Subjects: The Anzac tradition.
E&OE................................
Your Excellency the Administrator and Lady Green, Your Excellency Mr Simon Murdoch, the High Commissioner for New Zealand, other very distinguished guests and my fellow Australians.
All over Australia, all over the world today, our countrymen and women are gathering - drawn together almost by instinct, by a great silent summons to repay a debt to the past. Each year the numbers of us grow. Each year, more and more young Australians hear the call, though far removed, in time and circumstance, from those they seek to honour.
The story of Anzac is a remarkable one. At Gallipoli itself, amid the mud of France and Flanders, in the heroic defence of Greece and Crete exactly 60 years ago, in Korea exactly 50 years ago, in deserts and in jungles, in air battles and on broad ocean seas throughout the world, Australians have shown themselves willing to fight, and if need be die, for the cause of freedom. Australian courage has ensured that foreign names like Beersheba and Villers Bretonneux, Tobruk and Changi, Kapiong and Long Tan have become for this nation, treasured mementos of a past rich and steeped in great bravery.
Yet, Anzac Day should not only be about the past.
We would be a shallow people if all we sought on this day each year, was to bask in the pale reflected glory of others' deeds. We would be foolish if we felt our own safety assured by the service and sacrifice of earlier generations. Australians are neither shallow nor foolish.
Today we do pay homage to those men and women who either offered or gave their lives in war. We remember the fallen and give grateful thanks to the veterans among us. In the words of the War Memorial's founder, Dr Charles Bean, 'their story rises, as it will always rise, above the mists of ages, a monument to great hearted men and for their nation, a possession forever'.
And also today we think of those still abroad in our name in places such as East Timor and Bouganiville.
But as importantly, we gather in ever-increasing numbers to each pledge anew our determination, not merely to dwell upon the legacy of the past, but also to build upon it. To extend a culture of proud self reliance and personal initiative. To create a just society where an individual's rights are respected but their responsibilities are also recognised. To offer our children, and their children, all the possibilities of the world should they only have the heart and the will to grasp them. To build strong communities where men and women strive together for the common good and none need live in fear or isolation.
We gather to be reminded of the values so evident among Australians in time of war and adversity but that we too can use to face the challenges within our own lives. Courage, unity of purpose, compassion and selflessness - these virtues, so compelling and so commonplace amid the horror of battle, seem to subside so often in the calm of peace. Anzac Day reminds us all that it need not be so.
Anzac Day reminds us that we each have a task before us. Blessedly, not to fight new wars, not to bear the loss of sons and daughters, but to use the peace and prosperity purchased for us at so high a price. Anzac Day reminds us that our nation is capable of the most extraordinary achievements if only we dare to reach them.
Just after World War One drew to its bloody close, as the troop ships brought home our heroes, a young Australian poet asked how those of us, unscarred by battle, unmarked by war, could ever hope to repay the debt we owe. Her answer is as true today as it was then. As true for us as it was for those who waited the arrival of those troop ships. She wrote:
'Let us make haste and let us build
Great worlds with strength and wonder filled,
Then shall they know their peace has come'.
[Ends]