E&OE...........
Your Excellencies, Air Marshal Houston, Admiral Ritchie, General Leahy, ladies and gentlemen. Today we gather in our national capital to honour one of the great parts of the fabric of the Australian nation. We gather to honour the tradition, the loyalty, the dedication and the sacrifice of the men and women of the Royal Australian Air Force and the Australian Flying Corp over a period of almost 90 years.
We give thanks to the almost 400,000 Australians who have served our nation and the cause of world peace and world justice through the RAAF. We think of its history and its tradition. We think of the bravery of those men who flew in the Middle East and over the Western Front in World War I. We remember that when Winston Churchill remarked famously that never in the history of human conflict was so much owed by so many to so few that there were Australian pilots amongst the few who comprised that small number of people who stood against the worst assault of tyranny in World War II. We think of the awful sacrifices of those who fought in Bomber Command. And it has been calculated that although the members of Bomber Command comprised only 2% of those who enlisted in World War II, in all services they comprised some 20% of the fatalities, an enormous sacrifice of young Australians in the defence of freedom.
We think of the bravery of those who fought in North Africa, and closer to home we think of those who took part so decisively in the battle for Australia. We remember the pilots of the Mustangs and the Meteors in the Korean War and, subsequently, the participation of the Royal Australian Air Force in Vietnam in vastly different circumstances but no less heroically and also in Malaya and, more recently, in the Gulf. And in remembering their sacrifice we also honour a great tradition. And this is an occasion, particularly at this time of national challenge for Australia and for the values that we hold dear in common with other nations of the world, it is a time to particularly honour and give thanks to our great national institutions such as the Royal Australian Air Force, formed to give expression to the determination of this nation to defend, where necessary, what it believes in and what it stands for and what it values most but also an organisation that is founded on decency and a respect for the dignity of human beings.
Just before coming here my wife and I, in company with Air Marshal Houston, have had the opportunity of visiting Richmond Air Base and to give thanks to those wonderful people of the Royal Australian Air Force who carried out the evacuation of the injured from Bali in the wake of the atrocity committed on the 12th of October. They did wonderful things in the name of Australia. The speed and the skill and the professionalism involved in the way in which they assembled and then went to Bali and brought the injured back in such a short period of time was to me inspiring and it was a vivid reminder and communication to all of us that the capacity of the young of Australia - and most of the people I met this morning were in their 20s - their great capacity to rise to the occasion and to do what is needed in the name of Australia. And as I talked to them and thanked them you could see on their faces and hear in their voices a sense of pride that they had done something good for Australia, that they had been Australians together in helping their Australian mates. And it encouraged me, it warmed me to think that that spirit called upon in a different circumstance, very distressing and very challenging in its own right, different, though, and less challenging and less fatal than the experiences faced by so many of the 14,000 who gave their lives in the service of the Royal Australian Air Force, it was nonetheless in the same spirit and in the same tradition of loyalty and commitment and quiet dedication to an ideal and a set of values for which this country stands.
So as we think of those who gave so much, as we honour the men and women of the highly professional, superb Royal Australian Air Force of 2002 we, above everything else, we remember those who died and we salute the values for which they fought and died and for which this country stands. They are what gatherings such as this are all about. They are about the values that unite us all in a determination to preserve this way of life of ours and a determination to do what is right in the world. That has always been the commitment of the men and women of the Royal Australian Air Force. We thank them for that and we join in this solemn dedication of a memorial to one of the great traditions, one of the great services and one of the great parts of the Australian nation.
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