Jordon Steele-John (WA, Australian Greens) | Hansard source

I deeply understand why this action would evoke and provoke strong emotion in the community. My family have lost members to war. My grandfather's brother, my Uncle Gordon, was lost during the Second World War. He flew Wellington bombers and, on a night in June 1944, his bomber disappeared over the English Channel. His body and the bodies of his crew were never found. His mum, my great-grandma, never got over that loss—never—and neither did my grandad. Throughout his life and the life of his mum and the life of every single remaining member of that family, echoing down to my family right now, there has been a hole and an absence and a sorrow that cannot be described. There's the lack of closure and a sense of frustration and the inability to grieve because so many have lost so many and you are made to feel that you should be grateful that you've lost only one son.

When my family emigrated to Australia, one of the first places we visited was the Australian War Memorial, because one of the co-pilots alongside Gordon was a man who was an Australian. We went and found his name up in the memorial and placed a poppy next to it. I can't remember that; I was a baby at the time. But, when I was elected to this place, one of the first things I did was go back to that memorial and place a new poppy and reflect upon not only the hole that this person who I had never known, who I don't even have a picture of, must have left in their family but also the way in which Gordon's absence and loss had continued to affect me. So I do understand why the actions that have been taken by the people who made these decisions to express themselves in this way have evoked this response.

I also very much hear the calls from MPs. We have MPs in this place who have served in the armed forces, Senator Lambie among them. I very much hear the call for respect of the War Memorial and a desire that it be a place of honour and reflection upon sacrifice and the impact of war. I very much understand that. When I went back to the War Memorial—this would have been five years ago—to place that poppy for the second time, as I left I was filled with a sadness that I expected and a melancholy that I expected, but I was also filled with emotions that I did not expect to experience. I was filled with anger and, quite frankly, disgust, and I will tell the chamber why. It was because, when you enter the War Memorial to go through the museum part of the memorial, one of the things that hits you immediately as you approach the desk is a flat-screen TV. On that flat-screen TV intermittently revolves the branded logo of some of the largest defence manufacturers in the world. We're talking about BAE and Raytheon and Boeing, the very organisations and corporate entities that make money while our troops are at war—while the children of Australia are in harm's way.

That prompted me to look further into this and to discover that those organisations are legally able to donate to the Australian War Memorial. Until very recently, as part of the expansion of the memorial, there was a theatre within the memorial, branded the BAE theatre. If you went on the website and you clicked the link, it took you to BAE's website. I found disgusting the idea that, if we were to go to war, corporations would make money from that reality; they have made money from previous times in which our people have gone to war. That made me feel really, really angry. Now, that's a view that I share; that's a view that is not shared by others in this place. It's a perspective I disagree with, but in that disagreement we see, and there is, a truth revealed. It is that memorials of any type, but particularly war memorials, are not politically neutral spaces. What is in them, who they reflect, what they say and what they don't say is the product of active political decision-making.

There was a time when an Australian war memorial did not feature the names of First Nations soldiers. There was a time when war memorials did not feature the names of those who had served in particular kinds of roles. There was a time when our nation sent First Nations people to war—in fact, in the Great War, Australia sent men to die in Flanders Fields whom they did not recognise as equal humans under the Constitution, and when they returned, they were still not recognised or counted as equal human beings under the Constitution.