Anzac Day

 











This is a copy of an address I gave to students of my old school to commemorate Anzac Day last year. I'll post it now - better late than never.

Anzac Day Address – 24th April 2009

Young men and women of Downlands, distinguished guests staff and visitors.  

Tomorrow is Anzac Day, and represents the 94th anniversary of the landing at Gallipoli.

It’s also 93 years since the Battle of the Somme, 68 years since the invasion of Crete, and the Siege of Tobruk, 67 years since the battle for Australia on the Kokoda Track, 58 years (to the day), since Kapyong in Korea, and 43 years since the Battle of Long Tan in Vietnam.

Today as I speak, Australian men and women are serving in Iraq and Afghanistan. There are also peacekeeping deployments currently in Cyprus, the Middle East, in East Timor, the Solomons, Sudan and Darfur.

Tomorrow we commemorate the sacrifice and contribution sailors, soldiers, airmen and nurses, made and continue to make to our country’s security. This sacrifice and contribution has become a legend.

Today I would like to share with you some of the realities behind this legend, by telling two stories about people whose lives held a personal significance for me. I am happy to acknowledge the legend, and all that is made of it through the media, but I also feel strongly that the reality is much more significant than the legend.

Please come with me on these two brief journeys.

Back in 1961, a 14 year-old boy left his home in North Eton, outside Mackay, and traveled the one thousand or so kilometers to attend boarding school in Toowoomba. The school was Downlands, and the 14 year-old was me.

It was the first time I’d been away from home, and as a boy from the bush initially I was lonely and homesick. Downlands was a very different place back then, a pretty tough environment.

During my first six months at Downlands, another young boy from the bush was very good to me, and used his straightforward sense of humour to cheer me up when I felt down. He was also good to have around on the few occasions when I copped a bit of teasing.

He was from Flagstone Creek, like me a boy from the bush, and his name was Frank. Before too long I had made friends and began to enjoy school, but I remember well Frank’s friendship and support when I needed it most.

He left Downlands six months after I arrived, and subsequently joined the army as soon as he was old enough, and did his recruit training at Kapooka. Frank’s family (he was the eldest of six) drove down in their Ford Customline to attend his passing out parade. His parents were very proud of their soldier son. His corps posting was Ordinance.

After Frank had been in the army for a few years he applied for a reposting to Infantry, and this happened in 1965. He went home for Christmas leave that year, and then returned to Sydney as a reinforcement. Eight months later, he was in Vietnam, and on the morning of 18th August, 1966, he joined Delta Company 6RAR.

By 4 o’clock that same afternoon, Frank was dead.

He was one of the first casualties in the Battle of Long Tan, when an Australian Company of about 100 men held out against an enemy force, estimated at least at 1500, until relieved by a company of Infantry mounted in Armoured Personnel Carriers.

This easy going compassionate boy from the bush had given his life for his country. Frank is buried in the Catholic cemetery at Helidon. He is remembered well by his large family, and his mother Bridget has been a guest here at commemorations, most recently at the dedication of a plaque in Frank’s memory in the refectory.

My second story is about the Head Teacher of Hampton State School in 1941. This young man had married in 1939, to a pretty young teacher he’d met at Clermont, and they had moved to Hampton when he was transferred there. As a married woman, his new bride had to resign as a permanent teacher, but when her husband enlisted in the RAAF in late 1941, she was temporally re-employed to act as Head Teacher at Hampton whilst he went off to war.

This young man was my father, and Josie his wife, was my mother. Dad enlisted one day after the news of the Japanese raids on Darwin came through. I doubt that this was a coincidence.

He had originally applied for aircrew, but his sinuses apparently weren’t suitable for the unpressurised aircraft used in those days, so he was posted to ground crew, and trained as an LAC in Melbourne.

He was deployed to New Guinea from July 43 until Dec 44. Dad spent his time in New Guinea fitting and repairing radios to aircraft, amongst them Kittyhawks and Hudsons, and had a fairly uneventful war, with the exception of severe skin problems caused by the tropical conditions which saw him hospitalized on more than one occasion.

