigns were shockingly flawed and incompetently executed, those ‘ordinary people’ distinguished themselves by their latent nobility—

people like Jack Woollard. Lest we forget

Ms Anna Burke (Chisholm, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

We are fortunate to live in a land of peace and freedom, a country of wealth and prosperity, which is home to a profoundly multicultural and diverse community. During the one hundredth anniversary of the landing of the Anzacs at Gallipoli Cove it is important to remember that the things we can now take for granted did not come without a cost or sacrifice. We are not a country born out of war, we are not defined by war or our involvement in it, but we are also not a country that has escaped the loss and horror of war. Too many men and women have fought and died to protect our freedom over the last century and, sadly, too many still do. While there will always be differences of opinion about what Gallipoli means to our nation's spirit and identity, the landing of the Anzacs at Gallipoli Cove, the tragic loss of life that followed and the conduct, camaraderie and fortitude they showed is forever etched into the Australian story. While not Australia's first participation in a conflict overseas, it was the beginning of sacrifice on a scale we had not yet endured.

This year, in the Centenary of Anzac, it is important to recognise the significance of the Anzac spirit, which also infuses every part of our commemoration for every fallen soldier in every conflict. The Anzac spirit belongs to every Australian, not just to those who trace their origins to the early settlers but also to those who contribute to make our country great and who freely embrace the whole of the Australian story as their own. Many are actually over in the great hall, tonight, celebrating the story of settlement—now—in this country.

In Anzac Cove in the worst of circumstances, against the greatest adversity, the Anzac soldiers found the best in themselves and each other. Like many in this place, I have travelled to Turkey and Gallipoli—not on any delegation, but as a backpacker after my university years. I have stood on that beach and looked in amazement and thought, 'Why? Why would anyone think of landing on this tiny strip next to that amazing hill?' It was quite a moving experience to be there, to see the row of graves and to actually be part of that journey. And again, to marvel at why we did it.

But the story of the Anzacs is just the first in a very long list of deeds of valour performed by the servicemen and servicewomen of Australia's military since that fateful landing—deeds of valour performed in the world war that came after the war to end all wars and repeated over and over again in the regional conflicts that have plagued us in every decade since. The length of that list of deeds is at once a source of great sadness and great pride—sadness for every occasion we have had to call upon the men and women of our armed services to put their lives on the line for our country and pride that every time they have been called their courage, dedication, camaraderie and compassion have shown no bounds. But through it all there are mothers, fathers, brothers, sisters, wives and children who have lost the person closest to them. Those young men who never came home left a hole in the family and the country they fought to protect.

Like many Australians, I have a personal connection with the story— my grandfather, Edward William James Burke, served in both World War I and World War II. Luckily for me, he returned from both. Many years ago my cousin Peter Crook went to the War Memorial and got my grandfather's war records. It was amazing to read that my grandfather was borne in 1891. I had the records but I could not make head nor tail of them. They are quite difficult to decipher. Much to my chagrin, they sat in a drawer. I promised my cousin that I would try and work out what it was all about. Unlike everybody else, we do not have a letter, we do not have a medal and we do not have a picture. There was nothing left of my grandfather's service. My grandmother, whom he met in England at the demobbing at the end of World War I, a very short and unsentimental Irish woman, had thrown everything out. So, during the Centenary of Anzac I asked a very good friend of mine at the Box Hill RSL, Brian Tateson, if he would read and decipher the records of my grandfather from both World War I and II. He went off to World War I. He was not at Gallipoli—he did not sign up until 1916. But he saw the whole conflict and was at the demobbing in England. He then came home, had his 10 children, and left behind my grandmother to run the milk bar, with said children, and signed up for World War II. I don't know why he signed up for World War I, but I have a pretty good idea why he signed up for World War II!

But we had nothing, so Brian Tateson at Box Hill RSL and Gail Robertson took it upon themselves to decipher the war records and get, on behalf of my family, my grandfather's medals. Sadly, I forgot to bring them with me. I would love to be able to display them, because not only have the RSL given me my grandfather's medals, but they have had them mounted in a magnificent case for me. We are now working out who is the best person to look after my grandfather's medals. Sadly, my father is gone, but the eldest of 10 is still with us, as is the youngest. So there are four of the 10 remaining and there are something in the vicinity of 40 grandchildren, over 60 great grandchildren, and we are not sure about the great greats at this point in time. But we are incredibly proud of this service to our nation. I am incredibly grateful to the Box Hill RSL as we now have a replica of the medals, beautifully bound, so that we can reflect upon that service—not to glorify it, but to say thank you for that contribution.

One hundred years on and I am proud to say to my community of Chisholm that the commemoration of the Anzac spirit saw thousands upon thousands of local residents turn out to local services and RSLs to honour the fallen. As always, I attended the dawn service at the Box Hill RSL. It was a chilly morning but there were over 10,000 people in attendance, this at a small suburban occasion. There was another great occasion at Oakleigh RSL—I could not get there—and other great ones at Clayton and Glen Waverley. I went to some services they had held the Sunday before, and it was just an amazing experience. Both my children actually got out of bed at the crack of dawn to come with me, which was just delightful, as well.

The community also took full advantage of the Anzac Centenary grants program, which funded some important local projects. I am pleased to announce that all of these have been beautifully done and wonderfully handled. Box Hill RSL commissioned Steven Cooke to research and publish The Sweetland Project, a book chronicling the life of Stephen Sweetland and 26 other soldiers from the shire of Nunawading who lost their lives in Anzac Cove. One of the RSL members had gone around and noticed that all of the streets in Box Hill had certain names and he could not work out why until he looked at the World War I memorial and realised they were the names of all the fallen in our area. They commissioned historian Steven Cooke, who put together a great collection of those stories.

Oakleigh and District Historical Society undertook enormous research to uncover the long-forgotten Avenues of Honour, which were once prominent throughout the City of Monash. This is the pretty Melbourne tradition of planting trees to remember the fallen. They found out where they all were, and the names of the individuals.

The Friends of Wattle Park and the Wattle Park Heritage Group received funds to make significant improvements to the Wattle Park Patriotic area and Lone Pine precinct, where the annual Anzac service regularly gets one of the largest turnouts in my electorate. It is home to the original lone pine—the original cone that was brought back from the First World War. So if you are in Wattle Park please get on down and see the memorial.

The Box Hill Historical Society restored, framed and put on a display of nine historical photographs of local men who served in the First World War. The Rotary Club of Mount Waverley constructed a new arched walkway and garden area commemorating local soldiers who lost their lives. It is a wonderful community effort and I really want to thank the student from Mount Waverley Secondary College who actually designed it for the group.

Wattle Park Primary School students and mosaic artist Deb Cotter will be working two days a week during term 3 to create a First World War Commemorative Trail at the school. I am looking forward to seeing the end product. Whitehorse Council will be joining with local primary school students to create a field of ceramic poppies on the lawn in front of Box Hill Town Hall, in time for Remembrance Day. It is a historic town hall and this will look magnificent. Oakleigh Carnegie RSL has completed a major restoration of the Roll of Honour at the RSL. I encourage everyone to take a moment to appreciate the newly restored board. One of the fallen from the area was actually left off the original board, which was an oversight as his family are still connected to the area. So his name has been honoured as part of this. If you get a chance to go down to the Oakleigh RSL drop in for a look. There is great music and food to be had there, as well.

These are important local commemorations. Each will tell stories of individual sacrifice and heroism by people whose names might otherwise be lost to history—something that we can never let happen. There is no glory in war, no victory that does not feel hollow and no price paid that was not too high. Every life lost, whether friend or enemy, is a tragedy. We yearn for the day when such tragedies need not occur.

