ANZAC Day 2009
Commemoration Ceremony for Students
23 April 2009
Deputy Premier and Minister for Health, the Honourable Paul Lucas, MP,
Lord Mayor of Brisbane, The Right Honourable Campbell Newman,
Secretary, ANZAC Day Commemoration Committee (Qld) Inc, Major General Darryl Low Choy, AM, MBE, RFD (Ret'd),
Honorary Chairman, Students' Ceremony Committee, Ms Kristine Clarke,
Distinguished representatives of the Armed Forces and Services Organisations,
Other distinguished guests,
Ladies and Gentlemen,
Students,
I acknowledge the traditional custodians of the land on which we are gathered, the Jagera and Turrbal peoples and their descendants.
I address my words this morning especially to the students attending this ceremony.
Your presence here this morning - in such numbers - is a moving demonstration of the respect and importance which you, the students of Queensland, give to the ANZAC story. Understanding that story - reliving the circumstances in which so many very young Australians have fought in so many wars - is an important journey for you to take - to be involved with in an active way. That's because shaping the future - your future - always involves in part, a process, a measure of gaining understanding and learning from the past.
You all know that the ANZAC story begins in Gallipoli and in the ‘Great War' of 1914-18. Why this war has been so central to the ANZAC tradition relates to our coming of age as a nation. But it also lies in some bare and dramatic facts. 460,000 enlisted in our armed forces during these years - almost 10% of the Australian population, which had yet to reach 5 million. 330,000 served overseas, two thirds became casualties of which 62,000 were killed, never to return to Australia.
Such extraordinary loss of life would be unimaginable today.
These terrible statistics become even more vivid and compelling if you have the opportunity to visit - as I have done - any one of the Commonwealth and Australian war graves cemeteries located across Western Europe and nearer to home in the Asia Pacific.
They are beautifully, lovingly maintained and they touch your heart.
What strikes you most as you walk among the graves is not the names, the rank or epitaph but the ages, the ages of those killed: 18, 19, 20 - time after time, row after row. They are but a few years older than many of you here today.
Put yourself in the place of one of those soldiers. If he served in World War One and was a Queenslander he would be one of 58,000 from his State who enlisted in the armed forces. If he is male he would have made up part of more than one third of Queensland's entire male population who enlisted between 1914 and 1918.
This youthful story is repeated in later wars. The average age of Australian troops fighting the Japanese army's invasion of Papua New Guinea in 1942 was eighteen and a half. The average age of Australian troops who fought in Vietnam: 20 years.
Almost all of these young soldiers who did not return would have only recently left school, so no opportunity for career, or marriage, or children - none of their dreams, ambitions or goals in life yet realised.
The extraordinary roles which these soldiers shouldered - the responsibilities they accepted and the risks they took - are being repeated today in equally remote overseas locations. Last year our armed forces were members of ten peacekeeping missions in Afghanistan, Iraq, Cyprus, East Timor, the Middle East, the Sudan and Darfur.
What does this ongoing ANZAC spirit say about Australia today?
It says many things: but one very clear message is this: that as a relatively small country - at least in population - we have to both support and rely on a mutual interdependence with others who share our values and goals in a still conflict-ridden world. That is what our young soldiers at Gallipoli and France, Belgium and Africa were doing almost 100 years ago. It is what they were doing in Vietnam and it is what they are now doing in Afghanistan.
All of you inherit this ANZAC spirit - it is your legacy - from the soldiers of yesterday and of today. I want to suggest to you that in addition to paying respect to this legacy once a year, on ANZAC Day, that you do something more: I want each of you, in your own way to make the ANZAC story a part of the life that you live, now and in the future. How? I'd like you to adopt, in your mind, one of those young 18 year old Australian soldiers interred in those cemeteries around the world. Live that person's life for him. Do the things that he was unable to do - enjoy your life, for you and for him. Imagine his dreams and ambitions and hopes, along with your own - and think that if you succeed, you give meaning to his life and purpose to his sacrifice. Travel overseas, take some time to explore other cultures, visit some of those cemeteries, learn about why conflicts happen, why cultures differ and, above all, recognise the values which we have in common with others.
In that journey of discovery I hope you will learn that the ANZAC spirit is not part of a narrow inward-looking nationalism but an idealism which involves a commitment to others and the defence of values we hold dear: a commitment to an outward-looking internationalism; something that is not to be commemorated once a year - but to be lived every day. By using your lives to remember and honour those who sacrificed theirs, I am confident that you will give greater meaning and value to your own lives and to the ANZAC spirit we have come together today to commemorate.
Thank you.