It was probably fortunate for me that dad’s posting was LAC, as the casualty figures for aircrew in the RAAF in New Guinea during this period were pretty high. Dad was demobilized in July 1945, and resumed his career as a teacher in 1946. He went on to raise six children, and retired as a school principal in 1976 after working in many different parts of Queensland. Dad died in 1991.

These are stories of two ordinary Australians whose contributions of service I remember today, and who touched my life in very significant ways. You could consider them unremarkable but to those who knew them and love them, these simple stories distill the spirit and legend of Anzac.

That spirit is about service, self-sacrifice and loyalty – old fashioned virtues, perhaps, but just as relevant now as they were in 1942 and 1966.

Someone who has used words to capture this spirit much more eloquently than I can is the Australian poet, John Manifold. I’d like now to read an extract from the poem The Tomb of Lt John Learmonth, AIF written about an Australian killed in the Battle of Crete in 1941.

His freedom gave him nothing else to do
But set his back against his family tree
And fight the better for the fact he knew

He was as good as dead. Because the sea
Was closed and the air dark and the land lost,
'They'll never capture me alive,' said he.

That's courage chemically pure, uncrossed
With sacrifice or duty or career,
Which counts and pays in ready coin the cost

Of holding course. Armies are not its sphere
Where all's contrived to achieve its counterfeit;
It swears with discipline, it's volunteer.

I could as hardly make a moral fit
Around it as around a lightning flash.
There is no moral, that's the point of it,.

I’ve shared this extract and these stories with you to remind you that there are hundreds of thousands of people today quietly remembering loved ones who served.

These precious shared memories are at the centre of our national commemoration.

Lest we forget.

Chronicle Caught Short

Our local paper is called the "Chronicle". Some of the more cynical residents of this town call it the "Chronic".

It's not difficult to see why. Yesterday, for example, the headline read - Man picks bad spot for call of nature - I kid you not - look at the picture.

Apparently the editor believes that this kind of headline, appealing as it does to the lowest common denominator, increases circulation. If true, and I have no reason to doubt that it is, the headset of Toowoomba residents, or at least those who buy the Chronicle, is questionable. What on earth is interesting or engaging about a story describing this level of detail about some twit's drunken behaviour?

I feel sorry for the young reporter who has her picture emblazoned under the by-line. I wonder if she had any choice in the subject matter of her story? I can imagine her going on to greater things - she obviously aspires to the same kind of churnalism as for example, Andrew Bolt.

When I was a kid in North Queensland, I occasionally went to local dances with my parents. Often there would be a "lolly scramble", when some half drunk notable would throw handfuls of sweets on the floor of the hall, and then watch whilst kids nearly killed each other in retrieving them. Lolly scrambles provide a good metaphor for this publication.

Interestingly enough, the on-line version comes across as slightly less than tabloid.

Next Episode - "Jellybeans in the Jungle"

Chapter Eight - Jellybeans in the Jungle

Projection and Corruption

If we are to believe the Fart of the Nation, the Australian taxpayer has been ripped off by unscrupulous builders making hay from the federal government's BER scheme.

If we believe Tony Abbott and others, dodgy installers have created havoc and house fires through the home insulation programme, another initiative of the same government.


American shock jocks and others have blamed the recent financial meltdown on worthless mortgages forced on banks by organizations such as ACORN.
 

There is a bizarre pattern emerging in this commentary. Its logic runs something like this -
 

A scheme is set up which assumes that the usual commercial convention holds. By this I mean the convention that it doesn't matter who is paying - you get what you pay for.
 

In other words, if you (or the taxpayer) pay for safe and professionally fitted home insulation, that is precisely what you get. If you (or the taxpayer) purchase a school building you expect to get value for money. If you live in the USA and buy a loan (which is precisely what happens - unless you're paying no interest) you expect that your capacity to pay has been professionally sussed out by those who know what they're doing.
 

But wait - I'm showing my naïveté. There is a different school of thought which argues that if the money comes from the taxpayer, normal commercial ethics don't count. In the case of the mortgage, so long as the commissions and bonuses roll in, ethics can also take a holiday.
 

I've seen a minor but very clear example of this recently. In my work I use vehicles from the state government fleet. I'm also a bit over-cautious before I take a car on a long journey, so I check tire pressures, fluid levels etc. A few weeks ago the vehicle I was to use was due for a service, so to help the fleet manager out I offered to pick it up direct from the dealer after the 30000km service and take it out next day at first light.
 

