Steve Georganas (Adelaide, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Hansard source

I commend this motion moved by the member for Gippsland, who is himself a former minister for veterans' affairs and who, I know, was very well regarded in the veterans community during his time as the Minister for Veterans' Affairs. I thank him for this motion today.

When I think of VP Day, or the 80th anniversary, I think those of us who were born after World War II. We can only imagine the range of emotions felt by millions of people around the world on Victory in the Pacific, or VP, Day in 1945. I take this opportunity to thank the veterans who have played a role in the history of defending our nation but also in recent years, in Vietnam, the Middle East, Afghanistan, Iraq and East Timor, and all those who have served at the UN, who are there protecting us and ensuring that we have a safe nation to live in.

Almost a million Australians served in the war in the Army, Air Force, Navy and the Merchant Navy, with half serving overseas and others serving in key roles on the home front. Approximately 40,000 Australians would die serving in this war. Their graves and memorials to the missing are located right around the world. Fighting in the Middle East and in Europe, Australians helped to defeat the Nazi German regime that was responsible for the war in Europe and for terrible atrocities, including the horrendous Holocaust. They fought in the deserts of North Africa, the mountains and valleys of Greece and Syria, the seas of the Mediterranean and the Atlantic, and the dangerous skies over Europe.

When the war expanded to Asia and the Asia-Pacific in December 1941, Australians faced the possibility that Australia itself could be attacked—and attacked it was. We'd been through World War I in Gallipoli and the beginning of World War II in Europe, where there was a perceived threat to our nation. But this was a real threat. All of a sudden, the enemy was on our doorstep and the next step would be to invade Australia. In fact, following the fall of Singapore on 14 February 1942 Prime Minister John Curtin famously declared that it opened the battle for Australia. Just three days after Curtin's declaration, Darwin was bombed—as the member for Solomon has described to us many times in this place—causing trauma for the people of the Northern Territory and all of Australia to this day.

We mark VP Day on 15 August to remember the war, to pay our gratitude to those who served but also to remember that these people, these veterans, were the pillars of our democracy. They were there fighting for our democracy. If we can just think about what it would be like if we hadn't had victory; what sort of Australia would we be living in today? Not only Australia; what would the world be like? We have a lot of gratitude to pay to those veterans who defended our nation, and the best we can do to honour them is to defend the democracy they fought for and defended in World War II, in the Pacific, under atrocious circumstances. We've heard stories of prisoners of war in Singapore, of the prisons all over the Asia-Pacific region—horror stories of people who were tortured and were kept in isolation et cetera. A few of them made it to this wonderful Chamber, this House, to be representatives of their communities when they came back to Australia. Like I said, I think we have a lot of gratitude to pay to those people, to thank them for everything they've done.

I'd also like to take this opportunity to particularly thank the RSLs in my electorate in South Australia—the state branch of the RSL, the Kilburn, Unley, Prospect, Hilton, Enfield, Walkerville, West Croydon and Kilkenny RSLs, and the other ex-services associations in South Australia and all of Australia for the work they do to make sure that we never, ever forget. When we forget, we don't know where we're heading. You need to know where you have come from to have a direction and a focus on where we're going. We should never forget these conflicts because they are what have made us the nation that we are today, they are what have given us our freedoms—our freedom of speech, our freedom of religion—and they have made us one of the best democracies in the world. That's all due to those veterans that fought for those pillars of our democracy and our system here in Australia.

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