Nick Minchin (SA, Liberal Party, Leader of the Opposition in the Senate) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

The opposition does not oppose the Military Memorials of National Significance Bill 2008, but I do want to take this opportunity to record our criticism of the government in relation to what I think is quite misleading behaviour in relation to this issue. The government claims this bill will provide a mechanism to honour its election promise to declare the Australian Ex-Prisoners of War Memorial to be a national memorial. That is in fact not true. It is not what this bill does, and the government is not fulfilling its commitment, because it cannot. This bill creates a new mechanism to enable a memorial located outside the ACT to be recognised as ‘a military memorial of national significance’, not a national memorial as the government said before the election. So this bill in fact confirms the coalition’s position, and Labor now effectively acknowledges that its election commitment cannot in practice be achieved. We condemn the government for misleading the citizens of Ballarat over this matter.

The Australian Ex-Prisoners of War Memorial in Ballarat was completed in February 2004. The names of more than 35,000 POWs from the Boer War through to the Korean War are etched into the memorial, and it is a great tribute to those 35,000. As we know, many Australian prisoners of war did not make it home. Of the 8,400 who died in captivity, 4,000 have no known grave, so this is a very significant memorial and one that the coalition has always supported. The previous coalition government was a strong advocate of the Australian Ex-Prisoners of War Memorial at Ballarat, and my colleague Senator Ronaldson, as the then member for Ballarat, announced in 1999 on behalf of our government that Ballarat would be the site of an Australian ex-prisoners of war memorial. The then coalition government allocated half a million dollars towards the memorial, the largest federal government grant allocated to a memorial outside Canberra, and Senator Ronaldson was instrumental in supporting and promoting that concept. In 1999, the then Assistant Treasurer, Senator Rod Kemp, announced that gifts to the Australian Ex-Prisoners of War Memorial Fund to the value of $2 or more would be tax-deductible, so our commitment to this memorial is very longstanding and clear.

As I said before, this bill has resulted from a Labor Party election promise to declare this memorial in Ballarat a ‘national memorial’. That is now a promise we know they are effectively abandoning by creating a mechanism to establish this memorial as a memorial of national significance, and we do criticise the government for their grandstanding on this matter in Ballarat. Our position has been clear from day one. The legislative base for declaring a national memorial is the National Memorials Ordinance 1928, which restricts such memorials to being situated in the ACT. What the Labor member for Ballarat and the Labor Party have failed to recognise is that the National Memorials Ordinance 1928 only applies to such national land. This bill does not in fact make the Ballarat memorial a national memorial; by this bill they have introduced a new category to declare the Ballarat memorial a memorial of national significance, which is very different from declaring it a national memorial. Labor in opposition argued there was no legal impediment to declaring this war memorial a national memorial, contrary to our advice, and now that they are in government they understand the basis of our advice and have effectively admitted the error. The introduction of this bill demonstrates obviously that they now agree with our position that it is simply not possible to make memorials outside the ACT national memorials.

Clause 4(1) of this bill provides that the Minister for Veterans’ Affairs may declare a memorial to be a military memorial of national significance if certain conditions are met, and those conditions are set out explicitly in the act. Therefore, on that basis we are happy to support this bill, but I felt it necessary to put on the record that the government misled the people of Ballarat prior to the election as to its capacity in government to declare this a national memorial. This bill now exposes that falsity and exposes the deception of the people of Ballarat. We are quite happy to support this bill for its effect of declaring this a memorial of national significance and we are grateful that the government has at last admitted the error of its ways.

Michael Ronaldson (Victoria, Liberal Party, Shadow Special Minister of State) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I want to say a couple of words on the Military Memorials of National Significance Bill 2008. I thank Senator Minchin for his kind words but I can assure the chamber that this was a massive community effort and, while I am reluctant to talk about commercial involvement in a project such as this, I do want to pay enormous tribute to the Tattersalls organisation for putting some $1.1 million into this project. Quite frankly I think we should give credit where credit is due: we would not have had this project the way it is unless it were for the involvement of Tattersalls.

