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

Next Monday will be Anzac Day 2016. I was in Royal Melbourne Hospital last year on the Centenary of Anzac Day, having had open heart surgery following a heart attack, and very inconvenient it was too. But things are looking more promising this year. Yesterday I attended the Glenroy RSL Anzac Day Sunday service together with my father, Allan.

Dad's older brother, my uncle John, was killed while the front gunner of a Liberator in action against the Japanese in the Flores Sea during World War II. After John's death, a memorial gate was erected in his honour where the little township of Mooralla was then located, at the back of the Grampians in western Victoria, on the East-West Road close to the Henty Highway. My brother, Lex, has grown some Lone Pines from the Warrnambool Botanic Gardens Lone Pine, which is descended from the original Lone Pine, and later this year he will be planting a Lone Pine at John's gate.

I want to thank the Glenroy RSL and the other local RSLs—Coburg, Fawkner, and Pascoe Vale—for the extensive and lasting contribution they have made and continue to make to the great community of Wills. They are people like Ken White, Bert Lawes and Tom Clayton at the Glenroy RSL; Godfrey Camenzuli, Kerry Marshall and David Thompson at Coburg RSL; Tom Parkinson and John Paterson at Pascoe Vale RSL; Bert Randall and Alan Henderson at Fawkner RSL; and many others as well, of course.

So why do we gather every year to retell the Anzac story, and why are the crowds who gather around Australia to hear it getting larger rather than smaller? I think the first reason is this. Every culture has a fixed and sacred site, with stories to be handed down to be retold by each new generation. In Australia a single story captures the public imagination: Anzac.

Anzac as legend was very much the creation of one man, Captain Charles Bean, whose greatest legacy was his first six volumes of the Official History of Australia in the War of 1914-1918. His two volumes on Gallipoli are written with evocative, timeless force, celebrating the mettle of the soldiers, by a man who saw most of the campaign at first hand.

It is worth remembering that Gallipoli is arbitrary in relation to Australia. The Dardanelles lie on the other side of the world, with no British traces, and the military campaign was, as is well known, a failure. I think we should thank the Turkish people for their generosity and hospitality, which have in a sense given us permission to commemorate ANZAC in the way that we do. I particularly note the words of reconciliation from the commander of the Turkish forces and founder of the Turkish nation, Mustafa Kemal Ataturk.

And then you have the First World War memorials, thousands of them, which sprang 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's statue 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 and sacrifice.

Captain Bean ends his first volume by asking the question, 'What carried each man on when he realised he had been cast into some godforsaken Turkish wilderness without food or sleep, the dead and wounded all around, the cause seemingly hopeless?' Bean's answer was 'character'. I believe the first reason we gather together at this time is that 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.

And I think that there is a second reason also. It is that each generation has its own battles to fight, its own challenges to confront, and that, in facing those challenges, courage and character are just as important as they were at Gallipoli. In the face of the global threats and challenges facing us now, it is easy for people to be passive, throwing their hands up in the air and saying: 'What can I achieve? The challenge is 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 are not some museum piece to be taken down and dusted off and admired once a year and then put back on the shelf. They should inspire us to fight the battles of our own time. There are many things that we can do as individuals and together. They may involve some sacrifice, but they are worth it in the common good. The Anzac legend endures because we have need of it today and because our children will have need of it tomorrow.