I acknowledge Bill Shorten – this is a bipartisan occasion. I acknowledge all of my parliamentary colleagues. I acknowledge the distinguished representatives of our friends and allies from those times, and indeed from these times, but I particularly acknowledge our friends from Turkey. Yes, we fought a ferocious struggle on the Gallipoli peninsula, but since that time, Turkey has been a good friend of Australia and at all times after that struggle was ended, Turkey has been the soul of magnanimity towards Australia – those immortal words of Ataturk that ‘your sons are now at peace’. We remember, and we are very grateful to have your presence here with us today.
I particularly acknowledge Angus Houston, Chair of the Centenary of Anzac Advisory Council and our fundraiser in chief, the legendary, the extraordinary, hopefully the immortal Lindsay Fox.
My friends, World War I was the most traumatic event our nation has ever experienced. A population of less than five million people, almost 10 per cent, almost 400,000 volunteered for service overseas. Sixty thousand – over one per cent of our population – didn’t come back. An extraordinary trauma for our nation, an extraordinary blight on our nation, and you look at the global figures; they’re horrifying, they’re daunting; you think of the casualties that were sustained in individual actions – some 5,000 killed and wounded on the first day of the Battle of Fromelles – it’s almost unimaginable and yet that was what our nation endured in that searing, extraordinary, torturous time.
So it’s something that did form us and shape us, the fact that we came through that, as did other nations, but the fact that we came through that as a young nation, it did help to make us and this is why Gallipoli has always loomed so large in our national psyche. This is why the First World War was in a sense the crucible that forged our nation. We had the legal beginnings a decade or so earlier, but in a significant way, we had the emotional beginnings forged in the crucible of World War I. And while even then there were so many voices that asked: ‘Was this all in vain? – we did make a difference.
Australia, one of the smaller significant combatants was a very significant military force in World War I. We think of Gallipoli as being very special and it was. The Australian forces at Gallipoli were but a part of much larger forces – British, French, Indian – also engaged. And then of course the forces withdrawn from Gallipoli were transferred to the Western Front where they performed magnificently. Not only did they perform magnificently, but at key parts of that struggle, they were the difference, perhaps the most significant difference, between victory and continuing stalemate.
Under the brilliant leadership of Sir John Monash – perhaps the finest allied General of World War I – the Australian corps perfected all arms techniques which were first deployed at the Battle of Le Hamel and which helped to bring on the black day of the German Army a couple of months later.
So while it was a terrible and traumatic episode for our country, it was a significant, extraordinary episode in which perhaps more than at any time in our history, Australia impacted on the world. So we should remember these days. Certainly over the next four years, we should remember these days and we should honour those who served. We should mourn those who died and we should celebrate the country which shaped them, and we should celebrate what they gave to our country – the virtues, the ethos which inspires us to this day.
I am thrilled to be launching this Centenary of Anzac Public Fund today and I want to commend and congratulate and thank the businesses which have already pledged large amounts of money towards this fund: BHP Billiton, Woodside, the National Australia Bank, the Commonwealth Bank, the ANZ, Telstra, the AFL, Crown, Aurizon, Newscorp, Leightons, James Packer and LinFox. Lindsay, you have deployed your charisma in your own inimitable way to ensure that the Centenary of Anzac is not just supported by government to the tune of $150 million, but is supported by those big businesses which are the pillars of our economy.
The beauty of this fund is that it enables everyone to contribute. It enables every Australian to make a contribution which everyone will be pleased to note is fully tax deductible. We want this to be not just a celebration by government. We want this to be a peoples’ celebration. We want the Australian people to own this in every sense. We want them to feel that they can make a contribution and as of today, they can. And thanks to the efforts of Lindsay Fox, there is already a substantial quantum of money there which will help to ensure that we do learn the right lessons over these next four years and the extraordinary sacrifice those amazing times are properly remembered now and far, far, far into the future.
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