Jacqui Lambie (Tasmania, Jacqui Lambie Network) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I asked for leave to move a motion today that the Senate acknowledges this Sunday 18 August is Vietnam Veterans' Day. On that date 58 years ago, 108 soldiers faced an enemy that outnumbered them 10 to one in the Battle of Long Tan—one of the bloodiest and most significant of the war. Sixty thousand Australian service men and women served in the Vietnam War and more than 500 never came home. Those that did come home didn't get the praise. They were spat at in the streets. They were called baby killers. Many were left with physical and mental scars that would never heal.

I thought that bringing a motion to honour these veterans would be the easiest thing I could actually do up here. Given the history of the treatment of our Vietnam veterans in this country, I just assumed that all the senators in this place would support my motion. The Vietnam veterans' motto is: 'Honour the dead but fight like hell for the living'. That's what those veterans did.

We've seen motions in this place for D-Day and Remembrance Day, but we can't do that for our Vietnam veterans without an argument over it from both the government and the Liberal Party over there. Honestly, I don't know how you look at yourselves in the mirror at times, especially when we have recently seen motions in this place on the Hamas war on Israel. They even got a minute's silence. Have we ever given our veterans a minute's silence in this place when we've lost them on the battlefield? No, we have not.

Many of these Vietnam veterans stood by and mentored the younger generations for the Royal Commission into Defence and Veteran Suicide because they did not want to see them suffer exactly like they did. They didn't want to see another generation of soldiers who had been on the battlefield suffer the way they did and have to fight for their rights and compensation for over 50 years. They did not want us to have to go through this. I am asking all Australians out there to please go to their cenotaph this Sunday and go and stand side by side with one of our Vietnam veterans.