Today is the 60th anniversary of the cabinet decision to introduce selective national service, based on a ballot of birthdates, to rapidly increase the size of the ADF in peacetime.
At no time in our national history had Australians been conscripted to fight on foreign soil in peacetime. By 1972, 15381 Nashos were sent to Vietnam, where 200 were killed, 1200 wounded, and thousands traumatised.
A further 40000 (30000 have survived) who weren't deployed to Vietnam had their futures negatively and irrevocably altered by two years in the military at a critical time in their lives, and initially received no rehabilitation benefits.
For a time, the Australian people supported the policy and returned to power a Coalition government which skilfully used anti-communist hysteria based on the Domino theory.
The voters woke up, far to late for many, in 1972, after this most political of conflicts, which had nothing to do with national security.It's time for a bipartisan Crown apology to surviving Nashos, based on the division created by this policy, and the damage done to a generation. Those surviving voters who supported the decision at the time owe us an apology, as do those who blamed us for the war and turned on us on our return.
As Paul Ham wrote in "Vietnam, the Australian War" - "A unique aspect of the Vietnam war is the collective cruelty of a nation that ordered, with the threat of a two-year jail term, a 20 year old to go to war, and then damned him for going."
