Andrew Laming (Bowman, Liberal Party) Share this | Hansard source

This debate, bipartisan as it is, and will always remain, is important to recognise the service of those who leave the comfort and the familiarity of Australia to fight for values we share. The observations of Kenneth Minogue, and more recently Svend Brinkmann, have looked at identifying what, as a nation, we stand for? What are the values that we're not going to keep trading away; we're actually going to stand firm and defend? That's an important question for young Australians educated in an age of moral relativism. Increasingly, we need to be able to identify clearly what is something that is a non-negotiable element in a civil and peaceful democracy that allows us to have elections in a peaceful way, to respect the pen and the word rather than the sword.

I want to make five observations in this opportunity I have been given today. The first one is to note it's not just conventional military service that we recognise in this motion; we recognise all Australians who served either here or overseas, not only in a military capacity but also in a peace-keeping capacity. As I will say later, even in a Kiap capacity through the police constabulary that served in Papua New Guinea. All these need to be recognised as part of this motion.

I had the privilege of serving in Afghanistan as a landmine-clearing medic and physician with English landmine clearers post the first Gulf War. I lost two of my three closest friends in a landmine-clearing accident in 1992, shortly after I had departed. But they had, as close friends of mine, written back to their families about what drove them to continue to serve even after they had resigned their commissions from the first Gulf War. Tim Goggs, Tim Porter, Julian Gregson: one of them went home to their relatives; the other two were trapped in a landmine-clearing tank after a dreadful accident in Afghanistan. That point is marked by a can of rocks and a small sign that recognises the work they did just to try to rekindle democracy in Afghanistan. That was in 1992. How long have we been struggling, and how many civilisations prior to 1992 were trying to do the exact thing? It's a fight we won't give up on for Julian and for Tim. Both of them were recognised with the highest civilian award for bravery by their own country—a point I'll be coming to later—but they were serving in an unconventional way in the farthest corners of the world for the same thing.

Closer to home, my dad was a Kiap. He trained as a civilian to serve as a patrol officer in Papua New Guinea. His unusual duty, in 1970, was to disarm the last coast watcher in Bougainville, who had been serving in Bougainville since World War II and was still in possession of his military allocation of both weapons and other equipment from World War II. I remember my dad said to me: 'I had to go and see this gentleman at the plantation and say, "The time has come. The emerging independent country of Papua New Guinea has asked you be disarmed."' While every military item was offered to my dad, he only took what he had to take by law, and that was the weapon. We need to remember those Kiaps now; many of them are passing away. We are yet, in this capital city of Canberra, to recognise Kiaps with a formal location where we can go and recognise the service of Kiaps. Though they served in peacetime, it was not always safe. Papua New Guinea was a very challenging environment for those Kiaps.

Bereavement and being recognised in the armed service is incredibly important. We can all remember the embarrassment of the 'mother's medal' up until World War II. Many of us have forgotten that those who lost a loved one in war were sent a letter to go and pick up a medal, a medallion, from their local post office. That is inconceivable today, but let us not judge previous eras by today's standard. We can now do it properly. I think that everyone in Australia who has lost a first-degree relative, a family member, in service to this great nation should be able to wear that proudly on the left breast with the medal array that they have from their relative. But we still can't do that. While we welcome every person who served and their family to march on Anzac Day, I think it's appropriate that we recognise that element of losing a loved one in this service. And that's quite easy to do through a medal that's awarded directly to the next of kin that is noted on those enrolment papers.

That's yet to occur, but what has occurred with each of the three of our armed forces is a bereavement pin, an element that had been lost to history until 2010, when the former member for Herbert Peter Lindsay retired from the parliament without it having been secured. We made it a coalition policy in 2010. It was forgotten in 2013, but all three wings of the armed forces have gladly gone ahead with a bereavement pin that can be worn proudly by the next of kin who've lost a loved one serving this nation.

In my own area of Bowman, a particular form of service that is almost forgotten now is the Women's Land Army. Hard as it is to imagine if you took away the equivalent of half a million young people to serve and, self-evidently, only 10 or 15 per cent of them were women, and you had a huge economy that you needed to be run by the women who stayed behind—but the Women's Land Army did that in World War II. Four hundred women at Victoria Point would go out and regularly tend to the fields in the food bowl of my electorate every minute of every hour of everyday, under the sun, doing a role they hadn't been doing up until then and thinking about whether their loved ones would be coming home. The way they thought about it was actually rolling up their sleeves and farming. It's an incredible story. They received a minor royal visit when a countess popped by in a limousine to see the Women's Land Army in my electorate. She didn't get out of the car, apparently, because it was spotting with rain and she didn't want to upset her bonnet, but all of the young women came up and offered her strawberries. What an era that must have been. And what an incredible and now forgotten service. Many of those women had to take their kids with them while they farmed.

Lastly, and very importantly, we are now just starting to recognise the breadth and dimension of service by moving of the year when the Vietnam War began. It's now officially 1962. It wasn't always 1962, because we were officially not at war. But I want to say today that Australians were serving then and Australians were dying. The first casualty in the Vietnam War was a gentlemen by the name of Kevin Conway from Wellington Point in my electorate. At the moment, we are reapplying for his bravery to be recognised. I would like to read into the Hansard the importance of his gentleman's service. Sergeant and Temporary Warrant Officer Class 2 Kevin Conway was killed in action in 1964 in the Battle of Nam Dong. As a member of the Australian Army Training Team Vietnam, he was placed on his own to work with American consultants in building the capacity of the South Vietnamese to defend themselves. He was the first Australian, as I've said, to die in that war.

He left school at 15 years of age and attempted to enlist in 1943 but was too young for the Second World War. So he joined what was called the postwar army. It is unclear whether he was able to serve in Korea, but he did serve in Malaysia and was awarded the appropriate clasp. He was an efficient and conscientious soldier. He had a practical, common sense approach to problems. He was the kind of Aussie you would want to send to the front line. He was the kind of Australian who could work shoulder to shoulder with the Americans and do our nation proud, which is precisely what he did in an incredibly remote part of Vietnam, close to the Laotian border. What we didn't realise at the time was that up to a quarter of the South Vietnamese that he was helping to train were actually Vietcong. The very men who the Australians and Americans were trying to assist to build their nation and get their nation on its feet and be able to defend from what they saw as a northern threat had already technically deserted but remained to ambush these serving personnel when the time was right. When a bullet was heard and shot in anger, these South Vietnamese were instructed to pull their shirt off, identify as Vietcong and slit the throat or shoot at point blank the Australian or the American they were standing next to. Imagine serving in that context!

Conway was recommended the Victoria Cross by the AATTV and by Colonel Ted Serong in particular for not only running towards a mortar trench but urging others around him to organise themselves and defend. The US officer next to Conway, Captain Donlon, became the first recipient of the Medal of Honour in the Vietnam War for his actions alongside him. Several other Americans also received an award. But Conway only received the highest bravery award that Vietnam can offer and nothing from Australia.

When Colonel Serong visited the scene of the battle, he said Conway and a US Master Sergeant fought their way through the Vietcong just to get to a mortar pit where they began their assignment of firing illumination flares so they could see the enemy. When another Vietcong assault brought the attackers to within grenade-throwing distance of the trench, Conway had two choices: pull out his firearm and defend himself or continue operating the mortar. He chose the latter. We have been through the archives in the last month looking for a previous recommendation for a Victoria Cross for this gentleman. Archives have confirmed that they cannot find it. On those grounds, we are now applying directly to the ministry of defence to ensure that the valour of Kevin Conway is recognised.

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