Jason Clare (Blaxland, Australian Labor Party, Shadow Minister for Resources and Northern Australia) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

George Butcher, Lawler Sutton Byrne, Alfred Callaghan, Walter James Edward Callaghan, Sydney J Currall, George Arthur Dale, Frank Dalton, Frederick James Goodwin, Herbert Henry Gyler, Reuben Arthur Harvey, Harold Clement Hyde, Harry Lambert, William Middleton, Albert Edward Mitchell, Walter Charles Monaghan, Edgar Athling Morris, Thomas Partington, Walter Edward Peake, Edward Joseph Radford, Marcus Dill Reid, Herbert Leslie Rowley, Alfred Edwin Smith, Leonard Gilmore Smith, Leslie David Tynan—24 names, 24 men from Bankstown who went off to war over 100 years ago and didn't come home and 24 men that Bankstown forgot.

There is a memorial in Bankstown with the names of the local men who went off to war and fought and died in World War I. These 24 names are not on it. We discovered this a couple of years ago when I organised for a book to be written about the men on that memorial. Those names weren't on it. We don't know why their names weren't there or why they were forgotten. In just over two weeks, it will be 100 years since the war they fought and died in ended. As part of that commemoration, the names of these 24 men, these 24 Bankstown boys, have finally been added to the memorial. Every Anzac Day and every Remembrance Day, we make a promise. We promise that we will remember them, but we haven't done that—not these men, not for the last 100 years. They were forgotten. But that's not the case anymore. This Remembrance Day in Bankstown, at long last, we will make good, finally, on that old and solemn promise that we will remember them. Lest we forget.