PRIME MINISTER:
Thank you very much. Lucy and I are here with you today with the Minister for Veterans Affairs, Darren Chester, and our High Commissioner Alexander Downer and of course the Fuller family of whom I'll speak in a moment.
But also, we're here with so many of our servicemen and women of today. And I want to say to you again what I said upstairs in the Wellington Arch when the Fuller family presented us with that most remarkable Bible, your uncle's Bible, that saved his life. And this is the important message, the most important message, at this time of remembrance and of history we must always confirm and reaffirm that we best honour the ANZACs of 1918 by supporting you, the service men and women of today, and the veterans and your families of today. Because you are keeping us safe today just as Corporal Ross and 416,000 thousand Australian volunteers fought to keep us safe a century ago.
This memorial behind me stands as a solemn and lasting tribute to the 100,000 Australians who fought and died in two world wars. It stands here in the centre of London - a symbol of the unbreakable bonds between our two nations. 100 years ago, this city, this nation, this country was full of Australian soldiers.
The famous ANZAC Australia headquarters at Horseferry Road. So many of our forebears were here. My own grandfather, Fred Turnbull, who also signed up from the Northern Rivers like Corporal Ross. They were trained here, came back here to convalesce after being wounded or gassed and then thrown back into the front.
And they were here in a country that was part of them, Corporal Ross, of course, had been born in Scotland. My grandfather's family had lived in Australia for generations. But they felt they were as British as anybody here. As Menzies years later said the boundaries of Britain are not on the Kentish coast but at Invercargill, the south of New Zealand and Cape York.
And at that time Australians had no doubt about their identity as Australians, but equally no doubt that the Empire of which they were part was committed to them and they were committed to it with the shared values of freedom and democracy. And from here, from London, they set out to defend those values.
Corporal Alistair Ross was one of them of the First AIF. He was a young butter factory hand from Scotland and he first saw action in Gallipoli and then the Somme. His family had come out from Australia and he joined up from Lismore.
Early on in the war he was lucky. In Gallipoli he was saved by the Bible, which we have just been presented with a moment ago, that he carried in his left breast pocket in his tunic, and it trapped a piece of shrapnel that otherwise would have killed him.
A year later he was in France still carrying the Bible that his mother had given him and on the inside cover is written this simple message, on the 6th of August 1916. "Came safely through the battle of Pozieres. Battle lasted nearly a week. My battalion had many casualties. I had many narrow escapes. Came through safely." And that Bible given, as I said, to Corporal Ross by his mother is being donated here today by his family, the Fuller family and they are here and we thank you again for that very generous gift.
It's an important part of your family's history and of Australia's history and of Britain's history and it will, your donation of it, will enable it to be displayed at the ANZAC memorial in Hyde Park in Sydney.
Sydney's Hyde Park obviously named in emulation of the Hyde Park across the road here. Corporal Ross's story ends, like so many others did, in a tragic sacrifice two weeks after writing that entry. He was killed during an attack at Mouquet Farm. Or as Mr. Fuller said as the Australians irreverently referred to it as Moo Cow Farm which is probably an equally accurate description.
He was buried on the battlefield and his remains have not been recovered. And like so many others lying in unmarked graves France's fields his name is inscribed on the memorial to the missing at Villers-Bretonneux and at the Australian War Memorial in Canberra.
Corporal Ross, like so many of his mates, did so much for our nation, for our nations as they fought to preserve our freedom. He was only 22.
Now etched into the sweeping arc of this memorial are the names of nearly 24,000 Australian towns and cities. Some of them very, very small. These are the places from which this generation of volunteers came. And alongside them are the names of 47 battles from two world wars also etched into a nation's consciousness.
Gallipoli, Villers-Bretonneux, Passchendaele, Tobruk, El Alamein, Normandy, Singapore. All of these names will never be forgotten, nor will the extraordinary bravery of the Australians we honour here today.
All who passed this memorial are reminded of the sacrifices made by generations of Australians, of the world that they knew and which is now gone, but of the values which are timeless. The values of freedom, democracy and the rule of law. Timeless values, hard fought for and hard won. Timeless, but never more timely than they are today.
So let me close where I began and thank the men and women of the Australian Defence Force today. You keep us safe today as Corporal Ross and his mates did 100 years ago. Lest we forget.