If we are to take any solace from these tragedies, it is that in most cases, nations who once met in war can now call each other friends. There is no better way for us to continue to honour the sacrifices of our service men and women than to appreciate and nurture our way of life right here in our community, contributing to it with our energy, our vision, our time and our care. Now and for all time, we will remember them. Lest we forget.

Joe Hockey (North Sydney, Liberal Party, Treasurer) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

One hundred years on—just three generations in human terms, it is still hard to come to terms with the tragedy and the triumph that was Gallipoli. As a strategic initiative it was a tragedy—a failure in almost every military sense. As a marker of the courage, fortitude, and sheer determination of the human spirit it was a triumph, one out of which so much which is unique to us as Australians was forged.

In June 1915 ANZAC troops were poised between the great events of the Gallipoli campaign. Their minds must have gone back to those days in the previous November when they had set forth from the port of Albany, escorted by three warships—HMAS Sydney, HMAS Melbourne and the Japanese cruiser HIJMS Ibukion what they expected to be some sort of great adventure fighting in Europe for King and country. They had enlisted in their thousands.

They went with songs to the battle, they were young,

Straight of limb, true of eye, steady and aglow.

They were farewelled by parades in every town, village and hamlet, all of which were to suffer from their loss and none of which would ever be the same again. They did not expect to be landed on the beaches of an unknown and barely heard of land but, true to their oaths and their honour, they landed and they fought. It did not take long for them to come face to face with the realities of war.

On 25 April they had struggled up from the beaches into the scrub and the gullies and the fierce terrain. They had heard that Albert Jacka had won Australia's first Victoria Cross at Courtney's Post on 19 May. Then on 24 May they had paused for one terrible day in an armistice so that they and the Turks could clear the dead from the field to make it easier to resume the fighting. The staggering British losses at the three battles of Krithia were fresh in their minds, and their own extraordinary tests at Lone Pine, Chunuk Bair and the Nek, where seven more Victoria Crosses were to be won, lay but a few weeks ahead. It is staggering to recount the casualties of these few brief months: 44,150 Allied soldiers lost their lives and 141,547 became casualties. Of the dead, 8,709 were Australians and 2,779 New Zealanders. They now lay alongside the British, Irish, French, Indians and Newfoundlanders who had fallen. They had mixed for the first time with trenchers from Newfoundland, not then part of Canada; with a large contingent of Indian soldiers of the King-Emperor; with the French, about whom they had heard many curious tales; and even with a mule corps composed entirely of Zionists fighting under the Star of David flag—the first such corps for 2,000 years. Across but such a little space were to lie 86,692 Turkish dead out of a quarter of a million casualties. If anything, they were even younger than the Anzacs who fought them. But they were fighting for their fatherland and had no understanding of the forces or comprehension of the politics which had brought so many enemies from so far away to their home shores. On all sides the killing was brutal, the suffering indescribable, the courage exemplary and the camaraderie magnificent.

One feature of the Great War was the number of serving parliamentarians who were accorded leave of absence from their seats and who went to fight. Nine sitting members of this parliament served. One of those was Granville de Laune Ryrie, later Sir Granville Ryrie, the then Liberal member for North Sydney—my predecessor. Born in 1865—exactly 100 years before my birth—in Michelago, Ryrie had served in the Boer War. He landed at Gallipoli on 19 May 1915. On 29 April he was severely wounded and was evacuated. He returned to duty and was wounded a second time in December. Again he returned to duty, serving in Syria, taking part in the battle of Beersheba, where he rode a horse provided to him by the people of North Sydney. He went on to serve in Egypt and rose to the rank of Major General. It is ironic that my own grandfather, who had reportedly been a spy for the Catholic church, was sent by the British to rebuild Beersheba after the member for North Sydney had taken it as part of the everlastingly great charge of the Light Horse on Beersheba in 1917. Granville Ryrie served this House as the Liberal member for North Sydney from 1911 to 1917. He then sat as a Nationalist until 1922, when he was elected to the new seat of Warringah—currently held by the Prime Minister. He served as Assistant Minister for Defence and later as High Commissioner in London, and then as the Australian delegate to the League of Nations. He died in 1937.

Two future prime ministers served at Gallipoli, Stanley Melbourne Bruce and Clement Atlee—as, of course, did the founding president of modern Turkey, Mustafa Kemal Ataturk. That Australia and Turkey have, since those bloody and terrible days, forged a close relationship says much about the men who fought and the men who made peace, which they hoped would prevent the carnage ever happening to their children and those beyond. That they were disappointed in this hope should remind us to be ever vigilant to ensure that there is no recrudescence of the precursors of war: hatred, intolerance, economic despair and political tyranny. It is sobering that but a stone's throw from the shores of Gallipoli we are witnessing such a conflict again in our time—one which contains within it so much to put us in peril once again.

Despite its centrality for us as a nation, Gallipoli was but a sideshow in a far greater and utterly more terrible conflagration caused by an act of fanaticism and a failure of statesmanship. Before peace was restored, 10 million soldiers and seven million civilians had died and 20 million had suffered as casualties. In that time, old, great and historic nations and dynasties ceased to exist. New and fragile nations were born, and millions of colonised people —without their consent—gained different destinies and new masters, including Australians. A way of life that had developed and been sustained for generations was obliterated and a new paradigm settled across the face of the planet. All the old truths ceased to be true. Class and gender relationships were changed inexorably and forever.

A young nation—ours—lost its sense of innocence. It committed itself to the conflagration—to the last man and the last shilling—because that is what it meant to be part of the great Empire. It poured its blood into the soils of the Dardanelles, the sands of the Middle East, the jungles of Papua and the mud of the Western Front. It rose to the challenge with heroism based on mateship and stout hearts. It produced soldiers, nurses and commanders of rare courage, tenacity and true grit. It is that spirit and those men and women that we remember and we honour today. It emerged scarred, shaken and changed. But as a nation we had a new sense of self and a new confidence in our destiny.

In a time when we are reminded that fanaticism and irrationality still lurk like some evil and malign demon all too close, all too willing to take life and all too threatening to the skills of statesmen and stateswomen and politicians, we should more than ever proclaim: never again!

I know these speeches will be marked in history. I say to those that follow me both as the member for North Sydney and through the generations beyond: for so long as we have breath as Australians, we will never forget.

Terri Butler (Griffith, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

It is a pleasure to follow that excellent speech from the Treasurer in responding to this issue. On Anzac Day we stop to remember sacrifice. It is a day on which we mark, as Sir Isaac Isaacs said, the loyalty, faith, courage, skill and endurance of those who served and of those who continue to serve. And it is a day to recall the terrible lessons of war and the pressing imperative for peace and security.

One hundred years ago, more than 20,000 Australians and New Zealanders went ashore at the Gallipoli Peninsula. The four infantry battalions of the 3rd Brigade, Australian 1st Division, made the dawn landing. More than 620 Australians died on that first day of what was to become an eight-month battle. Two-hundred-and-five brave local men from the south side of Brisbane landed at Anzac Cove that day: 131 from South Brisbane, 17 from Bulimba, 15 from Kangaroo Point, 11 from East Brisbane, 11 from Woolloongabba, nine from Coorparoo, seven from West End, two from Morningside and one each from Hawthorne and Norman Park.

In Queensland, 57,000 young men signed up to serve in the 'war to end all wars'. Two out of every three who served died or were wounded. At the time, Australia was a country of barely five million people. In the First World War, nearly 400,000 wore the uniform, of which 152,000 were wounded and 62,000 died. The men who went to Gallipoli gave themselves for the sake of others. In the hundred years since, many more locals from my electorate and from the south side have joined the Australian Defence Force. In doing so they have followed the Anzacs' example.

