My fellow Australians, every generation paints the past as a simpler, more certain, more innocent time. But let we who are heirs to the sacrifice of a great generation set aside that conceit today.
There was nothing simple about the lives of those who won a global war and turned the tide of history.
Victory over the evils of Nazism, Fascism and militarism could not be certain through dark months of doubt.
And innocence offered little to those who died so we could live in peace and freedom. The Second World War was not just our gravest hour, when Australia was imperilled as never before. It was the hour when, across oceans and continents, the flame of democratic liberty flickered violently and almost went out.
And so we come to this place of solemn remembrance to mark not just a great military victory 60 years ago, but the triumph of a great moral cause.
Fate had thrust a heavy responsibility on the World War II generation, whose childhood in the main had already been blighted by the ravages of the Great Depression. Yet it was a responsibility they accepted with courage and without any illusions.
What makes this generation so remarkable is that it knew what awaited them. It knew what hell on earth could be.
A war that was to have ended all wars had cut down the previous generation. And yet, when duty demanded, the next generation risked all.
Why? Because they knew that if they didn't fight for the country they loved and all they held dear, all would be lost.
Not far from where I stand, the names of 40,000 Australians who died in the Second World War stretch across 50 metres of sandstone wall. Their sacrifice, and that of thousands more whose lives were cut short, is a debt our country can never repay. Today we honour, too, our many gallant allies and their great sacrifice in the struggle for freedom.
This was a war that broke all distinctions between battlefield and home front. It surpassed all previous wars in lives lost, the majority of them civilian. It gave us phrases like 'people's war' and 'total war'.
Women would play an indispensable role in defence of freedom and of Australia. To give but one example, virtually the entire communications network by which our soldiers, sailors and airmen relied in the Pacific was in the hands of Australian women.
Like all wars, the Second World War had its share of blunders and cowardice, of greed and petty rivalry. Controversies live on to this day.
Yet let us never equivocate: this was a good and just war, fought not for conquest but for liberty.
Freedom's torch was preserved not just here in Australia but in the Pacific and in Europe, this was a war of liberation which, in a real sense, liberated the people of our once bitter enemies.
Australia was part of this struggle from the first day to the last. A nation of seven million people in 1939, we put a million men and women in uniform.
Our prisoners of war came face to face with barbarity of a kind that younger generations can scarcely imagine.
In a few weeks in 1942, more than 20,000 Australians passed into captivity only to endure years of forced labour, starvation and brutality at the hands of a cruel enemy. Thousands never saw Australia again.
When the forces of freedom rallied - in the Pacific, in the sands of Alamein and the skies over Europe - Australians helped to turn the tide.
It was Australian soldiers on Papua who checked and turned back a Japanese army that til then had known only victory. British Field Marshal Sir William Slim, later Governor-General of Australia, would write that:
'Australian troops had at Milne Bay inflicted on the Japanese their first undoubted defeat on land. Some of us may forget that. Of all the allies, it was the Australians who first broke the invincibility of the Japanese Army.'
These sons of Australia kept liberty's flame alight just as surely as Churchill's defiant speeches or America's great arsenal.
In jungles close to home, a new generation became part of a tradition of courage, loyalty and mateship forged on a distant peninsula 90 years ago.
Patriotism, it's been said, 'is not a short and frenzied outburst of emotion but the tranquil and steady dedication of a lifetime'.
After that great moment of jubilation 60 years ago, a generation of heroes put down the tools of war. They became architects of the stable and prosperous modern Australia, which included reconciliation with former enemies.
To our veterans, we honour not just your sacrifice in war, but your lives of quiet and dedicated patriotism.
Yours is a legacy that says freedom must be valued, defended, and, where necessary, fought for. It reminds each generation that love of country is a noble impulse, calling us to high ideals and causes bigger than ourselves. It reaffirms our faith in Australia and its future.
In our time - and for all time - we will remember you.
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