Chris Evans (WA, Australian Labor Party, Leader of the Government in the Senate) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

by leave—I move:

That the Senate records its deep regret at the death, on 7 August 2011, of Nancy Grace Augusta Wake, AC, GM, decorated Second World War servicewoman, and places on record its appreciation of her service to the allied forces and resistance to the German occupation of France and tenders its profound sympathy to her extended family.

It is rare for the Senate to move a condolence motion other than for very specific groups of persons like former members of the parliament but, on this occasion, the Senate has agreed to do so, given the outstanding nature of Nancy Wake's contribution and her place in the history of Australia.

It is very rare for Australians to adopt New Zealanders, but Australians claim her as an Australian. Nancy Wake was actually born in Wellington, New Zealand, on 30 August 1912. Despite her many exploits she lived a very long life. Her family moved to Sydney in 1914. Nancy's early life was challenging. Her father abandoned the family in Australia after selling the family home and heading back to New Zealand. Nancy's mother was allegedly quite religious and apparently oppressively strict. It was perhaps her experiences as a child with an absent father and a controlling mother which encouraged the defiant and rebellious streak in Nancy.

At 16, she took her first job as a nurse. Then she used a small family inheritance to fund travel to Europe, with the aim of training as a journalist, a career which she would eventually pursue. We should remember that at that stage it would have been very unusual for a woman to pursue a career like that. As a journalist one of her first assignments was to interview Adolph Hitler. Her travels in the 1930s in Vienna allowed her to witness the Nazi regime firsthand. Speaking about this experience of witnessing the persecution of Jews she said, 'I don't know what I'll do about it, but if I can do anything one day, I'll do it.'

Settling in Paris, she met her first husband, French industrialist Henri Edmond Fiocca. Together they both joined the French Resistance shortly after the invasion of France by the Nazis in 1940. In this early period in the resistance, she began by smuggling messages and goods in Vichy, France. Buying an ambulance, she successfully smuggled refugees fleeing the German advance. By 1942, the Gestapo had become aware of an unidentified woman agent who they sought to capture. Nancy was nicknamed the White Mouse and placed at No. 1 on the Gestapo wanted list, with a 5 million franc bounty. She escaped to London around this time but tragically her husband was captured, tortured and killed by the Gestapo after their resistance network was betrayed.

After moving to London she joined the British Special Operations Executive, where she became a member of a 470-strong specially trained resistance force set up to work directly with local resistance forces. In 1944, Nancy Wake was parachuted into Auvergne to assist the D-Day landings. She was required to organise and coordinate an army of 7,000 resistance troops. Perhaps the most significant operation of her unit was a very successful attack on a Gestapo headquarters.

One of her resistance colleagues said of Nancy: 'She is the most feminine woman I know, until the fight starts. Then she is like five men.' Wake was never shy of being put in the middle of action, often taking responsibility because a woman was deemed to have more chance of success. In one particularly gruelling operation, she cycled about 500 kilometres in 72 hours, crossing several German checkpoints to find an operator to radio Britain and request new radio codes. That she survived the war is indeed a remarkable fact.

After the war she resettled in Australia with her second husband, ex-RAF pilot John Forward. She then, strangely, became interested in Liberal Party politics, running as a candidate for the federal electorate of Barton in the 1949 election against Doc Evatt, where she secured a 13 per cent swing to the Liberal Party. She again ran against Evatt at the 1951 election, missing out by a mere 250 votes. Her final attempt to win a federal seat was at the 1966 election in the safe Labor seat of Kingsford Smith, where she only lost by about 1,500 votes.

Her awards are numerous and she is arguably the most decorated woman of the Second World War. She has received numerous awards from France. She has the Medal of Freedom from the United States. She has the George Medal from the United Kingdom. In 1970 she was appointed Chevalier of the Legion of Honour and in 1998 was promoted to Officer of the Legion of Honour. Unfortunately, it was not until 2004 that her exploits were recognised by the Australian government, when Nancy was awarded the Companion of the Order of Australia. She has also received recognition from New Zealand.

After her second husband died in Port Macquarie in 1997, she returned to England in 2001. She lived an extraordinary life and her story is just an incredible one. I cannot do justice to it in a short condolence motion speech here, but I do recommend Peter FitzSimons's biography. I have got to be careful about advertising, I suppose, but he did a great job of bringing her story to life and providing the colour and adventure that was so much a part of her incredible story. Peter is an ex-second rower for the Wallabies and played a lot of rugby in the south of France, so he had to be tough and probably a little on the dirty side, but he said after writing the book that, 'We both agreed that she was 10 times the man I would ever be.' He paid an extraordinary tribute to her life in the book.