So many Australians have given their lives in our nation's defence. Their names are inscribed on local war memorials and honour boards in every community across the country. The trees that were planted around the memorial park at Bulimba were planted in their honour. On Anzac Day this year, as we have done every year, my community and I gathered together to honour the sacrifice of the Anzacs. It was a real honour for me to be able to give an address—upon which this address is based—to those gathered at the Bulimba Memorial Park. It was an honour to attend the dawn service at Morningside. It was an honour to attend the service shortly after dawn at the Greenslopes Private Hospital. It was also an honour to have been able to attend the Coorparoo RSL event that was held to mark 100 years of Anzac, to have attended a small but beautiful ceremony that is held every year at the Balmoral memorial bowls club at Bulimba on Thyme Road and also to be represented at a range of other Anzac ceremonies. We lost count of how many I participated in along with my office, but we bought in the vicinity of 20 wreaths.

There were certainly thousands of people across the south side who commemorated the 100th year of Anzac on that day, and I know that the same is true in your own electorate of Bonner, Mr Deputy Speaker. As our community gathered together on those days we remembered those who were lost and we thought of those who had returned but who would never be the same because of their injuries and what they had endured. And, of course, that was particularly noted at Greenslopes Private Hospital, which has a long association with an organisation that deals with those who have post-traumatic stress as a consequence of war.

As I said, in remembering the Anzacs we remember how ardently we desire peace, to borrow another expression from former Australian Governor-General, Sir Isaac Isaacs. We remember that war stokes our desire for peace, because in remembering men and women's sacrifice we necessarily remember death, horror, pain, and suffering. War shatters families, but not only families. Every loss leaves a hole in our community, and every war injury carries consequences not just for those injured but for the communities to which they return.

George Harry Storey was a clerk who lived on Bulimba Street. He was just 19 when he left for Gallipoli, where he arrived as part of the 5th Light Horse Regiment on 16 May 1915. Twelve days later he was in the hospital with a gunshot wound to the head. Amazingly, he rejoined his unit, only to be back in hospital again by Christmas with frostbite. He was admitted to hospital three more times before returning to Australia and being medically discharged just three years following his enlistment. He was awarded the 1914-15 Star, the British War Medal and the Victory Medal for his valour. He served in Gallipoli, Egypt and Palestine. He died as a result of his war service at just 34 years of age. He is buried in the Balmoral Cemetery in the electorate of Griffith, which I have the honour of representing. George had enlisted just 12 days after his older brother, Fredrick. Fredrick was killed at Gallipoli on 8 August 1915.

You can imagine in that community, as well as in every other community around the country, the uncertainty and the grief and the suffering of the families and of the communities when they met, maybe at church—like the churches on Oxford Street, for example—to gather together as a community, and you can also imagine the community spirit as people rallied around those families who had not heard from members of their family who were at war. On Anzac Day we mourn with all of those families who have lost people and we mourn with all of those communities who have lost those who made the ultimate sacrifice. We mourn for the lives lost and for what could have been if not for war. And on Anzac Day we also give thanks for those who have returned and for those who still serve—like all those veterans who attend the commemorative ceremonies that we hold and that the RSLs and services groups around the country hold each year on Anzac Day—the people who march on Anzac Day and the people who are unable to march but still attend.

When Isaac Isaacs observed in 1937 our nation's ardent desire for peace, he also spoke of what is needed—clear vision, a resolute heart and a strong arm. It is true today. That is why we owe everyone who has served and everyone who continues to serve a debt that cannot be paid. They serve so that our nation's ardent desire for peace and security has a chance of being fulfilled.

So, though we cannot repay the debt we owe, we can gather together each year, not to glorify war but to make sure that past sacrifices are never forgotten—as my community has done, in the local area, for many years. As you know, the first Anzac Day commemoration committee came about from a public meeting in 1916. The community wanted to honour the fallen and all who had served. It was under Canon David Garland's energetic stewardship that the first Anzac Day was commemorated. My friend and sometime opponent Dr Bill Glasson is a leader in the community who seeks to make sure that we remember the work of Canon David Garland.

As you know, the Colmslie Sub-Branch of the RSL has led commemorations in the local area in my electorate for many years at Oxford Street, and our community was very grateful to them for that leadership. They had faced some challenges before this Anzac Day and the community rallied around those people, including all of the other RSL sub-branches—and there are quite a few in my electorate—to ensure that the Morningside dawn service went ahead for the 100 years of Anzac. There are so many—I have mentioned some of the RSL sub-branches. I have mentioned Coorparoo. There is also a sub-branch that you and I share, which is Holland Park, which has a strong naval contingent. There is the Cannon Hill District and Vietnam Services RSL Sub-Branch, the nashos at Norman Park, the Hellenic sub-branch down at west end, and I have mentioned Colmslie and the groups that coalesce around the memorial bowls clubs. There are so many services organisations. I should mention St Stephen's; I should mention Yeronga Dutton Park. There are so many that work so hard to ensure that we adequately, properly and respectfully commemorate the work, contribution and sacrifice of all members of the armed services, especially those who have made the ultimate sacrifice or those who have been injured at war. Our community also owes a great debt to those people who continue to stoke those commemorations.

I conclude by expressing my gratitude to those organisations for ensuring that this year our community held wonderful, appropriate and dignified commemorations of the Centenary of Anzac. I express my deepest condolences to all who have lost family and friends to war, armed conflict or dangerous peacekeeping missions. I also offer sympathy to those survivors who have been wounded or have been affected by injury, whether seen or unseen. I know that my constituency would want me to express its gratitude to all of those who have served.

Gary Gray (Brand, Australian Labor Party, Shadow Minister for Resources) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

My grandfather, James Albert Lees, enlisted in the York and Lancaster Regiment from his home town of Rotherham, in Yorkshire, in the early days of World War I. He was signed up in what they called the Pals recruitment, or a Kitchener recruitment process. He belonged to his local sporting club, and as a young athlete he and his friends, his pals, signed up for the York and Lancaster Regiment. They served their war beginning at the Somme, and my grandfather, James Albert Lees, served most of his war in either hospitals or in prisons. But he survived his war, and for that we give thanks to the Lord. He had a good war; he got through it.

The Anzac legend was born on the shores of modern day Turkey, on 25 April 1915, when the Australian and New Zealand Army Corps invaded the Gallipoli peninsula. This daring but ultimately unsuccessful campaign ended after eight months with over 25,000 Australian casualties and over 8,000 deaths. War creates loss, uncertainty and unending devastation for families, communities and countries.

The troops involved in the Gallipoli campaign came from the length and breadth of Australia and New Zealand. Each state and New Zealand supplied a quota of troops who made their way by sea to their designated rendezvous point. For many that was off the southern port of Albany, off Western Australia. The ships began to assemble from 24 October 1914. When they arrived in King George Sound, Albany, the troops were not allowed ashore, although many did get a trip to land to take part in marches or other organised excursions. For many of the troops who fought and died at Gallipoli, Albany was therefore the last that they ever saw of Australia.

The people of my electorate of Brand hold deep ties to World War 1 and the Gallipoli campaign. Rockingham, which is in the heart of my electorate, holds, I believe, the second-biggest Anzac morning march-past west of Adelaide. Rockingham is home to the Royal Australian Navy's Fleet Base West. It is also home to many of the thousands of young Australian men and women who, tonight, will serve in our forces overseas. Rockingham was also home to some of the brave young men of Western Australia's own 11th Battalion, whose distinguished service began when they received enemy fire as the first ashore, at Gallipoli, providing cover for the Anzac landings. The 11th Battalion had practised on the beach at Rockingham.. The 11th Battalion had called Rockingham their home.

