Bills

Burial and Cremation (Interment Rights) Amendment Bill

Second Reading

Adjourned debate on second reading.

(Continued from 21 September 2021.)

The Hon. S.C. MULLIGHAN (Lee) (16:18): When I commenced making my remarks, I said that I agreed with this bill and that it was important that the government had brought it before the house to try to rectify what has been emerging in more recent times as a bit of a growing problem across South Australia. But in the remainder of my remarks, I want to talk about one thing in particular, which I had not previously been aware of but which has been drawn to my attention only in the course of the last 18 months, and indeed perhaps this might also be the case for some other members in this place.

Back in April or May last year, while we were in the midst of the first round of restrictions in response to COVID, I received a phone call in my electorate office from someone from an organisation called the Headstone Project, which I had not heard of before. After some contact—a phone call and emails back and forth—I agreed to meet with the gentleman who had contacted me from the project to understand what his request was all about and how I fit into it.

Some members might be aware of the Headstone Project; in fact, I learned that in 2019 the Premier provided the South Australian branch, if I can call it that, of the Headstone Project a small grant of $10,000 to assist it in its efforts. Basically, the Headstone Project was formed in 2010 by a Tasmanian historian, John Trethewey, who in researching World War I veterans discovered that some were in unmarked graves.

That led to the families and friends of the First AIF in Tasmania starting the Headstone Project. As you can probably gather from my earlier comments, it has expanded into other states and territories since. It was brought to South Australia by John Brownlie and Neil Rossiter and they have started establishing their activities here.

Basically, people—volunteers, I should be specific in saying—who work with the Headstone Project identify former World War I veterans who are believed to be in unmarked graves. They try to accurately identify the bona fides of their war service but also the location of their graves and, with the modest funds that are available to them, try to provide some form of headstone with a recognition of their First World War service.

I find this generally interesting, but I could not understand what it had to do with me. I thought perhaps they were making approaches to political parties and so on about better funding, but it was nothing to do with that. It was to do with somebody who was being researched, Frederick Thomas Laurence Parkins, who was born in Warooka on 1 September 1874 and who served in the First World War.

That in itself you might find remarkable, in that it would make him about 40 or 41 years old during that first stage of the First World War, serving in Europe as he did in 1914 and 1915. Even for whom he served gives a pretty decent indication of how dire the fighting conditions were over there: the unit he was allocated to was the 15^th Reinforcements, 31^st Battalion. It is extraordinary to think how often those forces needed to be reinforced in the battles over on the Western Front.

I still did not really understand how that related to me, because Parkins is not a name I remember from my family history or even my electorate having a direct connection, given that he was born and lived as a miner on Yorke Peninsula. His sister was Emily Frances Picton Parkins, who then went on to marry Henry Hincks. Their son was Cecil Stephen Hincks, known to this chamber as Sir Cecil Hincks, a minister in the Playford government and, perhaps much to the surprise of those opposite, my great-uncle. It goes to show that sometimes the apple can fall some distance from the tree when it comes to political allegiances.

I never met Sir Cecil, as he passed away in 1963. Despite representing Yorke Peninsula from 1946 until his death in 1963, I was told by my grandmother, who passed away some years ago, that he lived on Alexander Street in Largs Bay, being one street over from Anthony Street, where my grandparents lived and my father and his brother and sister grew up in Largs Bay. When parliament was not sitting, he would regularly drop past the next street over for a cup of tea with my grandparents.

But this was relevant to the Headstone Project because they were trying to establish whether there were any family members related to Frederick Parkins who might have some information or control over his affairs to the extent of being able to provide an approval or otherwise for a headstone to be created and placed at the grave that was hitherto unmarked. So I put him in contact with some of my relatives, and for those of you wondering where my occasional verbosity comes from in this place, poor Mr Hopley from the Headstone Project was subjected to many a long conversation with some of my elderly relatives about family history, some of which was even relevant to his investigations.

It occurred to me when this bill was introduced to this place by the Attorney that, in addition to the Commonwealth War Graves Commission, there are also these independent not-for-profit efforts being conducted around Australia, including South Australia, to try to make sure that in unmarked grave locations, and also in cemeteries where headstones may have been provided but perhaps have been eroded over time or lost for some other reason, there is a need to recognise and annotate those First World War veterans for their war service.

