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Legislative Council - Fifty-Second Parliament, First Session (52-1)
2011-04-06 Daily Xml
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MATTERS OF INTEREST

ANZAC DAY

The Hon. R.P. WORTLEY (15:25): I rise today to speak about ANZAC Day. The story of the ANZAC campaign is well known to all. It is a story that is a part of us. ANZAC Day has a unique part in the Australian psyche. There have been many learned analyses of the events at what has become known as Anzac Cove and what they mean for our democracy. It has been part of our national story that Australia came of age in World War I in the Turkish campaigns, and in France, Germany and the Middle East. However, ANZAC Day now has a broader significance.

In 2011, we will honour those who fought in the Sudan and Boer wars, in World War I and World War II, in Korea, Malaya, Borneo, Vietnam and Iraq, and those who fought and continue to fight in Afghanistan. We will honour those who served in the Persian Gulf, Rwanda and Somalia. We will honour those who help to keep the peace today in East Timor and the Solomon Islands. On ANZAC Day, we will remember that during the course of these conflicts more than 1,500,000 Australian men and women have served and that of these over 100,000 have died.

ANZAC Day is for many a day of solemn commemoration and for many a day of national pride—for many, those feelings are intertwined. We have all seen the day change with the change in our community. I remember the ANZAC marches I saw as a child, the few women and the sombre-faced men with their medals, the sadness and the tension in the air. What happened after the service was private to those men who, on every other day of the year, kept what they had seen to themselves.

Now it seems that ANZAC Day has a different character, a changed dynamic. This springs perhaps from the opening up of the Returned Soldiers' League in the 1980s and 1990s to service people who had not served overseas, which of course included most servicewomen, and those who had served in the so-called minor wars. This new spirit of inclusiveness was echoed by state and federal governments, which mounted public education and community campaigns, including the Welcome Home March in 1987.

Fifteen years after Australian service people left Vietnam, returning home to indifference or worse, around 25,000 veterans were led through Sydney by the next-of-kin of those who had not returned. Each carried an Australian flag, and the parade was watched by many hundreds of thousands of people along the route. New campaigns marked the 75th anniversary of ANZAC in 1990 and the 90th anniversary in 2005. The resurgence of interest in ANZAC Day has continued to the present.

Increasingly, young Australians are embracing the ANZAC spirit, and attendance at the dawn service at the ANZAC commemorative site has become part of the pilgrimage of our young. Dawn services here in Adelaide, South Australia, around the country and, of course, in New Zealand are increasingly well attended. It seems that ANZAC Day has become not only a day of commemoration but a day to demonstrate our support for the men and women who continue to serve our country here and overseas, increasingly in humanitarian and peacekeeping roles.

It is a welcome development, as is the gradual change from predominantly Anglo-Saxon male participation to events more representative of the wide variety of communities that now make up our 21st century multicultural Australia. On 20 March, the National Commission on the Commemoration of ANZAC Centenary released its report on the way of marking the 100th anniversary of the beginning of the Great War in 2014 and of ANZAC in 2015.

The commission made a number of recommendations around six broad themes: public awareness and education so that understanding of war and peace can be passed down the generations; refurbishment of our memorials and other commemorative monuments; public recognition of a century of service; major commemorative services at Gallipoli and here at home; education about Australia's military legacy, including local wartime experiences; and international engagement and collaboration. The ANZAC Centenary Advisory Board will now continue the work of the commission, providing advice on the planning and implementation of the events. Believe me, the time will be here before we know it.

However we think about war and about the wars in which Australia has been and is engaged, ANZAC Day continues to touch us, even though its nature has changed, and will continue to do so. As we approach the centenary of the battle that has come, somehow, to define our national character, it is important that we look beyond the commemorative events that will mark the anniversary to the lessons that we and future generations can learn from 100 years of war and conflict and 100 years of peace and peace-keeping. The ode we recall every ANZAC Day comes from For the Fallen by English poet, Laurence Binyon. It was first published in The Winnowing Fan: Poems on the Great War (1914).

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