Don Farrell (SA, Australian Labor Party, Parliamentary Secretary for Sustainability and Urban Water) Share this | Hansard source

The incorporated speech read as follows—

It is with great sadness that I support this condolence motion. I cannot begin to imagine the profound sorrow of Private Jamie Larcombe’s family—his parents, Tricia and Steven; his sisters Anne-Marie, Emily and April; his partner Rhiannon Penhall; and of course his friends—a football-playing country boy from Parndana on Kangaroo Island will have plenty of them. As a parent myself, my heart breaks for Jamie’s parents. I cannot imagine the heartache of having to farewell a child in this way. In the normal course of things, we parents expect to precede our children.

Jamie Larcombe died in the proud and selfless service of his country. Born in Kingscote, Jamie Larcombe graduated from the Parndana Area School in 2007 and joined the Army soon after his 18th birthday. Those who knew him say he always had his eyes and his heart set on a career in Australia’s Army. Jamie Larcombe was on his first deployment to Afghanistan. He had only been there a short time—since September—that is, around the time he turned 21.

This war in Afghanistan, which has claimed 23 Australian lives, has now hit home in the tight-knit community of Kangaroo Island. Jamie is one of many brave South Australians to have faced the ultimate sacrifice in Afghanistan since the Australian Defence Force commenced Operation Slipper in 2002. Sergeant Andrew Russell died in 2002. We lost Sapper Darren Smith and Private Tomas Dale last year and, now, Sapper Jamie Larcombe. His passing serves to remind us, yet again, of the reality of what we ask our defence personnel to do in various theatres of conflict around the world. They wear their uniforms in our name and put their lives on the line, in a very real way, ever day.

Mr President, at another time in this place I spoke about Australia’s commitment to the war in Afghanistan. I said in that speech that unmitigated tragedies like the death of Jamie Larcombe are not just headlines in newspapers and radio and television news reports to be forgotten in a day or two. These tragedies are devastatingly real. Jamie Larcombe’s sacrifice is real, enduring and brutally painful—like those sacrifices made by the other personnel who have lost their lives in Afghanistan.

So, at times like this, we would not be human in we did not stop and ask ourselves whether we should stay in this conflict which is half a world away, a conflict that has taken 23 Australian lives and continues to bring so much grief and heartache to brave Australian families. But we stay to mark the courage and honour the sacrifice of Jamie and the other Australians who have died or been injured pursuing peace and security in Afghanistan. We stay to say to Jamie and his family that his was a fight worth having and a peaceful, safe, secure and just world is an objective worth pursuing.

The Ode of Remembrance is taken from Laurence Binyon’s poem For the Fallen, first published in The Times in September 1914. Over the decades, the third and fourth stanzas of the poem—more often just the fourth—have been recited as a tribute to all those who have died in war. We have all stood in RSL clubrooms around our nation and listened to it in respectful silence. I recite it now for Sapper Jamie Larcombe:

He went with songs to the battle, he was young.

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

He was staunch to the end against odds uncounted,

He fell with his face to the foe.

He shall grow not old, as we that are left grow old:

Age shall not weary him, nor the years condemn.

At the going down of the sun and in the morning,

We will remember him.

And we will.

Question agreed to, honourable senators standing in their places.