Deborah O'Neill (NSW, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Hansard source

I rise to make some remarks around Anzac Day, which has occurred in the interim since our last sitting. Traditionally, Anzac Day is a day of solemn reflection and remembrance, and senators in this place absolutely understand the role it plays in the articulation of the character of our nation. But, for me, this year, it was a celebration—a celebration of all that the best of the Anzac spirit stands for, in terms of camaraderie, family, and the connection that it makes between all Australians, even across time.

I was honoured to play a part in a heart-warming Anzac story that stretches from World War II, from the staging ground in Darwin, to the ammunition stores of Fort Scratchley in Newcastle, and from Umina Beach on the New South Wales Central Coast to the grazing town of Grenfell in the central west of the state. It began with a chance meeting with a Umina local by the name of Ian Wilkes at Woy Woy, while I was actually handing out at the by-election for the state seat of Gosford—and I want to take this opportunity immediately to congratulate the wonderful Liesl Tesch, who is now the member for Gosford; she is a remarkable woman and it is a pleasure to have her representing the Labor Party and the community of Gosford.

Ian Wilkes told me of some medals that he had found amongst his father's war memorabilia from some years ago. The problem Ian had wrestled with for years was trying to find who these medals belonged to. They were inscribed 'Private Vivian Huckel', and he had made many attempts, over decades, to track down the owner, but he was unsuccessful.

I asked Ian to pass the details on to my office and, after a bit of great sleuthing and a happy dose of good luck, we turned up Ron Huckel, Vivian's brother, in Grenfell. I can tell you: it was an emotional experience, on Tuesday, 18 April, to receive these medals from Ian Wilkes, who was indeed relieved to hand them over to me, knowing that he need wrestle with his conscience no longer because he had done his job; he was sending them home. To say that Ron was excited when he was contacted by my office would be to understate his reaction.

I travelled to Grenfell on the following Friday to reunite the Huckel family with the awards made to their late relative, who had survived the war but was later tragically killed in a car accident. The people of Grenfell turned out at the cenotaph in support of Ron and his family, and it was a truly moving reunion. As I said, it was all about the nature of home and things returning home and to their right place.

Apart from the reunion, the story leaves more questions than answers. How did Ian's dad, Noel Wilkes, who served at Fort Scratchley in Newcastle, come to be in possession of the medals awarded to Vivian, who hailed from Pullabooka near Forbes and was stationed in Darwin? It is a mystery that endures for both of these gentlemen. But it was wonderful for me to play a small part in returning the medals to Ron and the family.

Earlier on that day, I had had a morning tea with locals in Wagga, just over two hours drive down the road in the Riverina, as I was in transit from an NBN hearing over the border in Wodonga. The highway from Wagga Wagga to Grenfell winds through some of the state's most productive rural countryside. There are many parallels between the productive lands around Wagga and the city's businesses, the B85 and the National Broadband Network in the bush. Wagga is fertile ground for innovative web based companies that range from tech support to local online TV streaming operations. But the NBN rollout in this vibrant centre has not lived up to the expectations of these IT innovators.

One local IT strategist, by the name of Michael Meyer, did in fact predict this. He saw the writing on the wall. Back in February last year, on the eve of the NBN rollout in Wagga, he called on the local member, Michael McCormack, to hit pause on the connection process, over fears the city would be lumped with a second-rate network. Mr Meyer believed, and he has been proven quite correct, that the NBN, better known as MTM, or 'Malcolm Turnbull's mess'—he likes to call it a 'multitechnology mix'—would be a cobweb of technologies. It is similar, according to Mr Meyer, to outdated ADSL networks. 'We are about to inherit an anchor,' he said, prophetically.

Mr Meyer recently took to social media to call on Mr McCormack to speak up for a stronger digital policy, after it was revealed that residents of Quambi Place in Mount Austin were told by the NBN that they could be without their broadband services for up to three months, after the copper wires were cut on a building site. This is a story we are hearing all around the country. Mr Meyer said: 'Unfortunately this is not an isolated incident. NBN fault rectification SLAs are often simply ignored and appointments missed without notification.' There is much more to say for the people of Wagga, and I will be making further contributions on that matter in this chamber.