The Anzac Centenary Local Grants Program, administered by the Commonwealth government, was used recently to fund a local project at the Rockingham War Memorial. The grants were to support projects honouring Australia's servicemen and servicewomen as part of the Anzac Centenary national program. This particular project involved the purchase and installation of eight commemorative seats and plaques around the war memorial cenotaph in Flinders Lane, Rockingham. The project was directed through the RSL City of Rockingham Sub-Branch, which is currently headed by the very capable Lyndon Jackson as president and Jennifer Sciortino as secretary. The grant was for around $25,000. The first plaque on the chairs reads:

These commemorative seats are in memory of the sons who were born and/or resided in Rockingham whose courage and sacrifice defended and preserved our freedoms. WW 1 1914-18 Lest We Forget

The names listed on the plaque are as follows: Alford C, who died; Armstrong RJ; Bell RR; Barter GM; Barter RD, who died; Carroll HJ; Colledge REL; De San Miguel C; Evans FW, who died; Fry GW; Hanretty RH, who died; Hanretty TP; Mead WE, who died; Hymus HA; Hymus WJ; Northover CE; Parkin CE; Sloan LT; Smirk WJ; Stokes HJ; and Stokes FH.

Many of these names are familiar to the people of Rockingham. They are names that can be seen today on street names. They name our local reserves. They become part of our local history and lore. They live on in modern descendants and families.

The De San Miguel family name remains prominent in the Rockingham area. Charles De San Miguel joined the Army on 9 March 1916, and was in the 1st Australian Division, 11th Battalion. He was captured at Tagnicourt on 20 March 1917, reported missing on 26 March 1917, and officially recorded as prisoner of war on 26 September 1917. He was registered at Limburg Camp, Germany. On 10 December 1918 he was repatriated from Germany to England, and he returned to Australia per the Lancashire,on 21 March 1919.

Charles was the son of Angel and Mary De San Miguel of Hope Valley, Rockingham. His father was originally sent to New Norcia Mission, north of Perth. However, he left and that is how he met his wife, Mary. Their son was a prisoner of war for most of the war.

The Hymus family was one of the first to settle in East Rockingham. The Hymus family name now adorns streets and, again, has become part of the living culture of Rockingham. Wesley John Hymus—'Jack'—joined the Army on 4 February 1916 and embarked on 31 March 1916. On 3 October 1917 he was wounded in action. He was gassed in France on 15 November 1917 and hospitalised at the 3rd General Hospital. He was hospitalised again on 21 and 31 March 1917, suffering the effects of gas. He suffered from paralyses, on 31 March 1918, and was sent to hospital in Newhaven, England. He suffered a haematoma to his spinal cord from administration of medication. He was returned to Australia, paralysed, on 30 June 1918. His father, Daniel Hymus, ran the Rockingham pub until the 1920s. There is a street in Rockingham connecting the esplanade to Safety Bay Road, which is named after the Hymus family.

Parkin is another name which has been given to Rockingham streets and Rockingham landmarks. Charles Parkin went to war underage and his father wrote a strongly worded letter to the Army asking where his son was. Charles Edward Parkin was the son of Charles Parkin and Annie, nee Burns. Charles Sr was the first chairman of the Rockingham Road Board. Charles embarked on 22 November 1915. Illness plagued him and, after being hospitalised with influenza and bronchitis, he became a military policeman and then a munitions worker. He was discharged on 27 November 1919. 'Parkin' lives on as a local street name.

The Sloan family have a reserve named after them—Sloan Reserve. It is on the corner of Sloan Drive, which is also named after the family. Sloan Cottage, an original soldier's settlement house, is an important heritage feature of Kwinana. The family farmed land near the corner of Day and Mandurah Road, East Rockingham. They farmed here until 1953, until Kwinana began to be developed.

Leonard Thomas Sloan was the son of George and Emma Sloan, nee Smirk, of East Rockingham. The Smirk family are another famous local family. He joined on 4 February 1916, aged 27 years, and embarked on HMAT Suevic on 6 June 1916. He was sent to France on 25 November 1916 and was wounded in action at Ypres on 10 January 1917. On 24 June 1917 he was awarded the Military Medal. He was wounded, again, on 4 October, suffering a gunshot wound to the right side of his chest and was hospitalised in Portsmouth, England. On 15 February 1918 he returned to Australia aboard the Llanstephen Castle, arriving 9 April 1918.

His grandfather was a whaler and his father was a convict, who farmed near Kwinana and taught Sunday school for 20 years. His grandfather, James Sr, was in the Navy and jumped ship from HMS Driver for which a price was placed on his head. His father, James Jr, established the Port Hotel, now called the Rockingham Hotel.

Raymond Harold Hanretty joined the Army on 12 January 1916 and embarked on 6 June 1917. Raymond went to France on 22 November and was wounded on 1 June 1917. Ray rejoined his unit on 14 June 1917 and, on 31 May 1918, was killed in action in France. He was buried originally at Petit Blangy and then re-interned at Villers-Bretonneux.

The Hanretty family had a street named after them in Warnbro. His mother's maiden name was Thorpe. The Thorpe family also had a street named after them in Rockingham and a way named after them in Kwinana. Raymond's mother planted pine trees near where the Kwinana marshalling yards now sit. His father worked at the port of Kwinana.

William Ernest Mead joined the Army on 1 February 1916. He was 29 years and five months at the time of his enlistment. He was a farmer and grazier at 'Lealholm,' East Rockingham. William was the son of Charles and Hannah Mead.

He embarked from Fremantle aboard the HMAT A9 Shropshire, on 31 January 1916, to Suez and from there to Alexandria, then to Marseilles, arriving on 2 June 1916, joining his unit at Etaples on 7 June 1916. On 7 July 1916 he joined the 11th Battalion in France. On 23 July 1916 he was wounded in action and suffered wounds to his arm, concussion and shellshock. William died from his injuries at the 44th Casualty Clearance Station, in France, on 23 July 1916. He was buried at the British Cemetery, plot 1, row F, grave 49. William's father and his two uncles owned much of the land around the Kwinana Strip and Mundijong. The family also owned land near the corner of Gilmore and Mandurah Road up until the 1980s.

I would like to thank Wendy Durant from the Rockingham Museum for her great knowledge of my local area, its families and its history and for her assistance with the research for this speech. I of course encourage the locals of Rockingham to call into our local museum to learn of our local history and how it relates to the events of World War I and how that war helped shape our community and our nation. Lest we forget.

Pat Conroy (Charlton, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I am honoured and privileged to rise to commemorate the 100th anniversary of the landings at Gallipoli. World War I was a conflict that divided the nation, communities, political parties and even families. Even the cause of the war is still debated today—whether it was purely German aggression or a product of balance-of-power politics. But what is beyond dispute is that the honour and sacrifice of all those who volunteered for service must be honoured and commemorated, because it was a tremendous act of sacrifice that our community should be exceedingly grateful for.

