Kevin Rudd (Griffith, Australian Labor Party, Prime Minister) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

Mr Speaker, on indulgence: today the Leader of the Opposition and I attended the Remembrance Day commemoration activities at the Australian War Memorial. I believe it is important for the parliament to reflect on Remembrance Day, this being the 90th anniversary of the Armistice. It is important for the parliament to reflect on the extent of Australian casualties in the First World War—casualties which, as I reflected this morning, are mind numbing in their dimensions. There were 60,000 Australian dead and 150,000 Australians wounded in the First World War. The implications and the impact which that had on families and communities across Australia were profound and continue to be profound.

As we gathered again today, we had the opportunity to meet with the families of some of the more recently fallen. This was a moving occasion for us all. It reminds us afresh of the continuing service of our men and women in uniform. It reminds us afresh of the fact that there is no higher calling in Australia than to wear the uniform of our nation. It reminds us afresh of the fact that we have our troops still in harm’s way in many theatres around the world.

Also on this, the 90th anniversary of the Armistice, it is important for us as a parliament to reflect again publicly on our friends and allies with whom we have fought for the better part of a century in so many theatres around the world—in difficult theatres and in dark days for our nation and, indeed, in dark days for the world. It is, furthermore, important for the parliament to reflect on the significance of the Armistice and its aspirations for the peace of the world. We know from the history of the 20th century that the aspirations for peace following the Armistice of 1918 were not realised, that within a generation the world was again at war. Again, following the Second World War, since 1945, peace has not been the order of the day.

I think that if those whose names we revere and honour as we walk through the corridors of the War Memorial—and see their names inscribed in the Hall of Honour—have one message for us all today it is not simply to remember their sacrifice, which we must do; it is not simply to honour their heroism, which we must do; it is also to hear their voice to us today telling us to be ever vigilant, not just in the defence of the nation but in the prosecution of peace. There is nothing more horrific for any nation, any community or any family than the direct experience of war. Let us resolve afresh as a parliament to maintain the vigilance which they would expect of this generation of Australians, but to be equally vigilant in the prosecution of peace.

Malcolm Turnbull (Wentworth, Liberal Party, Leader of the Opposition) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

Mr Speaker, on indulgence: I wish to associate the opposition with the remarks of the Prime Minister and compliment him on his very eloquent address at the Remembrance Day ceremony at the War Memorial. When we look back on the First World War at the scale of the casualties the horror is mind boggling—almost beyond our comprehension. The numbers were staggering in a world, a society, much greater than the country from which those brave fallen men came.

We contemplate an Australia a quarter the size of what it is today in population and then the horror of Fromelles, that most cataclysmic of Australian military campaigns, where 5,533 Australians would die between one nightfall and the next. It was possibly the worst 24 hours in our nation’s history. We think of the mighty struggles undertaken and the thousands of men whose lives were lost to gain a few metres ground, only to lose it again. We think of Villers-Bretonneux, the village where Australian and French forces had to fight literally door-to-door to drive their enemy into retreat. And we think of the 1,200 Anzacs who died to rescue that village, to liberate it, three years to the day after the landing at Gallipoli. Over 320,000 Australians volunteered for the First World War—this from a nation of five million. There were 61,000 killed and 155,000 wounded. ‘There were so many of them but we never saw them,’ wrote Les Carlyon in The Great War, his epic study of the Australian deployment to the Western Front. We never really knew them, or perhaps never knew enough about their lives or deaths. What we have are memories: faded photographs, bits and pieces brought back from the war.

Perhaps the one war relic that is most evocative for me is a German button brought back by my grandfather. He no doubt found it on the battlefield. I remember it has written on it ‘Gott mit uns’: God with us. I wonder sometimes whether that was a proud boast by the aggressor nation saying, ‘God is on our side and not on the side of our opponents,’ or whether it was perhaps just a prayer—a silent prayer every day as that soldier buttoned up his greatcoat, hoping that God was indeed with him in the horror of the trenches and indeed with the men he was fighting against on the other side.

The Prime Minister spoke today about peace, and that of course is what we must never lose sight of. I am reminded too of Psalm 34, where King David wrote, ‘Seek peace and pursue it’. It is not enough just to look for it or be aware of the virtues of peace, to be in favour of peace; we must pursue it. In that passage, in the original Hebrew, ‘pursue’ means relentlessly, tirelessly chasing, with the passion of the hunter. That is the challenge that comes to leaders in every age: not simply to be vigilant, not simply to stand up for peace, not simply to seek it, but to chase after it, to pursue it relentlessly, tirelessly, with all our heart.