Nancy Wake was an extraordinary woman. Her life story is one of courage, determination and incredible commitment to freedom and opposition to the invasion of France and the German regime there. It is an incredible life story and I am very pleased to be part of the Senate as it acknowledges that tremendous life and the tremendous contribution she made to Australia and the broader allied Second World War effort.

Eric Abetz (Tasmania, Liberal Party, Shadow Minister for Employment and Workplace Relations) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I regret that I did not meet Nancy Wake, but I am glad that I did not meet Nancy Wake in the first 16 years of my life. She once famously said, 'I killed a lot of Germans and I am only sorry I didn't kill more.' Nancy Wake was Australia's most decorated servicewoman and one of the most decorated allied servicewomen of World War II. She was a true heroine in every sense of the word. Her courage and resourcefulness in a wartime France saved thousands of allied lives. The French government made her a Chevalier de Legion d'Honneur, France's highest honour, and awarded her the Croix de Guerre with star and two palms and the Medaille de la Resistance. She also received Britain's George Medal and the US Medal of Freedom. In 2004, she was made a Companion of the Order of Australia, long overdue recognition from the country in which she grew up and to which she returned on war's end.

Nancy Wake trained as a nurse before an inheritance from a New Zealand aunt enabled her to fulfil her dream of travelling to New York, London and Paris. After studying journalism in London, she became a correspondent for the Chicago Tribune in Paris and reported on the rise of Adolf Hitler in Germany. A 1933 trip to interview Hitler in Vienna galvanised her views on the Nazis. 'I saw the disagreeable things that he was doing to people, first of all the Jews,' she told ABC radio in 1985. 'I thought it was quite revolting,' she said.

When war broke out, along with her French husband she helped downed British pilots and Jewish families to escape the German occupying force, planning escape routes for thousands of Allied troops. She often used her feminine wiles to glean information from the Germans and to evade security. By 1943 Gestapo agents were closing in. Wake told her husband she was going shopping and would soon return. They never saw each other again. She later learned that her husband had been captured, tortured and then executed for refusing to divulge information about her activities or whereabouts. It took her several attempts to cross the Pyrenees into Spain. On one attempt she was held and interrogated by the Vichy French. She eventually did reach Britain where she convinced the Special Operations Executive to train her as a spy.

In early 1944 she was parachuted into the Auvergne region of central France to organise the local Maquis Resistance, collect air drops of ammunition and arms, and establish radio links with their base in Britain. Wake helped recruit an additional 3,000 fighters to build a force of about 7,000. She led groups of these fighters on guerrilla and sabotage raids on German troops, installations and equipment in the lead-up to D-day.

A French Resistance comrade said that, 'When fighting, she was like five men.' She could kill the enemy with her bare hands. Her proudest exploit was her very own Tour de France, cycling over 400 kilometres or so through occupied France in 72 hours to relay a request for a replacement radio and codes. In the final days of the war she was part of a very bold assault on the Gestapo headquarters which killed 38.

Upon her return to Australia after the war, Nancy joined the New South Wales Liberal Party and became an institution within our party. The Liberal Party is very proud to call her one of our own. She served as a member of the party's state executive and was known to address branch meetings and talk about her experiences during the war. Nancy stood as a candidate at the historic 1949 federal election. She contested the seat held by Dr Herbert 'Doc' Evatt, achieving a 13 per cent swing. When she won preselection for the electorate, the Liberal Party sent Dr Evatt a telegram: 'Nancy Wake, Liberal candidate, parachuted into Barton tonight'. She was a gutsy campaigner and she spent most days thereafter doorknocking and addressing meetings. She stated that her reason for standing was:

… a gradual gathering together of controls, centralisation of power in the hands of a few power-hungry fanatics …

Although Nancy was unsuccessful, the Liberal Party led by Robert Menzies won office at a national level at the election for the first time. Nancy Wake cut Dr Evatt's margin from 11,112 to 2,644. Undaunted, she decided to stand against him again. It was a testament to the postwar Liberal Party under Robert Menzies that it could attract candidates of the calibre of Nancy Wake.