Checking the oil revealed that it was filthy and hadn't been changed. The service manager was initially cooperative, but when I showed him the dipstick, he became quite hostile -
 

"It's none of your bloody business - I only talk to the fleet manager" was his defence. I had of course, stumbled on an old scam. If the taxpayer's footing the bill, normal rules don't apply.
 

Once he'd understood that I was quite prepared to use my mobile to phone his head office unless I had actually witnessed the old oil drained and 4.5 litres of Mr Castrol's best poured into the motor, he settled down. I have no doubt that this wasn't the first time, and probably won't be the last that the taxpayer is ripped off in this way.
 

It happens for two reasons. The obvious one is that busy drivers or fleet managers have neither the time nor the inclination to check these things in the same way as a private owner does. There is a hidden (and invidious) understanding that it's OK to rip off a government agency embedded in our corporate culture. In Vietnam it's called corruption. Here it's called free enterprise.
 

This culture, obviously embraced by the above-mentioned commentators, assumes that if rip-offs occur, it's the government's fault. Funny that…
 

It's much the same mythology that believes that the poor in the USA benefiting from the dodgy mortgages are to blame for the GFC. The fact that they did not securitise the loans, and sell them for profit is neither here nor there.
 

Other aspects of this mythology hold that the Masters of the Universe speculating in the derivatives market are completely innocent, as are those who generated a plethora of incentives for executives to oversee sub-prime loans in the first place.
 

There is a name for this phenomenon. It's called "projection".
 

From Wikipaedia -
 

Psychological projection or projection bias (including Freudian Projection) is the unconscious act of denial of a person's own attributes, thoughts, and emotions, which are then ascribed to the outside world, such as to the weather, the government, a tool, or to other people. Thus, it involves imagining or projecting that others have those feelings.
 

Note the reference to "government".
 

So if greed takes over, and the taxpayer is ripped off, or the financial system collapses to the point where it has to be rescued by (guess who) the taxpayer, it's the government's fault. Ain't free enterprise wonderful…..
 

My parents were obviously misguided when they taught me to deal honestly with my fellow human being. Must have been the government's fault…..

Another Polish Tragedy

Reports of the crash of a Polish government aircraft and the loss of so many eminent Polish citizens have brought back memories of my youthful connection with this much abused nation.

For about five years in my early teens, my family lived next door to a Polish couple. They were refugees from internment, and Steve wore a tattooed "P" on his forearm. He never spoke of his wartime experiences, and whilst a tolerant and forgiving man, he had no time for anything German or Russian. I discovered this when I showed him my first car bought at age 18 when I was at Teachers' College. It was a 1956 Volkswagen Beetle. He took one look at it, spat in its general direction, and refused to have anything more to do with it.

They were devout Catholics, and we got to know them well through our local church. When my mother went back to full-time teaching, Mrs K (as we knew her) was employed to mind my youngest brother during school hours. They also had a pretty daughter about my age, but we never did get together. It was difficult for us to get any unchaperoned time, as Steve kept a very close eye on proceedings. I went off to study in Brisbane. She got a job locally, and finished up marrying an Anglican clergyman, which must have caused family ructions.

I had a mate at college who was going out with a nurse, and just before I embarked, he set me up on a blind date with his girlfriend's best pal who turned out also to be Polish. We hit it off, and when I arrived in Vietnam, I started writing to her. After three letters with no response, I gave up.

Years later, when we were both school principals in Toowoomba, he told me that her dad intercepted and burnt my letters, as he wanted her to marry someone of Polish heritage. She did, but it didn't last, and divorce followed, although apparently arranged marriages are generally more enduring statistically than the conventional kind.

There was a Polish bloke in my section in Vietnam. I got to know him fairly well, but we lost contact on RTA. In 1991, I was shocked to hear that he had been shot and killed by a Police Special Operations Group in a seige of his farmhouse in isolated rural Tasmania.
 
This incident was the subject of two formal inquiries that eventually found police justified in the way the seige ended, despite the less than ethical behaviour of some involved. The whole episode was tragic and avoidable.   

