Michael Johnson (Ryan, Liberal Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

Ninety years ago today, at 11 am on 11 November 1918, an armistice brought an end to four years of brutality, hostility and total destruction. Nations around the world were able to celebrate the return to peace. Today I, as the federal member for Ryan, representing nearly some 100,000 constituents in the western suburbs of Brisbane, want to honour all those brave Australians who sacrificed the ultimate—their lives—in our name. We cherish so much today the features of our great country: our democracy and freedom, our liberty and our capacity to go about our daily lives in peace and harmony. Today, as my constituents would want me to, I very profoundly honour those brave Australians.

During World War I more than 60,000 Australians died and an additional 156,000 Australians were wounded or taken prisoner of war. We understand that until 1939 the anniversary of the end of World War I was called Armistice Day. Following the Second World War, the British and Australian governments changed the name to Remembrance Day, making it a day when we commemorate and honour all those who died in terrible war. Those of us living today can only just imagine the horror of what it might have been like.

I know that the people of Ryan will be paying tribute to and remembering in their own way, both formally and officially at ceremonies in the western suburbs of Brisbane and informally at home and in their place of work, the lives lost. I know that they will pay tribute to the 102,000 Australians who have died in war by placing a single poppy flower in their local community memorial. I want to also take this opportunity to pay tribute to the RSL, which has a very special place in the architecture of our community organisations because it takes on the responsibility—but, I think, also the burden—of reminding the rest of the country of how significant it is to honour those whose lives have been lost. I want to pay tribute to all those in the western suburbs who, year in and year out, in the shopping centres and streets of the western suburbs, ask their fellow citizens to buy a poppy, which of course marks in a very profound but very simple way the sacrifices of Australians in generations past.