Like every other community in this country, the Hunter region was deeply touched by this sacrifice. Over 11,000 served and 2,072 men lost their lives. In the Lake Macquarie region, which I predominantly represent, over 1,000 men served and 167 died. The youngest was 18 and the oldest was 47. I would like to honour all those from Lake Macquarie who served in World War I by reading their names into Hansard, because I think that is a greater honour than having a politician like me talking about their sacrifice a hundred years later. I think it is much more important to record their names. With your indulgence, Mr Speaker, I will attempt to do that in the time I have remaining:

Thomas Abell of Fassifern; David Absalom of Catherine Hill Bay; Charles Adams of West Wallsend; Albert Aley of Dora Creek; Sidney Allen of West Wallsend; Andrew Allison of Teralba; Leonard Amourous of Catherine Hill Bay; Alexander Anderson of Seahampton; Arthur Anderson of Belmont; Edward Anderson of Dudley; James Anderson of West Wallsend; Joseph Annoni of Speers Point; John Anson of Mandalong; James Antcliff of Teralba; Edward Ardron of Redhead; Walter Armitage of West Wallsend; Stanley Ashdown of Morisset; Ernest Ashman of Teralba; Paul Askew of Charlestown; John Atherton of West Wallsend; Edward Atkins of Toronto; George Atkinson of Cardiff; Thomas Aylward of Morisset; Daniel Baccus of West Wallsend; Samuel Bailey of Cardiff; Vivian Bailey of Cardiff; Wilfred Bailey of Cardiff; John Bainbridge of West Wallsend; John Bainbridge of Edgeworth; Arthur Baker of Catherine Hill Bay; Ernest Baker of Fassifern; Robert Baker of Catherine Hill Bay; William Baker of Catherine Hill Bay; John Baldwin of West Wallsend; Edwin Balkham of Dudley; Frederick Ball of Boolaroo; Thomas Ball of Toronto; Sydney Banfield of Dudley; Alexander Barbour of West Wallsend; Rupert Barnett of Boolaroo; William Barnett of Teralba; Peter Barrass of West Wallsend; Walter Barrell of West Wallsend; Benjamin Barry of West Wallsend; Percy Barry of Corranbong; Arhur Bateman of Boolaroo; John Bateup of Wyee; Timothy Baxter of Toronto; Frank Beattie of Toronto; Athol Beck of Teralba; Charles Beck of Teralba; Claude Beck; George Beck; Victor Beck; Eldred Belford; Ernest Bell; Walter Bennett; Sydney Benton; Charles Bice; Arthur Biggers; Roland Biggs; Gregory Bills; Edward Bird; William Bird; James Black; Robert Black; Samuel Black; Charles Blackett; John Blackford; Andrew Blackie; Alfred Blackman; John Blackwell; Angus Blakely; John Blakely; Edward Blatchford; Enoch Blek; George Bliss; Peter Bloomfield; Thomas Bloomfield; William Boekenstein; William Bookless; Frank Botham; Herbert Bowen; Samuel Bower; Frederick Bowers; James Bowie; William Bowles; Peter Bowling; Alexander Boyd; David Boyd; Herbert Bradley; Thomas Bradley; James Brady; Harold Branscombe; George Breakwell; Enoch Brennan; John Brennan; Joseph Brewer; Joseph Briddick; Cecil Bridgett; James Brierly; George Broadbent; John Broadbent; John Brogan; Charles Brooks; Henry Brooks; David Brown; Ernest Brown; George Brown; Harold Brown; Hugh Brown; John Brown; William Brown; James Brownlee; William Brownlee; John Broxom; Edwin Bruce; Frederick Bruce; Albert Buckley; Alfred Bull; Alexander Bull; Rupert Burchell; Harold Burgin; John Burn; George Burns; Charles Burrows; William Burt; James Byrne; Henry Cadell; Edward Cain; John Callender; Wesley Callender; Samuel Cambridge; Alexander Campbell; David Campbell; Donald Campbell; James Campbell; John Campbell; Norman Campbell; Richard Campbell; William Campbell; William John Campbell; Charles Cannon; Frederick Cantelo; Roy Cantelo; Donald Carney; Joseph Carney; Robert Carpenter; Herbert Carr; William Carr; James Carter; Arthur Cartwright; Richard Casey; Archer Castleden; Cyril Castleden; James Castleden; Wilbie Chalk; Arthur Chapman; Clifford Chapman; Edward Chapman; William Chapman; Harry Charlton; Thomas Charlton; Elijah Chenhall; Herbert Cherry; James Cherry; Oliver Cherry; Eric Christian; Arthur Cima; Albert Clapham; Bernie Clapham; William Clapham; Herbert Clark; Alfred Clarke; Patrick Cleary; Leslie Clouten; Athol Clyde; Stanley Coates; Frederick Cockburn; George Cockburn; Henry Cockburn; Leslie Coleman; Edwin Collins; John Chalmers Collins; John Donald Collins; Thomas Common; John Conn; George Connelly; Arthur Convery; Robert Convery; Charles Cooch; Thomas Cook; Frederick Cooke; Arthur Cooper; John Cooper; Harry Copeland; John Copeland; James Corbett; George Cornish; Leo Cornish; Stanley Cornish; John Cornwall; Augustine Cotter; William Cotter; Peter Cousins; Arthur Coventry; Alexander Cowie; Edward Cox; Robert Cox; Norman Cragg; Alexander Craig; John Craig; Samuel Craig; Arthur Crampton; Frank Cravos; William Cresswell; Edward Cressy; Henry Cressy; William Crisp; Thomas Crittendell; Wilfred Crittendell; George Croft; Robert Croker; William Croker; Henry Crowe; Vincent Crosbie; Aloysius Culla; William Culla; David Cummings; William Cummings; Denis Curan; Alexander Curry; John Curtin; John Dallas; Harold Dalton; John Davidson; William Davidson; Robert Davey; Wallace Davey; James Davies; John Davies; Llewellyn Davies; Thomas Davies; Thomas Davies; William Davies; James Davis; Holles Dawes; Cecil Dawson; Henry Dawson; John Dawson; Adolphe de Sylva; Edward Dean; Roy Deaves; Charles Dedman; David Deeprose; Arthur Deighton; John Dempsey; Samuel Denney; Samuel Denny; Walter Desreaux; John Dever; Thomas Dial; William Dick; John Dickinson; George Dickson; William Dickson; Samson Dimmock; Andrew Dodds; John Dodds; Richard Donaghy; Andrew Donald; Patrick Donaldson; George Doncaster; Herbert Donnelly; James Dormer; Joseph Dorrington; George Douglass; Horace Douglass; Edward Douthwaite; Leslie Doyle; Herbert Drew; Thomas Drinkwater; Thomas Driscoll; Daniel Drough; Frederick Dudley; William Duers; Edward Duffy; Percy Duncan; Robert Duncan; Horace Dunford; Robert Dunn of Belmont; Robert Dunn of Homesville; Thomas Dunn; Claude Dunshea; John Durie; Archie Eade; Sam Earnshaw; Thomas Easton; McAlpine Eather; Reginald Eather; Richmond Eather; William Eather; Archibald Ebbeck Samuel Egginton; William Eller; Joseph Elliott; Stanley Elliott; Amos Escott; Samuel Etheridge; Joseph Etherington; Tom Evans; Walter Evans; Reginald Everitt; (Extension of time granted)Lindsay Fairmington; Charles Faith; Robert Fallins; Thomas Farinden; Victor Farr; Arthur Farrar; George Farraway; John Farrell; John Farrindon; Alfred Farroway; Thomas Featherstone; Foster Fennell; Edwin Fenwick; James Ferguson; Fabian Fernie; Earl Ferris; William Fiedler; Leslie Field; Matthew Findlay; William Findlay; Benjamin Finney; Charles Firth; Arthur Fischer; Louis Fisher; Percy Fisher; Cammeles Fitzsimmons; Robert Fitzsimmons; Thomas Fitzsimmons; Walter Fleming; Harry Flowers; Ernest Ford; James Forrester; Henry Forsythe; Robert Foster; Warwick Foster; Spencer Fowler; Joseph Fox; Arthur Francis; William Francis; Michael Freeman; Arthur Freestone; Michael Freestone; Richard Frith; Herbert Froome; William Frost; Henry Fullick; Edward Gain; Albert Gardiner; Claude Gardner; Thomas Gardner; Wilfred Gardner; Harold Garfoot; Horace Garratt; William Garrett; William Gawn; Charles Geary; George Geary; Thomas Geary; William Geary; James Gemmel; David Gibb; Harold Gibson; Joshua Gibson; William Gilchrist; Thomas Gill; William Gill; Thomas Gillons; Victor Gilson; Robert Goldie; Frederick Goldsmith; Albert Goodsir; Harry Goodsir; Hugh Goodsir; James Goodsir; William Goodsir; Bertie Gordon; William Gore; William Gourdin; Alexander Gracie; Albert Graham; John Graham; Harold Grant; Lewis Grant; Charles Grey; William Grey; Gordon Green; Owen Green; Ronald Green; Thomas Greener; Albert Greenfield; Peter Greenfield; Stephen Greenfield; Ernest Greenwell; George Greenwell; Joseph Greenwood; William Griffiths; Victor Guest; Cecil Guilfoyle; James Guilfoyle; Aaron Haddon; Sergeant John Haddow; Private John Haddow; Thomas Haddow; William Haddow; Sidney Hafey; Charles Hailes; James Hainey; Andrew Hall; Arthur Hall; Albin Hall; Cecil Hall; William Hall; Andrew Halme; Walter Ham; Richard Hamilton; Walter Hancock; William Hancock; Leslie Hansen; Harry Hanson; Archibald Harden; William Harden; William Harding; Charles Harradine; Edwin Harragon; Frederick Harragon; Herbert Harrington; Arthur Harris; James Harris; John Harris; Albert Harrison; Francis Harrison; William Harrison; Reginald Harrower; John Hart; Albert Hartland; Edward Hartland; Benjamin Haworth; Ernest Hayward; Ernest Healey; John Heaton; Charles Henderson; Jack Henderson; John Henderson; William Henderson; Richard Hepplewhite; Kenneth Hill; Robert Hill; Oscar Hillery; Henry Hills; Alexander Hincks; Alfred Hindley; Albert Hindmarsh; Phillip Hoare; John Hodge; Eveleigh Hodges; Joseph Hodgetts; John Hogan; Percy Hogan; William Holden; John Holland; Frederick Holmes; William Hooey; Matthew Hopkinson; George Hopwood; William Hopwood; Daniel Horgan; Gordon Horgan; Joseph Horgan; Charles Horn; James Horn; John Horn; Clarence Horne; David Horne; John Horne; William Horne; Arthur Horsley; James Howard; Roy Hoyland; William Hoyland; John Hubbuck; Jonathan