Bill Shorten (Maribyrnong, Australian Labor Party, Leader of the Opposition) Share this | Hansard source

Today we pay our respects to the honoured memory of all those who have served in our country's defence forces: young men who lost their lives 100 years ago in a desperate scramble through heavy enemy fire up impossibly steep cliffs on a Turkish peninsula that most had never even heard of; we remember the thousands who fell as fast as rain, interred beneath white crosses and red poppies in the foreign fields of the Western Front; and those buried at sea in the Pacific, Indian and Atlantic oceans, and in the North Sea.

We salute every generation of service: through swirling sand and unforgiving mud; in skies over Europe; in jungle dark in Malaya, New Guinea and Vietnam; in the biting winter of Korea; in the baking sun of Afghanistan and Iraq; and in the cause of peace in Africa, the Middle East and the Asia-Pacific. We remember all who came home wounded or bearing the hidden scars of war. We think of their families and loved ones who endured the long and lonely nights, fearing the worst.

The world would learn far too quickly that 11 November, the end of 'the war to end all wars', merely marked the beginning of a fragile and fractious truce. The trials of those two decades between the two wars were more than some nations and some people would bear. As our greatest wartime Prime Minister, John Curtin, said when he opened the Australian War Memorial in 1941:

Not all came through with courage enough, and faith enough, to stand the shattering onset of another war and to know what they must do.

But Australia did come through. We did so, Curtin said, in large part because we kept alive the great traditions of Anzac without vainglory and without distortion. We kept faith with the citizen-soldier tradition which owed more to courage in the face of adversity than to imagined glory and sweeping victories. We kept faith with those who lost their lives in Australia's name. We kept the promise at the heart of who we are as a nation:

At the going down of the sun and in the morning

We will remember them.

But the lesson of the last century—from the challenges of soldier settlements to the shameful treatment of many who came home from Vietnam—is that the cost of war does not end when the guns fall silent. We owe those who served us more than praise. 'Lest we forget' has to mean more than just the respect of history; it must be matched by meaningful support for our veterans and for their loved ones.

Post-traumatic stress disorder is an ongoing challenge which in many ways remains unmeasured and poorly understood. Today one in 10 Australians who are homeless is a veteran. Surely we are a better nation than this, and those who have risked their lives for our country deserve so much better. Veterans' Affairs do a good job. There are many remarkable organisations, from the RSL to Homes for Heroes—founded by Geoff Evans—who are doing great work. But it is up to us in this place to offer a better deal for our diggers—in particular the new generation returning home from Australia's longest war, in Afghanistan. Today, let us who do not serve remind ourselves of the duty that we owe. On a day defined, appropriately, by courage and sacrifice, let us find the courage to live up to that duty. Lest we forget.

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