I vividly remember Mr Scott from the other place visiting Ballarat when he was Minister for Veterans’ Affairs. When shown the plan, he said: ‘Why are you only doing this? Why aren’t you doing a bit more? Why aren’t you making this bigger?’ He was the inspiration for David Baird OAM, the chairman, who is an ex-POW, and others to go ahead and build this magnificent memorial. It is visited by tens of thousands of people every year. It is a very moving memorial, and I would encourage everyone to see it. I know a number of my colleagues have done so.

It is with reluctance that I talk about this memorial of national significance because I do not want in any way to debase what has been done. But it would be unreasonable to not place on the public record that you cannot go to the people of Ballarat with a notion that they were going to be delivered a national memorial, because that could never have happened. The Prime Minister must have known that that could not have happened. I do not know whether ‘duplicitous’ is the right word. But it is inappropriate when you know or should know that something cannot be delivered.

We have known since the first sod was turned that this was a memorial of national significance. We were talking about this as a memorial of national significance before the first sod was turned. So why would someone then go out and say it was going to be a national memorial, which it is not and can never be? No-one would like more than me for this to be a national memorial. No-one would want it more than me for this to be a national memorial. It was very obvious to me, it was very obvious to the committee and it was very obvious to a lot of people before the event that it could not be a national memorial. Could it be a memorial of national significance? Absolutely. Was it treated by the former government as a memorial of national significance? Absolutely.

Was it treated as such by the people of Ballarat? In fact, it was not just the people of Ballarat. Fifteen thousand people from Queensland, Western Australia, South Australia, Tasmania and New South Wales came down to the opening of this magnificent memorial. This may surprise some people, but it was stinking hot in Ballarat on the day this memorial was opened. It was stinking hot. I reckon it was about 42 in the waterbag. It was a hot, hot day. There were 15,000 people at the opening of this magnificent memorial attended by the Governor-General. Can we please celebrate this remarkable memorial to some remarkable people, but can we please be honest about what the description is? It is a memorial of national significance but it was prior to this bill. It has never been, nor can it ever be, a national memorial due to legislative reasons. I support this bill and I am proud of the people of Ballarat who made this extraordinary contribution to this country.

Kim Carr (Victoria, Australian Labor Party, Minister for Innovation, Industry, Science and Research) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

The Military Memorials of National Significance Bill 2008 delivers the government’s election commitment to provide national status for the Australian Ex-Prisoners of War Memorial in Ballarat. And no matter how much pumped up self-aggrandisement comes from the opposition, no matter how much hypocrisy and grandstanding comes from the opposition, you will not change this fact. This bill delivers an election promise. The memorial is the result of the outstanding efforts of the Ballarat RSL, the Ex-Prisoners of War Association, the city and the people of Ballarat to recognise the bravery and sacrifice of more than 35,000 Australian prisoners of war during the Boer War, the two World Wars and the Korean War.

The Australian Ex-Prisoners of War Memorial in Ballarat will be the first memorial to be declared under this bill. The bill will also provide a mechanism to enable in the future other memorials that are located outside the Australian Capital Territory and meet the criteria specified in the bill to be accorded national memorial status. The national status of memorials in the ACT is governed by the National Memorials Ordinance 1928 and this mechanism restricts memorials to within the ACT. However, the ordinance does not preclude the granting of national status through another mechanism to the memorials outside of the Australian Capital Territory. No matter what level of sophistry, no matter what level of semantics is pursued by the opposition, this bill achieves the national recognition that is so rightly deserved for this memorial.

The bill will establish a clear process and stringent criteria to be applied when determining future national status of military memorials of national significance outside of the Australian Capital Territory. The responsibility, the ongoing maintenance and the refurbishment of the declared memorial will remain with the authority which owns or manages that memorial. I acknowledge the commitment and the fine work of the various levels of government in establishing and maintaining memorials around Australia during the last century, and I trust that we will continue to preserve these important components of our heritage. This legislation will support the strong traditions of commemoration in Australian communities recognising significant memorials that are worthy of being declared national memorials.

Question agreed to.

Bill read a second time.