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

I thank the Prime Minister for his words then. The fall of Singapore changed Australia forever. Singapore had been a pillar of Australia's defence policy, our foreign policy, our sense of security. It was an invincible garrison. It was an impregnable fortress of British might and naval power. And yet it was swept aside within 10 weeks of the war in the Pacific. The unthinkable had happened.

There are many dates which contribute, I think, to the formation of the identity of Australia, but there can be no doubt that 1942 was a very significant milestone in the identity of Australia. The fall of Singapore changed the way we saw ourselves, changed our sense of security in the region. A relatively new nation, we had worried about what might happen to the north of Australia, but in 1942 it became real. It did, as the Prime Minister eloquently said, scar the lives of a generation of Australians. Unimaginable numbers of Australians were killed—unimaginable in our modern concept. Many more were wounded. And 15,000 servicemen were taken prisoner, along with Army nurses.

One in three of those who were captured would not survive the brutal nightmare of torture, starvation, cruelty, backbreaking labour, abuses and indignities great and small, and those who did came home marked forever by what they had endured. There were the ulcers and the amputations, the disease and the malnutrition, but then of course there were the wounds that did not show—the psychological trauma, the grief, the memory of a mate's pain. The Burma-Thai Railway runs straight through the heart of this nation, and, even as the veterans pass, its shadow lingers still. Frankly, that anyone survived is a miracle of the human spirit. That so many of our men and women came home is a tribute to the resilience of their spirit and I think also the depth of loyalty they showed to their brothers. Far from home, and a world away from the war they had imagined, there was nevertheless a profound Australian quality to their solidarity. In the great Tom Uren's words, the fit looked after the sick, the young looked after the old, the rich looked after the poor. There was a greatness in those Australians—kindness in another's trouble, courage in their own.

Seventy-five years ago John Curtin told the people of this nation, 'The fall of Singapore opens the battle for Australia.' He said that we would put aside the pangs as to the traditional links or kinship with Britain. Instead, in our darkest hour, Curtin declared that Australia would speak for ourselves, we would plan for our own defences and we would, in Curtin's words, fight and work as we had never worked and fought before.

Whilst we sit here in this parliament, I think all of us do not underestimate the difficulty and the courage that that decision took, or the magnitude of the shift in the national mind set. Less than three years earlier, Robert Menzies had said, 'Great Britain is at war; therefore Australia is at war.' But now, with invasion on the doorstep, with Japanese bombs to rain on Darwin within the week, with Australia threatened in a way barely contemplated at the beginning of the war, Curtin spoke for an Australian identity that was more than an outpost of empire. He spoke for a proud and independent people determined to defend their continent. He stood up to Churchill. He dealt with Britain not as a colony talking to its mother country but in the honest language of equals. It was the forerunner of that significant decision to bring the 9th Division home in December 1942. 'We know the problems that the United Kingdom faces,' he said. 'We know the constant threat of invasion. We know the dangers of dispersal of strength, but we know too that Australia can go and Britain can still hold on. We are, therefore, determined that Australia shall not go.'

Seventy-five years ago Australia faced its sternest test. Our people rose to it. The heroism of those times belongs to those who lost everything in the prison camps except their love for their fellow man. In a system designed to break the body and try the soul, they came through, not just fending for themselves but caring for each other. I think all of us, when we have read about or spoken to survivors, have wondered, 'How could they have got through?' In the face of cruelty beyond the realm of humanity, these men showed the very best of Australia. All of us salute their courage. All of us honour their memory. We stand as one with their families and their legacy, and with special emphasis we offer Australia's oldest promise: we will remember them. Lest we forget.

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