Malcolm Turnbull (Wentworth, Liberal Party, Prime Minister) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

Seventy-five years ago, Singapore fell to the imperial forces of Japan. It was a shattering moment. Australians had believed the might of the Royal Navy and the guns of Singapore's island fortress would keep it safe. Its fall began, as Curtin said, 'the battle for Australia'. Almost 1,800 Australians died and more than 1,300 were wounded in the fight for Malaya and the defence of Singapore. Just before Christmas, believing Singapore was impregnable, the Curtin government sent further reinforcements, including 1,900 virtually untrained recruits. Samuel Pond, commanding the 2/29th Battalion, learned to his horror that the men he received had been in uniform for only one month, and half of that time had been spent on the boat from Australia.

Between 8 and 15 February 1942, the 8th Division battled to hold back the Japanese advance down the Malay Peninsula. Eventually, fought back to Singapore and with water supplies cut and most of the island's defences overrun, at 8.30 pm, by order of their British commander, General Sir Arthur Percival, 130,000 troops, including 15,000 Australians, surrendered to the Japanese. Just two days before the battle, John Gorton, posted to Singapore with 232 Squadron, RAF, had evacuated the city. Of course, most did not make it out. We remember the former members and senators who were prisoners of the Japanese, including Tom Uren, a minister in the Whitlam government, and Alexander Downer, a minister in the Menzies government.

In total, more than 22,000 Australians captured in the defence of Malaya, Singapore and the Dutch East Indies between December '41 and March '42 became prisoners of war. More than 8,000 of them died in captivity. The cruelties inflicted on our prisoners of war were horrific: murders, beatings, starvation and neglect—war crimes that left a tragic toll and a bitter legacy. One of those prisoners of war was Norman Womersley, father of my stepmother, Judy. She was six when he died, just before the war's end, on the island of Ambon, starved and sick like so many others who had been flung into battle in January 1942 barely trained, only a few months after they had enlisted.

I remember well another prisoner of war from Singapore who did return and was a big part of my young life, George Daldry. He was a bit of a legend, actually—captured at the age of 16 and imprisoned in Changi, where he saw his brother murdered by the guards. George returned to become the best sports fitness and conditioning expert in Australia, from his base at City Tattersalls Club training national teams and those athletically ambitious, like me and my father, who joined his runs and workouts in Centennial Park. George was always obsessive about cleanliness and fitness. I remember him telling me with a very deep intensity how that obsession kept him alive in those dark days of cruel captivity.

Whole families were involved, like the Colenso family from Kingsford. Four brothers enlisted in the 2/18th Battalion on the same day, 1 July 1940, and sailed for Singapore the following year. When the Japanese landed, the Colenso brothers were stationed on the north-west coast. Of those four brave boys, 23-year-old Ray was killed in action on 9 February and his 31-year-old brother, Bill, died two days later. Their brothers Frank and Ted were both captured after the fall of Singapore and endured terrible miseries as prisoners of war. Thankfully, both returned home in 1945. Australians who died in Singapore and those buried at Changi and other prison camps now have their final resting place in Kranji War Cemetery in Singapore.

This week also marks the sinking of the Vyner Brooke by Japanese bombers. It was carrying evacuees from Singapore, mostly women and children, as well as the last 65 Australian nurses on the island. Many of the survivors who landed on Radji Beach after the sinking were then massacred by the Japanese. Twenty-two Australian nurses were forced into the sea and shot in the back. The only nurse who survived was the South Australian Sister Vivian Bullwinkel. This was the single biggest loss of Australian nurses in wartime.

Within days of Singapore's fall, the Japanese would bomb Darwin, bringing Australia under direct attack for the first time. On Sunday I will join the Governor-General and the people of Darwin to mark the 75th anniversary of the first of many air raids on Northern Australia during the war. For Australians at the time, it must have felt like the beginning of the end. But, just three months later, Australian and American forces were fighting together to halt Japan's momentum in the Coral Sea. Soon after that was the Battle of Midway, the turning point of the Pacific War. Fighting through the jungle of Kokoda, Japanese invincibility was exposed for the fraud that it was. American strategic power became the sheet anchor for what became a shared regional commitment to a rules based system which brought peace, relative tranquillity and the greatest burst of prosperity that the world has ever seen. The Republic of Singapore plays a crucial role in this shared effort, and Australia, Japan and Singapore work side by side as friends and partners in securing prosperity, peace and stability in our region.