Huddart; Victor Huddleston; Anthony Hughes; Edmund Hughes; William Edward Hughes; William Victor Hughes; Richard Hugo; David Humphreys; Hugh Humphreys; Percy Humphreys; Thomas Humphreys; William Hungerford; Albert Hunt; Robert Hunt; Frederick Hunter; Robert Hunter; Charles Hyde; Robert Hyslop; Oswald Iles; William Innes; Edward Jackson; Alfred James; Frederick James; William James; William Jarvie; Edgar Jarvis; Henry Jenkins; William Jenkins; Charles Jess; Raymond Johnson; William Johnson; Alexander Johnston; Mark Johnston; Robert Johnston; William Adolphus Johnston; William Henry Johnston; Private David Johnstone; Lance Corporal David Johnstone; Alexander Jones; David Jones; George Jones; Herbert Jones; Pearce Jones; Robert Jones; Robert David Jones; Tacey Jones; William Jones, born in Stafford; William Jones born in Sydney; William Joseph Jones; Arthur Judd; Daniel Judd; Garnet Judd; William Judd; William Jury; Thomas Kane; Harold Kay; Michael Keane; Frederick Keen; James Keen; Thomas Kelly; Thomas Francis Kelly; Augustus Kembrey; Thomas Kilshaw; William King; Thomas Kirk; Carl Knudsen; William Koos; Peter Kusmin; Robert Laidlaw; Edward Laidler; Gordon Lane; Rufus Lansdown; George Laverick; Charles Laverty; John Lawson; James Leckie; Charles Lee; James Lee; William Lee; Herbert Lenham; James Lennox; Alma Lewis; David Lewis; John Lewis; William Lidgard; Albert Lindsay; William Linsley; Alexander Lochrin; William Locke; Ambrose Lockett; Harold Lofts; George Lovett; Henry Lovett; Joseph Lower; Herbert Lunn; Walter Lunn; Frederick Lyle; James MacKenzie; Allan MacLean; Horace Hector MacLean; Thomas MacLean; Alexander Main; John Mainey; Arthur Manbey; George Mansfield; Cecil Marks; Cyril Marks; John Marks; Joseph Marks; Leslie Marks; Thomas Marrion; Christian Marshall; Charles Mason; Joseph Massey; Francis Masters; James Masters; James Masterton; Frank Mathers; Donald Matheson; Edwin Mathews; William Mathews; Thomas Matthews; William Matthews; William McAllister; Guy McClintock; James McCracken; George McCurry; Leslie McCurry; Michael McDade; Evan McDonald; Hector McDonald; Malcolm McDonald; Thomas McDonald; Archibald McDougall; George McDougall; John McDougall; Joseph McDougall; William McDougall; George McDowall; Thomas McEvoy; David McGeachie; Robert McGeachie; Charles McGuiness; Leo McGuinness; George McIlwraith; Andrew McIntyre; Andrew McIntyre; Colin McIntyre; Magnus McKay; Donald McKellar; George McKenzie; John McKenzie; William McLachlan; John McLaughlan; Joseph McLaughlin; Patrick McLaughlin; Allan McLean; William McLean; Daniel McMillan; John McMillan; William McMillan; Edwin McNaughton; Dougall McNeill; Norman McRae; Jack McVea; James McWilliams; Thomas McWilliams; William McWilliams; Herbert Meaton; James Melanophy; Albert Melling; William Merritt; Kenneth Middleton; Ernest Milburn; Robert Millar; James Miller, born in Miami; James Miller, born in Northumberland; William Miller; Alexander Mills; John Mills; John Roy Mills; James Milne; Albert Minslow; Robert Minto; Abraham Mitchell; Herbert Mitchell; Edwin Mittendorf born in North Brighton; Edwin Mittendorf, born in Baltimore; John Moffat; Robert Moffatt; Albert Moffitt; Peter Moffitt; Sylvester Moffitt; John Monagle; George Moncrieff; Thomas Monks; Ernest Moon; Montague Moon; Harold Moore; James Moore; William Moore; Albert Morris; James Morris; Reginald Morris; Robert Morris; William Morris; James Morrison; Hugh Morse; John Mowbray; Cecil Muir; Thomas Muir; Edward Murphy; Hugh Murray; Lester Murray; Robert Murray; Winsleigh Murray; William Mussen; David Mutton; John Mutton; Leslie Myers; George Naylor; Robert Naylor; John Neilson, born in East Maitland; John Neilson, born in Mount Kembla; John Nelson; George Nesbitt; Amos Newell; Stanley Newell; Samuel Newton; Thomas Newton; George Nicholls; Charles Nickson; George Noble; George Norman; Charles Nugent; John O'Brien; John O'Connell; Albert O'Leary; Timothy O'Leary; James Oliver; Arthur Olsen; Henry Olsen; Andrew O'Neil; John O'Neil; Wesley O'Neil; John Oro; Francis Osborne; Henry Osborne; Bertie Osland; Arthur Oswald; Collins Oswald; Hughie Outram; Samuel Outram; Aaron Owen; Percy Owen; David Owens; Thomas Padgett; Eugene Paillard; George Palmer; Herbert Parker; Joseph Parrish; Thomas Parrish; Francis Parry; John Parryman; John Paterson; James Patterson; Robert Patterson; Frederick Payne; John Peacock; William Pearce; William Henry Srodinski Pearce; Francis Pearson; Annaniah Pellow; William Pellow; Sydney Pemberton; Edward Penfold; Percy Penfold; George Perry; John Perry; William Perry; George Pike; Hugh Pillans; Edward Plummer; James Pobje; Herbert Pocock; Robert Poole; Charles Porter; Robert Porter; William Powell; William Power; Edwin Price; John Price; Samuel Price; Sidney Price; George Pritchard; John Pritchard; Joseph Pritchard; Thomas Provan; William Punton; John Purvis; George Pyke; George Raby; Benjamin Rae; James Rae; Robert Rae; Frank Randall; Frank Randle; Lyle Ranger; Robert Raw; Francis Redman; Frank Redman; Samuel Redman; Edris Rees; Harry Rees; John Rees; Leonard Reynolds; Bernard Rhode; Clifton Rhodes; Henry Rhodes; Lawrence Rhodes; Robert Rice; William Richards; Edward Ridley; Simon Ridley; William Ridley; George Robbins; Thomas Robbins; William Robbins; Albert Roberts; Ernest Roberts; George Roberts; Robert Roberts; Herbert Robertson; William Robertson; Joseph Robinson; John Robson; James Rochford; George Rockwell; Anthony Rodgers; Ernest Ross; Harry Rowan; Edwin Rowe; George Ruddy; Cyril Rundle; Reuben Rundle; Sydney Rundle; John Rutherford; Arthur Ryan; David Edward Sault; David James Sault; William Sault; Joseph Schmitt; Alfred Searle; George Seers; Thomas Sevester; William Sevester; James Sharp; Thomas Shaw; Alexander Shepherd; Hugh Sherry; Thomas Shields; William Shiels; Edward Shillabeer; Alexander Short; Donald Short; Edward Short; Charles Simmons; Robert Simpson; Archibald Skelton; Thomas Skinner; Martin Slater; George Slavin; Peter Slavin; William Smailes; Charles Smith; Clyde Smith; Cyril Smith; David Smith; Ernest Smith; George Smith; Gordon Smith; James Smith; John Smith; Oliver Smith; Oscar Smith; Peter Smith; Robert Smith; Robert Smith; Robert Smith; William Smith; William Smith; William Smith; Robert Snedden; Andrew Sneddon; Thomas Sneddon; Henry Spatz; John Speirs; Walter Spicer; Archibald Spowart; Cecil Stainer; Harry Standing; John Stanley; Thomas Stanley; William Staunton; David Steel; James Steele; Richard Steele; James Stenhouse; William Stephen; Robert Stephenson; Charles Stewart; David Stewart; George Stewart; John Stewart; Joseph Stewart; Robert Stewart; William Stewart; William Stockdale; Henry Stoker; Joseph Storer; Robert Storey; William Stott; Francis Stout; John Straker; William Stray; Arthur Streeter; William Sturt; Edward Sullivan; Reginald Sullivan; Percy Summerscales; William Sumner; John Swadling; John Sweeney; William Symington; Hugh Talbot; Leslie Talbot; James Tarrant; James Taylor; Linus Taylor; Wilfred Taylor; William Taylor; John Thain; Frank Thomas; Henry Thomas; John Thomas; Walter Thomas; Charles Thompson; Ernest Thompson; George Thompson; Henry Thompson; James Thompson; James Swan Thompson; John Thompson; William James Thompson; William Walker Thompson; Bruce Thomson; George Thomson; James Thomson; Keith Thomson; William Thomson; Sydney Thornthwaite; Victor Thornton; Walton Thorpe; Sidney Thoroughgood; Robert Thurston; William Tidball; Michael Toner; Frank Tong; John Tonner; Richard Toomey; Adam Towers; Arthur Towers; Thomas Towler; Herbert Traynor; William Treay; John Trueland; Harry Tudor; Peter Turnbull; Robert Turnbull; Christopher Turner; George Turner; John Tutin; Ernest Urwin; Roy Urwin; Alexander Vallance; David Vallance; Robert Waddingham; Richard Wakeham; Reginald Walker; William Walker; William Cecil Walker; William Waller; Charles Walls; Albert Walters; Charles Walton; Garforth Walton; George Walton; Horace Walton; James Walton; Joseph Walton; Mark Walton; Percy Wand; Walter Wappett; Albert Ward; John Ward; Joseph Wardle; Thomas Wardle; John Waring; Alfred Warren; George Warren; Ernest Watkins; George Watkins; Robert Watson; John Waugh; Eric Webb; William Webb; Reginald Wegg; Thomas Weir; Frederick Weiss; Aage Westergaard; William Weston; Edward Whale; Ernest Whiley; Charles White; David White; Thomas White; William Whitehead; John Whitelaw; Norman Whiteman; Alexander Wickham; Charles Wickham; William Wiggs; Thomas Wilcox; Vincent Wilkinson; Alfred Williams; Algernon Williams; David Williams; Francis Williams; Roy Williams; William Williams; Sydney Williamson; Harry Wills; Charles Wilson; Frederick Wilson; George Wilson; Robert Wilson; Thomas Wilson; Thomas Crookston Wilson; Thomas John Wilson; Theodore Windross; William Wingrave; James Wood; William Wooderson; George Woodman; Charles Woods; Thomas Woods; Alfred Woodward; Francis Woodward; Frank Woodward; Charles Worsnop; Frank Worsnop; William Wotton; Alfred Wright; Cecil Wright; John Wright; Norman Yeates; Charles Yorgensen; Andrew Young; David Young; James Young; Joseph Young; Thomas Young; William Young and Thomas Younger.

