Rebekha Sharkie (Mayo, Centre Alliance) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I rise to talk about the Virtual War Memorial. This is a website that details the experiences of over 650,000 of our veterans. It's a South Australian initiative. The memorial uses a digital platform, recognising that younger Australians are heavily reliant on technology. It seeks to increase the understanding of the legacy of the brave men and women who have served our nation. This memorial has become an excellent education tool. We have over 2,100 detailed, personal profiles that our schoolchildren, mainly across South Australia, have uploaded to the site. I really urge the government to support increased funding to this memorial. At the moment, it's largely self-funded. It is a valuable resource for our schools, for our RSLs and for our researchers, but there is so much more that needs to be done. We have 2,100 detailed, individual stories of veterans on the memorial, but ultimately we have 650,000 potential stories there. I believe that we need to make sure that we can get some federal funding for this, whether that's through Education or through Veterans, to contribute further to the South Australian government funding that currently exists. This could be an amazing resource for our whole nation.