Scott Morrison (Cook, Liberal Party, Shadow Minister for Housing and Local Government) Share this | Hansard source

I rise to support the condolence motion for Sergeant Brett Till. Sergeant Brett Till, his wife, Bree, and his children, Jacob and Taleah, lived in my electorate of Cook. It has always been difficult for me to fully comprehend the scale of human loss suffered by earlier generations of Australians who have served and experienced our nation during war. That all changed for me when I attended the funeral of Sergeant Brett Till at Woronora some months ago with former Prime Minister John Howard, Bree and her family, all of Brett’s family, the Deputy Prime Minister, the Minister for Defence and the Chief of the Defence Force. It was a very moving and very sad day.

Like many Australians from my generation and those that have followed, we have had the privilege to hear the stories of our veterans of previous conflicts. My grandfather served in Papua New Guinea and the Middle East. I can still vividly recall the discussions I had as a 15-year-old with a World War I veteran. George Wood, a warrant officer who served in the First World War, would talk of his experiences, but these were all just stories from another time and another place to which I have no direct connection. There are also the stories of those who lived during the war—the stories from my grandmother’s generation. They are stories about the uncertainty and the fear and the way that communities relied on each other during those times simply to get through each day.

While deeply respecting and honouring the commitment and sacrifice of all of these great Australians who went through these times, they came from previous generations so it was difficult to make that connection. At each Anzac Day the crowds gather—and they keep growing, and that is a wonderful thing—but I must say that it was not until Sergeant Till’s funeral that I really started to understand the mourning that accompanies a generation when they lose their own. Sergeant Till was the 10th soldier we have lost in Afghanistan and one of thousands of a new generation of veterans—and the Parliamentary Secretary for Defence Support, who is here today, is one of them—who have been created since our major overseas deployments around 10 years ago.

Brett was 31. He is survived by his wife, Bree, and his two young children, Jacob and Taleah, who attend schools in my electorate. As I attended that funeral in southern Sydney that day I became completely overwhelmed by grief. This grief did not come from my personal relationship with Brett and his family, because prior to his death I did not know them personally; this grief came from our shared but unconnected experience of life. They lived in my community and they shared the same joys and aspirations that all young families like Brett’s and my own have in all of our electorates.

To see on that day the pictures of Brett together with his beautiful young family struck a very deep chord. My wife and I also have a young daughter who is the centre of our lives. Like Brett and Bree, we are expecting a child this year. As parents similarly enjoying this wonderful phase of life, the tragedy of Brett’s loss is so much more profound. I can only imagine what the sense of loss must have been like for earlier generations during previous conflicts where this story of a generation losing its own and coping with the grief and loss that accompanies that was repeated literally thousands of times over in the streets, suburbs and towns all over Australia.

I was reminded of this recently when I had the privilege of accompanying the member for Blaxland, my good friend Jason Clare, in bringing young people from our electorates—young surf lifesavers from the beaches of Cronulla and young Lebanese Muslim Australians from Bankstown—with us as we walked the Kokoda Trail. One of the missions of particularly those from the shire during that trail walk was laying a tribute to Sergeant Till at Isurava. Those of you have been to Isurava will know how moving a place that is. One of the most moving parts of being at Isurava and what was a wonderful thing to do on behalf of Jason and I was to honour Brett in a place where incredible true courage, mateship, sacrifice and endurance was displayed.

We think of the current conflict in Afghanistan and detach it from those earlier conflicts. But the thing about Isurava is that it is where VC Bruce Kingsbury died on the field of battle—literally metres from that memorial—and, as we reflected in laying the tribute to Brett, most recently we have seen the award of a VC to Trooper Donaldson in Afghanistan. We reflected on the fact that Australians still die today in uniform in our name and under our flag, protecting those values. Just as that was true back in 1942 for Bruce Kingsbury it was true for Sergeant Brett Till early this year in Afghanistan.

It does not matter what the conflict is or what the field of battle is, these places are dangerous. The men and women who put themselves in these places on our behalf deserve our undying respect and our unswerving honour. As I gathered there with those young people from the shire and we laid that tribute, I knew that it was fitting for Brett to be memorialised in the company of those great men, because he sits comfortably and worthily with all of those who have fallen. Every time I think of Isurava, I will think of Brett and his family.

The pride and respect of Brett’s fellow soldiers from his regiment at Holsworthy and the brave faces of his family, his wife and young children and his parents—and particularly his brothers as we spoke afterwards and before—spoke highly of this new generation of Australians, who clearly walk in the same spirit as those who walked before them. Our soldiers do not choose the wars that we ask them to fight. Politics is not their calling; it is ours. They simply serve in our name, living the values that they so faithfully defend. This above all things is what we must honour in their memory.

As a new generation coming to terms with the loss that accompanies war, we must also, like those before us, honour the memory of those who have fallen by tasking ourselves with the care of those who have been left behind. One of the purposes of the trek by Jason and I to Kokoda was to raise the profile and importance of Legacy. The mothers that we support now through Legacy are 20 years old. Bree is, I think, 25. She is expecting another child this year. The faces of Legacy are no longer people like my grandmother, who has passed away, but young people who are dealing with family and the loss of their husbands or partners or the injuries of their partners or husbands—or wives, for that matter. Legacy continues to play a very important role in their future. We must commit ourselves to their future. Legacy can no longer be for us the wonderful organisation that my grandmother used to talk about; Legacy must now be the wonderful organisation that, together with our defence forces, supports Brett’s wife, Bree, and Brett’s children and all of the families of the fallen and injured.

As a new generation we must take up this responsibility for these and other important institutions that create our community. We must continue to build the Australia Sergeant Till cherished and dreamed of for his own family and future generations. These challenges have even greater meaning now as we further appreciate their cost of purchase as a new generation mourning our lost heroes, and Sergeant Brett Till in particular. Lest we forget.

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