Mike Kelly (Eden-Monaro, Australian Labor Party, Parliamentary Secretary for Agriculture, Fisheries and Forestry) Share this | Hansard source

I commend the previous speakers for their comments in relation to this wonderful Australian, Nancy Wake. It is one of those bittersweet moments in this place, when we obviously feel sad about the passing of a great Australian but also have the chance and a rare privilege to comment on a great life such as this and to celebrate that life. For me personally in these situations, I always attempt to draw lessons from the lives of these great Australians. There is no other person in our lexicon, in our galaxy of great Australians, than Nancy Wake to bring home so many relevant lessons to this country and so many lessons that are actually relevant right now. I will talk a bit more about that in a second. What an Australian, what a woman, this person was. It is also symbolic of our military tradition and heritage that she was actually born in New Zealand; she is the embodiment of that Anzac tradition itself. It is quite an interesting fact of her early upbringing.

I think we need to take one step back about what led her to perform the amazing feats that she did to demonstrate the courage to take on the forces of Nazism in Europe. It really all stemmed from her experience as a journalist in the 1930s. She was working in Paris at that time for Hearst Newspapers as a European correspondent. In that role she travelled to Vienna and Germany and had firsthand experience of observing the brutality of the Nazi regime, in particular towards the Jewish population of Germany. She witnessed the beatings, the humiliations and the degradations of the Jewish community. She saw the boycotts of Jewish businesses. She saw the daubing on the windows of those businesses. She saw the rabid crowds who gathered outside those businesses and broke their windows and intimidated decent citizens going about their normal business. How important it is to reflect on that. That led her of course to the great motivation to take on this evil regime.

Really, she is a timely reminder of the great generation who stood up to be counted, to take on those challenges and to pay sacrifices and live with those sacrifices. In her own case, that was a very personal sacrifice because, as we have heard, her own husband, Henri Flocci, was captured, tortured and executed by the Gestapo. She did suffer that personal loss immediately in that context. We are obviously these days called upon to shoulder those sorts of sacrifices in our ongoing efforts in Afghanistan, for example, against a no less evil opponent.

Her record was a tremendous one as a soldier, effectively. The training that she would have gone through alone to be an SUE operator was incredibly hazardous. There were no OHMS rules going through that training. Just surviving that training was a real credit to her. It involved jumping out of perfectly serviceable aircraft, which in itself is often declared by some people to be an act of insanity but certainly requires great courage and great skill. In her training she was, as we heard the member for Riverina state, categorised and reported on as being a very good and fast shot and possessing excellent field craft. As was also said, she put a lot of men to shame by her spirit and strength of character. I really commend the Leader of the Opposition yesterday for drawing attention to the fact that this was a woman, in the context of debates we have had recently about women in combat. If there is any better example we could cite than Nancy Wake over some of the more sillier aspects of that argument, then this is a perfect case study. I commend the Leader of the Opposition for drawing that particular lesson out of the life of Nancy Wake.

It was not just that she was good in training. She put that training into effect. One of the things that she had to do of course was kill, in the service of this great cause of defeating fascism in Europe. She killed an SS sentry with her bare hands to prevent him raising the alarm. She conducted many operations where she was responsible for directing actual contact, directing actual combat activity, directing covering fire with exceptional coolness and facilitating the operations of the maquis that she was involved with. Many times she was under fire and many times she was called upon to exercise her military skills in every possible way that you can.

She was a real character. Obviously she had a lot of strong opinions, not all of which some of us would agree with, but she certainly earned the right to exercise and voice those opinions if anybody did. Once when she was parachuted into France she was discovered by Captain Tardivat hanging in a tree. Captain Tardivat, being the gallant Frenchman, said to her, 'I hope that all the trees in France bear such beautiful fruit this year,' to which Nancy replied, 'Don't give me that French shit'—a typical Australian response. But she did love France and the French people; it was not reflective of that but more of her particular Australian spirit. Certainly she was also heard to make some comments about our nation's recognition of her—which was very tardy, we have to admit. She refused offers of decorations from Australia that came later by saying, 'The last time there was a suggestion of that I told the government they could stick their medals where the monkey stuck his nuts.' She was a character and in the finest tradition of this country.

I would like to come back again before I finish to talk about the lessons she brings home to me today and why they are so relevant today. She stood up in the face of the brutality that was being exhibited towards the Jewish population of Germany, the boycotts of their businesses et cetera. In this country today we are facing similar actions in this insidious—let me call it what it is—anti-Semitic boycott, divestment and sanctions campaign being run by certain sections of our community and supported by certain sections of certain political parties. This is the most disgusting, despicable campaign I think I have witnessed in recent times. It has been brought to the height of ridiculousness by the campaign against Max Brenner's chocolate shop in Melbourne, and more protests along the same lines are planned for Brisbane on 27 August and Melbourne on 9 September. I commend all of those who have united in their voice to condemn these boycotts.

Lest anyone be in any doubt about what these people are on about: campaigns like 'Let Palestine be free from the Jordan to the sea' are not on about the two-state solution; they are on about eliminating the state of Israel, another six million Jews on whose behalf we need to exercise due diligence and campaign for their survival against this insidious campaign. What are we going to see next? Will these people be daubing windows and breaking windows again? Is that what we are going to see next? There were 15 people arrested at that boycott of Max Brenner's shop—a peaceful, decent citizen of this country, doing his business honestly. I vigorously condemn not only the engagement in these activities but also the hypocrisy of these people. Where have these people been in relation to what is going on in Syria? Hundreds of people are being massacred, tortured and brutalised daily. What about Libya? What about Egypt? What about Tunisia? What about Somalia, Iran—where those people cry out for support and recognition—or North Korea, with massive daily violations of human rights? Where are these people? Where is their BDS campaign in relation to these issues? When we are talking about Israel, we are talking about the only democracy in the Middle East with a strong civil society, with separation of powers, with a Supreme Court that regularly rules in equity and fairness on the issues of the day in that country. Where are they in campaigning against these massive violations of human rights and loss of life? And where are they in campaigning on the rights of women in the Middle East and Central Asia? Are these people the sort of people who would be the first to suffer from these fundamentalist and mediaeval attitudes that they are actually supporting and fellow travelling with? What about Gilad Shalit, for whom on 25 June this year we observed the passing of five years of captivity, where Hamas has not admitted the ICRC to even observe his condition? Where are the human rights voices in support of Gilad Shalit amongst these people who are conducting this BDS campaign?

Finally, I would call upon Senator Brown to exercise some control or intervention now, particularly in relation to the New South Wales branch of his party, which is running off on this agenda dictated by elements of the Socialist Alliance and moving well away from their environmental concerns of the past by supporting this disgusting anti-Semitic campaign. I would call on Senator Brown to intervene in the New South Wales branch and bring that party back to its priority concerns in relation to legitimate issues on the environment.

In tribute to Nancy Wake today, I hope that this generation of Australians will be as forthright in standing up to be counted against the forces of evil as she was.

Pr oceedings suspended from 12:59 to 16:00

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