As it turned out, Mr Hopley who introduced himself to me when we finally met and had a really enjoyable lunch together—at La Vita on Grange Road, if you are that interested. Unfortunately, it is not in my electorate but actually in the member for Colton's electorate because it is just on the other side of Grange Road, but nonetheless a good eatery in the western suburbs. Mr Hopley introduced himself as a retired police detective and I understand that it is people from those sorts of professions, particularly police officers and other investigative services, who often find themselves attracted to doing work on behalf of the Headstone Project.

Mr Hopley was good enough to give me a copy of the report that he had done into Frederick Parkins for the purposes of establishing his correct identity and details of his war service, but let alone the location of where he believed his grave to be so that it could be adequately marked. It is quite an effort to establish where these graves are including looking at cemetery records; doing cursory internet searches on Google, etc., but ascertaining a date of death and burial; next of kin; looking at newspaper reports, particularly on the Trove website which is a website managed by the National Archives; local newspaper reports for death or funeral notices; South Australian Births, Deaths and Marriages records; Australian War Memorial inquiries; National Archives inquiries; genealogy investigations and so on.

So it is extremely thorough. In fact, there was a further page indicating historical electoral rolls, Sands and McDougall guides—something that I do not remember. Perhaps others—

Mr Picton: The Sands and McDougall showbag.

The Hon. S.C. MULLIGHAN: The Sands and McDougall showbag—the most expensive showbag, as I recall. It went for $50, I think—approximately 25 Bertie Beetle showbags that makes it. But it included discovering ANZAC websites and so on, so it is very thorough.

In the end, it was drawn to my attention that the grave was in the Cheltenham Cemetery and they found the grave location or the plot number and so on. As I said earlier, from the quite modest resources of the Headstone Project, with the consent of the next of kin they could find, they were able to install a new headstone with recognition of that person's war service, which is a terrific thing.

As I was about to mention before, he found through investigations that the headstone of Sir Cecil Hincks, which marks his grave at Centennial Park, does not record his war service during the First World War, when he was wounded at Gallipoli and lost part of the leg, or his service as a recruiting officer for the Second World War. Soon afterwards, he stood for parliament in 1946 and was elected to represent Yorke Peninsula. That was helpful to the broader family because on that side of my family the next of kin was able to arrange something in that respect.

It occurs to me that, in the Attorney bringing this bill forward, there are likely to be in some of these smaller churches and cemeteries around South Australia a number of graves that may or may not be marked and probably would not have a recognition of someone's war service. As regional members would perhaps appreciate just as well if not more than me, it was quite often regional communities that sent large proportions of the adult male population at the time overseas to fight in the First World War.

I can remember that when I first became a member I was asked to speak at the Semaphore ANZAC Day service, when Semaphore was part of the Lee electorate. The story of a family in Rosewater was recounted to me of where all five sons of that family were killed in action in the First World War. I cannot imagine what their mother, or father for that matter, must have suffered as a response to losing all their children, and I know that in regional communities many men and families of adult men were lost in the First World War.

If they were buried in their local communities, or they had graves recognising their deaths in their local cemeteries, after 100 or so years beyond the end of the First World War it is not unreasonable to think that we may stand to lose the opportunity of being able to mark those graves appropriately, particularly with the service these men gave to their country. So I am glad that the Attorney has brought the bill forward generally, but I am also particularly glad for that reason because it was not something until recently that I was aware of. It is something that I think we need to do more about.

I am grateful that the Premier provided a grant to the Headstone Project back in 2019. In fact, I do not actually recall the Premier saying much about that grant, which perhaps also goes to the fact that the Premier, like others, recognises the importance of this and the need for this and did not feel the need to make a song and dance about the generosity of his government in supporting that effort.

So it is a good thing, and hopefully supporting the Attorney's bill will mean that the greater requirements on people who find themselves as the owners, or the caretakers in the legal sense, of these cemeteries not only will have greater obligations placed upon them more generally but will provide the community in that regard a greater capacity to try to reflect people's past war service. For that reason, I am glad to commend the Attorney for bringing it to the house and again indicate my support for the bill.

Debate adjourned on motion of Dr Harvey.