Kevin Rudd (Griffith, Australian Labor Party, Prime Minister) Share this | Hansard source

I understand that the Leader of the Opposition will join me in a few remarks as well. What an extraordinary day. It is 2009 and we have with us this last living connection with the extraordinary events of the First World War. I would like to join with other honourable members in simply saying to Jack Ross: happy birthday from the Australian Parliament and the Australian people. It is not just that Jack Ross put on the uniform of Australia as a member of the first AIF and that he is with us still today. He also saddled up for the second one as well. He was a member of the Australian Volunteer Defence Corps second time around. It is an extraordinary story of the calibre and fabric of that generation of Australians. So, on his birthday, we salute him, and through him we acknowledge this extraordinary human bond with the events which so much shaped the Australian character in the battlefields of Western Europe and on the beaches at Gallipoli.

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