PM Transcripts

PRIME MINISTER
SPEECH BY THE PRIME MINISTER, THE HON P J KEATING, MP
OPENING OF HEROES WALK, TOWNSVILLE, 14 AUGUST 1995
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Con Sciacca, Councillor Tony M~ iooney and Mrs Mooney, Keith Payne VC and Don
Starcevich, son of Private Leslie Starcevich VC, distinguished guests, ladies and
gentlemen. I'm delighted to be in Anzac Park this morning to open this Heroes Walk.
During the Australia Remembers year, we have remembered the efforts of the
World War Two generation of Australians. We have remembered those who
worked on the homefront as well as those who served on the battlefield.
But this memorial honours the bravest of the brave.
It honours the twenty Australians who received the nation's highest honour for
valour during the WWII the Victoria Cross and especially the twelve recipients
who fought in the Pacific War.
They gave their all in defence of this country and many of them gave their lives.
Today we pay tribute to people of rare quality men of great courage and
resourcefulness and sustained by their belief in Australia.
Men like Corporal Jack French from Crows Nest, near Toowoomba, who overcame
three Japanese machine gun nests at Milne Bay before succumbing.
Or Private Richard Kelliher, who enlisted in the 2nd AIF in Brisbane, who silenced
a machine gun post at Lae and saved his wounded section commander.
It is to these men and all their comrades that we pay tribute today.
I know that Keith Payne VC from the Vietnam War is here and we acknowledge
his great service to Australia.
The winners of the Victoria Cross are surely all heroes. But all of Australia's
fighting men and women of World War Two and the millions of Australians who
stood behind them deserve the title too.
We remember them all as heroes.
Thank you.