Craig Kelly (Hughes, Liberal Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

On this Saturday, 18 August, we commemorate and remember the 52nd anniversary of the Battle of Long Tan. It was a battle that took place in a rubber plantation near Long Tan in Phuoc Tuy Province in South Vietnam during the Vietnam War. We remember the 18 Australians who were killed and the 24 who were wounded. We remember that 11 of those that lost their lives were national servicemen and that a further 13 national servicemen were wounded in action. It was a battle that showed the courage and the resolve of the Australian Defence Force to fight and to preserve the freedom and values of our nation.

It is difficult for us to understand what it would be like in such a battle. I would like to quote the words of Private Terry Burstall, who participated in the Battle of Long Tan:

We recovered the bodies of our friends who had been laughing living beings the day before. Nothing takes the supposed glory out of war more quickly than the sight of dead mutilated friends. Unfortunately it brings about a hardening of feeling toward your enemy that pushes normal human feelings of compassion to the back of the mind. It brings conflict down to a very personal level and gives you the licence to remain aloof from the suffering of others as long as your own little band … is protected.

We lost over 500 Australians in the Vietnam conflict. There was shame for our nation in the way we treated those service men and women when they returned. We should have been holding them up as heroes, but they were demonised by many sectors of Australian society. This is to our eternal shame as a nation. Today we recognise and we understand those mistakes. This Saturday, I'm sure, with all members of parliament, we'll stand and commemorate all those Australians who served and fought in Vietnam.