Their Excellencies Ms Quentin Bryce, Governor-Generalof the Commonwealth of Australia and Mr Michael Bryce.
Former Governor-General Michael Jeffrey.
His Excellency, Major General Martyn Dunne, High Commissioner for New Zealand.
Mr Jason Hyland, Representing the Ambassador of the United States.
The Hon. Warren Snowdon, Minister for Veterans' Affairs and Minister for Defence Science and Personnel.
Leader of the Opposition, Chief Minister and other parliamentary colleagues.
General David Hurley, Chief of the Australian Defence Force, your distinguished predecessor Sir Phillip Bennett and fellow Service representatives
Chaplain Geoff Webb.
And above all, to every Vietnam Veteran and your representatives who have come to this sacred place; we are honoured by your presence today.
Friends, the Australian historian Paul Ham wrote a few years ago that “the last act of war is to grieve.”
Grief - and its sister emotion, remembrance - are what is left when the guns are put away and the gaze of history turns to other stories and other events.
It's a long time since anyone fought in Vietnam or indeed protested against its waging.
The chief actors - John Kennedy, Robert McNamara, Ho Chi Minh, Lyndon Johnson, Richard Nixon, Bob Menzies, William Westmoreland, General Giap - are all gone.
And the very Cold War which gave rise to the conflict is itself now just a page in the history books.
And yet here, on a very cold winter's morning, we gather.
In fact, we gather in growing strength and numbers.
We gather with a renewed sense of this day's value among the anniversaries our nation's calendar.
And why?
To perform that last and most noble act of war:
To grieve.
And to remember.
Repeating it often never diminishes the power of saying that in this nation, we do not glorify war.
If any nation had earned the right to do so, it would be us:
The nation of Villers-Bretonneux and Milne Bay, Kapyong and Long Tan.
The nation that brings forth men like those of D Company, 6 RAR - rightly honoured with a unit citation this day.
We honour - but we do not glorify.
We who have never served suspect it.
Those who have been there know it.
Michael Jeffrey said as much on this anniversary five years ago when he remarked that:
“War is a dirty, frightening and totally unpleasant business and never to be glorified as such.”
For that reason, our days of commemoration are solemn, not triumphant.
We wear rosemary, to prompt remembrance.
The Ode cautions against forgetting.
And our chief shrine is a tomb to a nameless soldier plucked from the mudof northern France.
We do not glorify war.
But we do remember.
Friends, we remember that eighteen of our personnel died at Long Tan; 521 in Vietnam as a whole.
We remember each of them, and judge that they made the ‘supreme sacrifice' - because that is what it is.
Parents and siblings, girlfriends and wives, children and mates - grieving then and grieving still.
Long lives and brilliant careers and happy retirements cut short and never known.
And so we remember.
This was Australia's longest war yet we treated the returning veterans with shame.
And so we remember.
Three thousand of our own fellow citizens were wounded in body and spirit.
And so we remember.
Sixty thousand served, many against their will and by the casting of lots.
And so we remember.
Her Excellency's predecessor, Paul Hasluck proclaimed our nation's involvement in Vietnam at an end on the 11th of January 1973.
And yet, for many of the 60,000 Australians who went there, the Vietnam War will never end.
As another wise Governor-General once reminded us:
“The past is never fully gone.It stays to shape what we are and what we do.”
We are a different nation because of Vietnam.
We are a different nation than if those men had stayed at home and workedand married and built their lives.
But we don't always get to choose.
History and circumstance sometimes choose for us.
What counts is our response.
Our response as reflected in the qualities and character of those who go -
What Michael Jeffrey in that same 2006 speech called the “courage, compassion and professional skill” of the Australian personnel who served in Vietnam.
And also the qualities and character of those of us who stay behind:
Our willingness to understand what it is for men to go to war.
To accept that some will return broken or changed, and some will not come back at all.
That is Vietnam.
That is war.
And so we gather.
And so we remember.