Michael McCormack (Riverina, National Party) Share this | Hansard source

I thank the member for Hasluck for bringing forward this motion. That said, there are a number of elements and parts to this motion, and whilst I am very much against nuclear war and nuclear armaments—I am—we cannot place a 2025 lens over what happened 80 years ago. There are 39,658 Australians on the Roll of Honour from World War II. How many more Australian diggers would have lost their lives had Hiroshima and Nagasaki not brought a swift end to the Pacific theatre of war? I'm not saying it was the right thing to do, because many, many tens of thousands of innocent people lost their lives in those incidents—and they were far worse than 'incidents'; that almost downplays them—on 6 and 9 August 1945. We should find, in our hearts, the peace to ensure that it never actually happens again. But we can't look now and say that they were bad for doing it then, because it was the only course of action they felt could have been taken to stop Japan's imperialistic push in the Pacific.

You only have to look at the Sandakan monument in Wagga Wagga. There are so many names—150 men from the local district who died on that death march. The Japanese were very cruel. Let's make no mistake. Let's not beat about the bush. Let's not sugar coat this. The Japanese were very cruel to Australian and British soldiers in their prisoner of war camps. But I will say this: in Cowra, in central-western New South Wales, during the 5 August 1944 breakout when 1,104 Japanese prisoners of war broke out from the internment camp there, 231 of them lost their lives. Four Australian soldiers did as well. But, from that, there is now an understanding; Cowra is a town of international peace and friendship. There is a friendship bell, a peace bell, that they gong in the town on auspicious occasions. There is a cemetery there that is the only recognised Japanese military cemetery outside Honshu, Hokkaido, Kyushu and Shikoku. It is that important. I congratulate Nihon Hidankyo on the 2024 Nobel Peace Prize. We've had many, many Japanese ambassadors, diplomats and even survivors of the Cowra breakout go to the central-western town and talk about peace. That's the important thing.

For us to now condemn any action that was taken in 1945 is to try to rewrite history. Let's try not to do that, because, 80 years ago, Japan was not going to surrender. They were going to take more Australian lives. They were going to continue their cruelty in the jungles of Borneo and Papua New Guinea. They would have kept their attempted incursion of this country, and we may well be speaking a different language now had the actions by the Americans and by the Allied Forces not been taken. Labor, of course, with Prime Minister Curtin, did the right thing by bringing Australian troops back from the European theatre of war to fight for our country, to fight in this theatre of war. It's interesting that this motion immediately follows the Victory in the Pacific Day motion, commemorating, celebrating of sorts, 15 August. But for VP Day, it could have been a very different Australia to the one that we live in now. But for, sadly, the nuclear bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki, it could have been a very different Australia to the one that we live in now.

People like John 'Black Jack' McEwen were very quick to reorganise trade with Japan, to build Japan back up to where they needed to be, to reconstruct those wonderful four main islands—and a wonderful people. Japanese people are very, very good people, make no mistake. They're trustworthy, diligent and hard working. They have all the same ethics that we do. But, back in World War II, when we'd lost nearly 40,000 troops, what was done was done. It brought a very swift end to the deadliest conflict that mankind has ever known. To that end, whilst we're against nuclear arms, it was something that was relatable then and certainly saved a lot of lives.

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