Greg Hunt (Flinders, Liberal Party, Minister for the Environment) Share this | Hansard source

On Anzac Day around the country, in small towns and in large cities, hundreds and hundreds of thousands of Australians, young and old, of all ethnicity, of all background, of all persuasion, gathered to acknowledge the sacrifice of those who came ashore at Gallipoli on 25 April 1915 and all of those who gave their service, in many cases their health and in all too many cases their lives for the security of Australia not just in the Great War but in all wars.

On Anzac Day I stood and read the names on the cenotaph at Sorrento on the foreshore. Amongst the many names, four in particular struck me—Skelton and Skelton, and Thompson and Thompson—two families, two members each. They represented the damage the loss the tragedy that each of those families felt and that so many other families in that great and terrible conflict felt, not just in Australia but in so many countries of the world.

The fact that 100 years on, following what was one of the very first sites in Australia to commemorate Anzac Day, there in Sorrento, these names are still recorded and still honoured—by schoolchildren, by other veterans, by parents, by people from all walks of life—says two things. It says that as a country we honour, remember and recognise the immense courage and sacrifice; and it says that we are living the very life for which they fought. As a free country, as a decent country, as an honourable country and as a hopeful country we retain the best of both acknowledging that immense, heroic sacrifice but also living with a sense of optimism, pride, hope and forward-looking nature. I think that those four names—Skelton and Skelton, and Thompson and Thompson—would be proud of what their community has become.

So to look briefly backwards; when we think of Anzac Day we know that as the beaches at Gallipoli were swarmed and an almost impossible task was set, by the end of that first day alone, 2,000 Australians lay dead or injured. By the end of the conflict, in just Gallipoli 8,700 Australians had perished and almost 19,000 had been injured. And those injuries were of course of a scale and magnitude which meant that many never recovered in any meaningful way.

By the end of the Great War, 61,000 Australians had given their lives. Over 151,000 had been injured—again in so many ways and to such an extent that normal life was not only impossible but anything other than a life of enormous pain was also impossible. So the immensity of that conflict has to be understood.

A little over 320,000 Australians travelled abroad to fight in that conflict; 61,000 lost their lives; 151,000 were injured. The odds of being killed or injured were almost two out of three. That is a level of courage, a level of sacrifice, which is almost unimaginable. To see the young people recognise and honour the young lives and the names on that plinth—and for them to have that sense of sadness, not just in Sorrento but also in Rye, Rosebud, Dromana, Hastings, Koo Wee Rup, Red Hill, Phillip Island, Lang Lang, Pearcedale and in so many other places within the electorate of Flinders, and replicated in 150 constituencies around the country—is to see that there is something strong in our national fibre. It is not the glorification of this conflict; it is the connection with the fact that so many people fought and gave everything.

So it was profoundly moving to be able to present to Ronald White, an elderly gentleman from a nursing home in Hastings, the medals of his father on Anzac Day. His father, Alfred Henry White, had served in the war. His mother had died when he was but a baby. He never knew his father. It was only in recent years tracking down the only memorabilia he had of his father

a single photograph of a smiling young man in a slouch hat

by using the systems available

with modern technology and with the support of the Bays hospital nursing home

was Ronald White able to find out his father's story.

His father, Alfred Henry White, won the British war medal and the victory medal and these were awarded to him in the chamber of the Hastings RSL after the dawn service and there was a degree of pride and a degree of sadness which encapsulated Anzac Day on the day.

Similarly to be able to present David Loyd with the medals of his own father Herbert Richard Loyd who had servced with the allied troops in Papua New Guinea and then with the US army small ships section was a deeply moving moment.

Right across Australia these things occurred as Australians commemorated in the most honourable those who had served and given. At home in our family we had a quiet moment in recognition of Colin Alexander Grant. On 5 May 1918 Colin Alexander Grant was felled by a bullet at Villers-Bretonneux. Like so many others of course his remains were interred there on the Western Front.

Colin Alexander Grant was my grandfather's brother. He was my great-uncle and the echo of his loss was never lost through the generations. But that is the same for the families of each of the 61,000 Australians who were lost. So against that background, it is right that we still remember. It is right and proper that young Australians from primary school are still able to mourn those that they have never known or even contemplated, but recognise that that which they have is so dependent on that which was given. In some small way the program of commemorating through new Anzac Centenary grants around Australia with initiatives such as the French Island Community Association's flagpole for their Anzac Day service, the Koo Wee Rup RSL's magnificent honour roll and avenue of honour and the Phillip Island RSL's redevelopment of its cenotaph helps to commemorate not just those who came ashore at Gallipoli on 25 April 1915, not just those who fought in the First World War but those who served Australia and who served Australia in each and every conflict whether abroad or whether by providing service at home then that program will have served its worth for the next 100 years. I thank everybody who contributed to Anzac Day 2015. More deeply, I honour and respect all of those who have served Australia over the last century.

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