In an age where ancient enmities seem to re-emerge to stoke conflict around the world, it is remarkable that it was the generation who fought and suffered in the war against Japan who in 1957 entered into the Commerce Agreement with Japan, which has been the foundation of our strong and growing economic and strategic partnership. What a generation—fearless as they gave their all to fight against a cruel and overwhelming enemy and then, war won, foe vanquished, they were able to forgive. Lest we forget.

Bill Shorten (Maribyrnong, Australian Labor Party, Leader of the Opposition) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I thank the Prime Minister for his words then. The fall of Singapore changed Australia forever. Singapore had been a pillar of Australia's defence policy, our foreign policy, our sense of security. It was an invincible garrison. It was an impregnable fortress of British might and naval power. And yet it was swept aside within 10 weeks of the war in the Pacific. The unthinkable had happened.

There are many dates which contribute, I think, to the formation of the identity of Australia, but there can be no doubt that 1942 was a very significant milestone in the identity of Australia. The fall of Singapore changed the way we saw ourselves, changed our sense of security in the region. A relatively new nation, we had worried about what might happen to the north of Australia, but in 1942 it became real. It did, as the Prime Minister eloquently said, scar the lives of a generation of Australians. Unimaginable numbers of Australians were killed—unimaginable in our modern concept. Many more were wounded. And 15,000 servicemen were taken prisoner, along with Army nurses.

One in three of those who were captured would not survive the brutal nightmare of torture, starvation, cruelty, backbreaking labour, abuses and indignities great and small, and those who did came home marked forever by what they had endured. There were the ulcers and the amputations, the disease and the malnutrition, but then of course there were the wounds that did not show—the psychological trauma, the grief, the memory of a mate's pain. The Burma-Thai Railway runs straight through the heart of this nation, and, even as the veterans pass, its shadow lingers still. Frankly, that anyone survived is a miracle of the human spirit. That so many of our men and women came home is a tribute to the resilience of their spirit and I think also the depth of loyalty they showed to their brothers. Far from home, and a world away from the war they had imagined, there was nevertheless a profound Australian quality to their solidarity. In the great Tom Uren's words, the fit looked after the sick, the young looked after the old, the rich looked after the poor. There was a greatness in those Australians—kindness in another's trouble, courage in their own.

Seventy-five years ago John Curtin told the people of this nation, 'The fall of Singapore opens the battle for Australia.' He said that we would put aside the pangs as to the traditional links or kinship with Britain. Instead, in our darkest hour, Curtin declared that Australia would speak for ourselves, we would plan for our own defences and we would, in Curtin's words, fight and work as we had never worked and fought before.

Whilst we sit here in this parliament, I think all of us do not underestimate the difficulty and the courage that that decision took, or the magnitude of the shift in the national mind set. Less than three years earlier, Robert Menzies had said, 'Great Britain is at war; therefore Australia is at war.' But now, with invasion on the doorstep, with Japanese bombs to rain on Darwin within the week, with Australia threatened in a way barely contemplated at the beginning of the war, Curtin spoke for an Australian identity that was more than an outpost of empire. He spoke for a proud and independent people determined to defend their continent. He stood up to Churchill. He dealt with Britain not as a colony talking to its mother country but in the honest language of equals. It was the forerunner of that significant decision to bring the 9th Division home in December 1942. 'We know the problems that the United Kingdom faces,' he said. 'We know the constant threat of invasion. We know the dangers of dispersal of strength, but we know too that Australia can go and Britain can still hold on. We are, therefore, determined that Australia shall not go.'

Seventy-five years ago Australia faced its sternest test. Our people rose to it. The heroism of those times belongs to those who lost everything in the prison camps except their love for their fellow man. In a system designed to break the body and try the soul, they came through, not just fending for themselves but caring for each other. I think all of us, when we have read about or spoken to survivors, have wondered, 'How could they have got through?' In the face of cruelty beyond the realm of humanity, these men showed the very best of Australia. All of us salute their courage. All of us honour their memory. We stand as one with their families and their legacy, and with special emphasis we offer Australia's oldest promise: we will remember them. Lest we forget.