In 1951 another election was called. The then Liberal Prime Minister, Robert Menzies, came to tell electors that they must send Nancy to Canberra. This time she missed out by just a few hundred votes. After a period living overseas, Nancy came back to Australia and contested the seat of Kingsford-Smith for the Liberal Party at the 1966 federal election. With her second husband, John Forward, as her campaign manager, Nancy threw her efforts into this new battle. Although she gained a 6.9 per cent swing against the Labor incumbent, Nancy fell short of winning the seat. The experience of being thrice rejected was a difficult one for Nancy, who came to regret her experience with politics. But the book by Peter FitzSimons on Nancy Wake, referred to by the Leader of the Government in the Senate, on page 287 indicates she was no run-of-the-mill Liberal Party candidate:

The Liberal Party was a deeply conservative organisation with very firm ideas about how a woman should behave and many local members looked askance at the 'Nancy way' for it was hardly a perfect match. She, for example, never wore stockings or a hat and was quite happy to cross her legs while sitting on a public platform if she felt like it and if she wanted to have a drink in a beer garden she did so and she simply did not give a damn if someone in the party thought that this was too unladylike for their proposed representative. 'What did I care about trying to be a lady?' she asks rhetorically. 'After what I had been through the thought that I would worry about whether or not I wore stockings or a hat was completely ludicrous. If any of them ever wanted to chip me about it, I told them off in the strongest possible language.'

Further on the respect in which Nancy Wake was held is referred to by the author, Mr FitzSimons. It was in the first campaign and Ben Chifley was in fact called in to exhort the electors of Barton to return Dr Evatt to Canberra though he was very careful not to utter one word of criticism against Nancy Wake. He writes:

It seems that this was more than simply a polite public stance for when, by pure chance, the Labor Prime Minister happened to come face to face with the Liberal candidate in the corridor of a hotel in the Barton electorate on a day when they were both campaigning, the Prime Minister removed the pipe from his mouth, bowed deeply and moved on. In response, Nancy recalls warmly, he was a lovely man, a true gentleman.

I believe that it is further credit to her that, having sacrificed so much during the war, she went to extraordinarily brave lengths in an effort to serve her country in peace. It has been said that her decision to enter politics divided public opinion about her, reduced the receptiveness of the Australian people to her story and made it difficult for the Labor Party to support public celebration of her. I do not believe this is the case, or if it was, time has erased any partisan feelings towards her, as this condolence motion testifies and as do the generous comments of the Leader of the Government in the Senate. Of course, way back then when she was a candidate that was also testified to by the homage that the Prime Minister, Ben Chifley, paid her. One can only imagine what contribution she would have made to our parliament had she been successful.

Nancy Wake's life force was an inspiration. As she said, 'I got away with blue murder and loved every minute of it.' I understand that Nancy Wake wanted her ashes to be scattered amongst the wildflowers at Montlucon in central France, where she fought in a heroic 1944 attack on the local Gestapo headquarters and where perhaps, from reading her biography, she was most alive. Her nation salutes her life, her bravery, her selflessness and her service. The coalition trusts that the Nancy Wake story will continue to be told for generations to come. May she rest in peace.

Barnaby Joyce (Queensland, National Party, Leader of The Nationals in the Senate) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

It is a great honour to be able to have the opportunity to speak on this condolence motion for Nancy Grace Augusta Wake. To go through the honours that Nancy Wake has received is to note what is really a representation of a spectacular life. There was an issue with her receiving honours from Australia. There were some concerns and I will not actually give the quote that Nancy Wake gave as to what she first of all considered in regard to receiving an honour from Australia, but those things were obviously resolved at the end of her life.

She was a Companion of the Order of Australia, she had received from the United Kingdom the George Medal and she received, obviously, the 1939-45 Star, though many people received that, the France and Germany Star, the Defence Medal and the War Medal 1939-45. The honours that were bestowed on her by the French included the Chevalier de la Legion d'Honneur—which is quite something for a person away from France to get—and being an officer in the same order and the Croix de Guerre with two Palms and a Star. She received the Medal of Freedom from the United States and also, from the French Republic, a highly unusual honour for an outsider to get, the Medaille de la Résistance. She was one of the few people not French who received that honour. Also, New Zealand gave her a badge of honour.