All of these memories flooded back when I read of this crash. There is a deep irony in the fact that the VIPs involved were on their way to a commemoration of the Katyn massacre in 1940 in which the Russians executed  over 20000 of Poland's best and brightest.

According to Wikipaedia, those who were killed in cold blood at Katyn included an admiral, two generals, 24 colonels, 79 lieutenant colonels, 258 majors, 654 captains, 17 naval captains, 3,420 NCOs, seven chaplains, three landowners, a prince, 43 officials, 85 privates, and 131 refugees. Also among the dead were 20 university professors, 300 physicians; several hundred lawyers, engineers, and teachers; and more than 100 writers and journalists as well as about 200 pilots.

Those aboard the doomed aircraft were on their way to a ceremony close to where the original atrocity occurred, and many military, political and institutional leaders (again the best and brightest) were lost.

History has come back to haunt Poland, a nation which has seen more than its fair share of tragedy in the last two centuries.

Australia - Asylum for Political Lunatics

This is the first time I've linked to a Catholic Newspaper, but The Catholic Leader today features the best article on refugee policy I've seen in a long time.

I don't know about anyone else, but I've had a gutful of shock jocks, drop-kick bloggers and tabloid newspapers stirring up fear and resentment of vulnerable and desperate people who have been dispossessed of every skerrick of security and live in fear of their lives. I'm also heartily sick of politicians, both Labor and Coalition, attempting to score brownie points for toughness by beating their chests about "border protection".

I saw enough of the disruption caused by war in Vietnam in 1970 to understand something of what these families are going through. Many years ago I looked into the eyes of some women and children who were in a restricted area near Binh Ba and saw the fear created by being confronted by men with weapons. I can only imagine how it would feel if my family were in a similar situation, and the lengths I would go to in an effort to keep them safe.

As a nation, we've grown so smug and complacent that many of us are more concerned about insignificant issues in the quality of our own lifestyles than about matters of life of death for others. Australian values are rapidly becoming as inward-looking as those of some of our more vapid friends across the Pacific.

The Leader article very clearly exposes the media and political race to the bottom that has characterised the issue in this country since John Howard's cynical exploitation of those on board the MV Tampa in 2001, by making the following points -

Only a quarter of unauthorised arrivals come by boat. The largest majority come by plane, and the majority of these are from mainland China.

There has actually been a reduction (12%) during 2008 - 2009 in the number of people held in detention centres.

Refugee centres for Hazaras, the largest Afghani group seeking asylum in Australia, are no longer available in Afghanistan. Those seeking safety in Quetta in Pakistan, long the traditional destination of Hazaras escaping the Taliban, are being snatched off the street by Iranian agents.

Australia is a signatory to international conventions recognising the right of people fleeing persecution and violence to seek refuge.

To quote the Leader article -

Brisbane archdiocese's Catholic Justice and Peace Commission made the call following a recent front-page story in The Sunday Mail that the commission's executive officer Peter Arndt said had the effect of "de-humanising asylum seekers and robbing them of their God-given dignity".

Mr Arndt appealed to Catholics to defend the right of people to seek asylum in Australia and to be treated as human beings - "not as demons to be feared or as objects to be used for political or commercial benefit".

"Both major (political) parties are trying to show that they are tough with boat arrivals and they are causing a lot of suffering and unfairness for people seeking asylum," he said.

And -

"There is a potent mix of sensationalised media reporting, political point scoring, xenophobia and resentment", Mr Ferguson wrote.

"The consequence is that the circumstances and need of people who are in desperate situations is forgotten.
"At worst, they are being demonised and portrayed as a threat to our way of life."
Mr Ferguson urged a different response than that taken by politicians.
"Imagine a nation encouraged to be proud that we are one of only a few in the region to have signed the UN Convention on the Status of Refugees," he said.

Mr Arndt called on Catholics to reject "the attempts by fear mongers in politics and the media to foster resentment towards our fellow human beings".

"As Christians, we see asylum seekers as our sisters and brothers," he said.

"It is our responsibility to defend their human dignity and to encourage our politicians and the community to treat them with compassion and fairness."

How right he is.

"sensationalised media reporting, political point scoring, xenophobia and resentment"

Yes - it's all there.

The lunatics are taking over the asylum