I honour their sacrifice and their contribution to this country. I say thank you again on behalf of the people of Charlton. Lest we forget.

Tony Smith (Speaker) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I congratulate the member for Charlton on his marathon exercise.

Bernie Ripoll (Oxley, Australian Labor Party, Shadow Minister Assisting the Leader for Small Business) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

Tonight and over many days in this parliament and across Australia and New Zealand in 2015 we are commemorating one of the most significant events in our nation's history. Like I believe every other member of this parliament, I too want to add my voice to commemorate, to remember and to ensure that the legacy of our great Anzacs is never forgotten.

On 25 April 1915, 100 years ago, Australia and New Zealand soldiers landed on a small beach on the Gallipoli Peninsula in Turkey—that is well known. Many of these personnel were only teenagers at the time, some as young as 16 years of age and I understand there were even a few that were younger still. They were not professional soldiers nor a battle-hardened army. Many of them were volunteers willing to take great risks and for many pay the ultimate sacrifice for the freedom and quality of life we value so much today. Like the soldiers, our nation was also young. There is no doubt that the experience of Gallipoli has shaped our national character through the decades since and is still influencing the idea we hold of ourselves in 2015.

If I look back over just the last decade at events that have affected my electorate of Oxley, such as the 2011 floods that devastated so many of my local communities, it is clear that the Australian way is to stick together in hardship and to support each other. Australians have earned a reputation for courage, self-reliance and mateship, and these characteristics have been derived from our nation's history and will forever remain in our heritage.

Tonight I would like to acknowledge all current and former members of our Defence forces for being the brave and resilient representatives of our country—those currently serving, those lost in training and on operation, the wounded, the injured and the ill. It is important to acknowledge each and every one of the members regardless of the time they served as war does not discriminate on time served but on price paid. Today I also want to acknowledge that it is Vietnam Veterans' Day and honour all veterans who served during the Vietnam conflict.