When we actually look at Nancy's life, we see it was one that started in New Zealand before she moved to Neutral Bay and, as has been represented, her father went back to New Zealand. For want of a better word, he deserted the family and her mother brought Nancy up. I think Nancy was the youngest of six children. Hers was an exemplary life. She had attended North Sydney Technical College, where her main subject was home science. She went on, after receiving and using an endowment from one of her relatives in New Zealand—an aunt, I believe—of about £200, to go to New York and from New York across to London and then to Paris, where she started as a journalist. In her role as a journalist she saw the start of fascism and her memories included seeing Jews tied to a wheel and being beaten and whipped. That built her resolve, she said, to do something about these rotten people. Her life was one of absolute stoicism. She had very little regard for her own safety. Those around her reflected that she always seemed like someone who would survive and live life to the fullest. She met up with a French industrialist, Henri Fiocca, who had no reason to be anything more at that point in time than a person who was pretty well set in life. I think she married him in 1939. But in Marseille they were involved with the French Resistance and lived a double life. As the Gestapo started to close in on them, Henri said to her that she had to leave. Of course, you would not disclose what you were doing so that is why she came to a conversation where she just said to Henri, 'I'm going out to do some shopping,' and she never came back. She left, and the deal was not to tell people what exactly you were up to as, obviously, that would put them at risk. Later on he was captured by the Gestapo and tortured and killed. She only found out about this much later. He was killed in 1943. Nancy then had to make several attempts—four, in fact—to get into Spain. Finally she got to Spain but even on that final attempt she and others were shot at as they jumped from a train and ran through a vineyard to get away. They then made their way to Gibraltar, and from Gibraltar they had a convoy back to England. Nancy was then trained in the Special Operations Executive. This was basically a group that worked behind enemy lines. For that purpose she was later parachuted back into France. When she was parachuted back into France, she got caught in a tree and the French officer who found her said, 'I hope all the trees in France bear such a beautiful fruit as this one.' Her typical reply in Australian form—and you have to forgive me for the profanity—was, 'Don't talk that French shit to me.' This was the character of the person. This person was at points in time responsible for the command of 7,000 people. She and others were also engaged on and off with a force of 22,000 people. At that point in time, Captain Ian Garrow was in a Montlucon concentration camp and Nancy went there and deceived the guard into releasing him. The bravery of this person is just beyond belief.

Then there is the story of the bike ride of 250 miles in 72 hours that we have all heard about. Nancy said that she did not do it because she was brave; she did it because she was the only one who could possibly have done it. Anybody else would have been killed. She rode 250 miles in 72 hours, and when she got off the bike she said that she was on fire; she was in that much pain. Nancy did it to get codes back that had to be destroyed. To retrieve the codes, they had to drive to another place and on the way people were engaging with her. They initially did not believe that she was part of the resistance. They did not believe the story of how she could have ridden that far.

I think she is a great example of how a human being and someone that all Australians can relate to could become not a saint but resolute in the purpose of destroying fascism and all that fascism represented—the evil that fascism was. Later on she had the same disdain for communism. She saw them as basically similar entities, with a similar purpose. At the end the war she engaged in a number of attempts at politics. I think at one stage she took Dr Evatt down to about 250 votes, which was quite remarkable given that Dr Evatt was a substantial figure in the Labor Party of the time.

Nancy married again and moved to Port Macquarie. She lived there for quite some time until the death of her second husband. I think she was married to him for about 40 years. She then decided to move back to England. She resided at the Stafford Hotel in England, where people noted that she preferred a gin and tonic. She liked to live life to its fullest, right to the very end. It was said that a lot of her accounts were paid for anonymously. There was a belief that one of the anonymous payers of her accounts was the Prince of Wales. She is a person who will go down in history not just as someone whom we all have a great affection for because of her time as an Australian and the fact that she resided in our nation for the majority of her life—although she was born in Wellington, New Zealand; I think she stayed there until she was about four—but for the essence of her character and for showing us what a person is capable of doing when the cause is right.

For me it is an immense honour to be able to have the capacity to stand here and, as a small token of appreciation, respect the life of a person who was responsible for saving thousands of allied service people, service men and women. Nancy's bravery was exemplary. She was courageous. She was ferocious and courageous. She was no wallflower. She clearly admitted to killing people herself in the delivery of grenades into certain areas. In fact, she killed a Gestapo guard with her hands. We are talking about a person who was ferocious but she was ferocious for a cause, and it was a war. It was a war against evil. She picked the side of right and she fought it to the nth part of her being, knowing that if she did not prevail then evil would prevail, and that was just not an option for her.

It is with great honour that we reflect on the life of Nancy Wake. I do not know what her faith was, but I hope she may rest in peace.

Question agreed to, honourable senators standing in their places.