Tim Wilson (Goldstein, Liberal Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I would also like to associate myself with the comments previously made by the member for Sydney.

Today we acknowledge the incredible contribution of Victorians and Australians toward the relief funds to aid the victims—the families, children and orphans—of the Armenian genocide. In February 1916, the Melbourne Argus published an article arguing that 'few people in Australia have had the opportunity of knowing much about this interesting ancient nation, and therefore do not realise the appalling magnitude of her present manifold miseries'. The stories of Armenians being marched into the Syrian desert, of human and cultural genocide, slowly drifted back to Australians from our Anzacs. By 1917, The Age newspaper was reporting Armenians as 'the martyr nation of Christendom', saying, 'Think of the fact that 600,000 of these virile people were rounded up, as stock is rounded up, and done to death.'

The marching of Armenians to their death started a mobilisation of Australians for their lives. The then Lord Mayor of Melbourne, Sir David Hennessy, wrote to The Age newspaper of his opening of 'a fund for the relief of the remnant of Armenia'. The Lord Mayor trusted in 'a liberal response by the citizens of Victoria to this urgent appeal'. Subsequent editions of the newspaper carried the names of many citizens who liberally supported the fund. In addition to the Commonwealth dispatching a ship for humanitarian efforts, Australians and New Zealanders established an orphanage with the hundreds of thousands of pounds of relief funds needed.

Today we honour the memory of Armenians who lost their lives and the Victorians and the Australians who rallied to the cause of their relief.