In commemorating 100 years since our nation's involvement in the First World War I am not going to recount the statistics of those who served, were wound or killed at Gallipoli—those facts and figures are well known and I know they have been recounted many times in this place. Tonight I would like to make special mention of the thousands of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander soldiers who have served in Australia's armed forces. The soldiers on the front line during the First World War included Indigenous Australian personnel who managed to get their way through the recruitment process during a time when they had few rights, low wages and poor living conditions at home. Many of these personnel could not vote and none were counted in the census. The men who enlisting risked arrest and those who managed to sneak through were passed as Italian or Maori or knew the local recruiters. Sadly in many respects, it was the first time these men experienced anything approaching equal treatment in their lives and many saw this as their chance to gain education and employment opportunities previously denied to them. They also saw it as a chance to prove themselves as equal with other Australians and to campaign for better treatment after the war. In commemorating the Centenary of Anzac, we must continue to recognise the Indigenous Australians who served. Their service significantly shaped the development of Indigenous families and communities and likewise contributed to the development of the modern Australian Defence Force.

Wars are won or lost by nations but they are fought by individuals. Tonight I wanted to recount the extraordinary story of an ordinary Queensland soldier, so I went to the Australian War Memorial website and came across the story of Billy Sing, who served at Gallipoli and the Western Front. I know Billy Sing will be familiar to many Queenslanders, and I believe he has been mentioned by others in this place. William 'Billy' Sing was born in 1886 to an English mother and Chinese father. He and his two sisters were raised in rural Queensland. Billy grew up helping his parents with their market garden and he became skilled at shooting. Billy enlisted in 1914 and he was accepted into the 5th Light Horse Regiment. The Australian War Memorial website reports that as one of the first to sign-up Billy was not subject to some of the resistance towards non-white soldiers that came about later in the war. He was sent to Egypt in December 1914 and onto Gallipoli in May 1915.

On Gallipoli, Billy developed a fearsome reputation as a sniper, earning the nickname 'The Murderer' or 'The Assassin'. I want to relate to the House the kind of bravery and dedication to duty that Billy went through in his daily service. The Australian War Memorial describes it:

Every morning in the darkness before dawn Billy would find a place to hide and watch over the Turkish soldiers in their trenches. Waiting patiently with a "spotter", usually Tom Sheehan, or lon ldriess, he would wait for an enemy soldier to come into view. To avoid becoming a target of the Turkish snipers, the Australians would stay in their position until nightfall. The ANZAC war diary for 23 October 1915 states:

Our premier sniper, Trooper Sing, 2nd L.H., yesterday accounted for his 199th Turk. Every one of this record is vouched for by an independent observer, frequently an officer who observes through a telescope.

So famous did Billy become that the Turkish Army brought up their own elite sniper to try and kill him. And it is believed they nearly did. No-one can be sure who fired the shot but Billy was wounded by a single bullet fired from the Turkish side. However, the records show that in the end it was Billy who shot and killed the Turkish sniper. For his efforts at Gallipoli, Billy was Mentioned in Despatches by General Sir Ian Hamilton and awarded the British Distinguished Conduct Medal in 1916.

After the Australian soldiers were evacuated from Gallipoli in December 1915, Billy was sent to fight in France as part of the 31st Battalion. On the Western Front, Billy continued to serve with distinction. In 1917, he was recommended for but not awarded the Military Medal for his actions leading an anti-sniper fighting patrol at Polygon Wood, in Belgium. He was again Mentioned in Dispatches for gallantry, by General Birdwood, and in 1918 he was awarded the Belgian Croix de Guerre. Like so many soldiers, Billy's heath suffered and he returned to Australia in July 1918 and shortly afterwards he was permanently discharged as a result of being unfit for duty due to ongoing chest problems. He returned to Proserpine as a war hero.

But Billy's story does not end at the end of his war service. He took up a soldier settlement farm a few years after his return. This venture unfortunately failed, as did an attempt to strike it lucky in the goldfields near his property in Clermont. In 1942 Billy moved to Brisbane, and sadly a year later Billy Sing was dead. He died of heart failure at the age of 57, living in relative poverty. When he died he owned a miner's hut, worth around 20 pounds and five shillings, found in his room in a boarding house. There was no sign of his medals or awards from the war. Billy Sing's story is like the stories of so many other ordinary Australians, ordinary Queenslanders, who showed amazing bravery in achieving extraordinary feats during the Great War.

We look back on the First World War with pride and honour. As a nation we come together to remember the Anzacs and their achievements and losses, and not to glorify war or to praise victory but to appreciate how our history was derived from their sacrifice and derived from the sacrifices of men like Billy Sing, of our Indigenous soldiers and of the thousands upon thousands of ordinary Australians, from all backgrounds, who have served to protect our freedoms.

The spirit of Anzac is as relevant to us all today as it was 100 years ago, as it was being created. May the Defence Force personnel who have served this country and those who have made the ultimate sacrifice rest in peace while the spirit of Anzac continues to live in each and every one of us. Lest we forget.

Mal Brough (Fisher, Liberal Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

Today, 18 August 2015, is the 49th anniversary of the Battle of Long Tan, a battle of the Vietnam War. Why would I bring that to the attention of the House, when we are debating the 100th anniversary of the landing at Gallipoli? Because, as a former military man myself, I believe it was, above all else, the attitude that was forged in Gallipoli that has set the standard for our Defence Forces—men and women, Army, Navy, Air Force, as well as the Nursing Corps, as it used to be called, and the Mercantile Navy. Whatever branch of the Defence Forces people have been a part of, they all look to the traditions, the standards and the attitudes that were forged on 25 April 1915.

The names I am about to read out will be familiar to some, and one in particular will be familiar to most, but I would conclude that all of them, if given the opportunity, would have one thing to say. They are Private Albert Jacka, Captain Alfred Shout, Private Leonard Keysor, Lieutenant William Symons, Private John Hamilton, Lieutenant Frederick Tubb, Corporal William Dunstan, Corporal Alexander Burton and Second Lieutenant Hugo Throssell. All, of course, are Victoria Cross winners from the Gallipoli campaign. As I said, I feel confident in knowing that if they could be asked today or any time after being awarded the Victoria Cross, they would say that there were many more who were more worthy than they. That may not be true, but it is a reflection of the attitude, the mateship, the camaraderie and the collective passion they had for the tasks that they were undertaking, not to say the love and support of their comrades in arms.

Every one of the Australians who participated in that campaign forged a tradition that all Defence Force men and women strive to uphold. It is an attitude; it is something that becomes part of you when you join the Defence Forces. In my time at Kapooka, I learnt about these things. You only hope that if you find yourself on the occasion of having to face the battle and the enemy that you would find the strength that those young men did 100 years ago.

Today as I stood before the memorial, hearing from a former Governor-General and a current Governor-General, both of whom are decorated Vietnam veterans, I could not help but reflect that the survival of Delta Company 6 RAR was owed in some small part to the traditions that were formed 100 years ago—never giving in, making the best of a bad lot, facing the enemy and, in doing so, doing your mates proud.

In the 238 days there were on average 109 Australians wounded each and every day. That is a dreadful price to pay. I recall having the honour of speaking at a Maleny Anzac Day ceremony some years ago and, as I looked across the Obi Obi Creek, the scene came to me of a young man on horseback crossing that creek for the last time, heading down the Blackall Range to get on a troop ship—perhaps as part of the Light Horse—heading away for the last time. I thought too of the way families were torn apart and of the great excitement of leaving on this adventure and then the reality of the torn bodies, the death and destruction came home. One can only imagine the horror for those families.

My wish, Mr Deputy Speaker, is that this debate we have had over the past few weeks is replicated in 100 years' time. That will be the true testimony to the legend of the Anzacs. As they say:

Age will not weary them nor the years condemn.

It is up to us the Australian people, and not just the Defence Forces, not just the families of Defence Force personnel but the whole nation—our schools, our universities, our community associations—to live the spirit of Anzac, to commemorate their sacrifice, to remember and honour those men who forged a place in the world that only the Australian and New Zealand Army Corps has been able to provide in the decades since. On behalf of the people of Fisher, I say: 'Lest we forget and may they all rest in peace. We thank them for their duty to the nation.'

Question agreed to.