PRIME MINISTER: To the Larrakia people, and your elders past, present and emerging, to veterans and all serving Australians with us today, we owe a debt, a sense of gratitude, that we can never express fully enough.
To Australians, gathered here and around the nations this morning, one and free, because of their sacrifice.
We gather at this dawn, to remember, reflect, and re-dedicate ourselves.
As General Jim Molan, our colleague in the Parliament, who said “it takes a nation to defend a nation”.
And what ultimately matters in that task is a people with a fierce and protective love of their nation and their liberty.
A love of home, family, community and country.
A willingness to live for all of these things that are necessary to sacrifice for something far greater than themselves.
This morning far away from here, the people of Ukraine are doing exactly that. And on this particular day, as we honour those who fought for our liberty and freedom, we stand with the people of Ukraine who do the same thing at this very moment.
In the Hall of Memory at the Australian War Memorial – there are stained glass depictions of Australians in uniform.
There’s an infantryman, a sailor, an aviator, a nurse, a signaller, engineer, gunner and a wounded soldier.
And below each is a word.
One word is the foundation of all: devotion.
Devotion to Australia and to our values has compelled women and men in all the places -in all the battles – where our history has been written.
From the muddy trenches of Europe, to the dusts of North Africa, and the vast water of the Pacific.
The freezing snows of Korea, the stifling jungles of Vietnam and the suffocating heat and dust of the Middle East.
And here in Darwin, when the Australian mainland was attacked repeatedly again and again 80 years ago.
Through it all, our servicemen and women have defended our land and our values, devotedly.
It is often said on ANZAC Day that we gather to remember the fallen – the nearly 103,000 men and women whose names adorn our sacred Roll of Honour.
And the hundreds of thousands more who have worn our uniform – and possibly their loved ones only truly know them best.
But we also gather to remember that chord that ties all Australians from the past, to the present and ultimately, the future.
To understand ourselves and our precious democratic inheritance.
In the words of Sister Vivien Bullwinkel: we must never forget “that the lives, opportunities, sports and freedom of our young were bought at a price”.
To forget the past is of course to repeat it.
The late Clive James said on an ANZAC Day a long time ago, the memory of past sacrifice fades, he said, “precisely because we have got the world our parents dreamed of”. And I would say fought for.
But our world is changing.
War does stalk Europe again.
Coercion troubles our region once more.
An arc of autocracy is challenging the rules-based order our grandparents had secured.
And democratic, free peoples are standing together again.
In facing this world, we must remember again.
If only then, it is only then, that we will truly appreciate what these times require of us all.
This ANZAC Day, I think of two young Australians.
The first, Sydney Kinsman, enlisted in the early days of the Second World War.
He had just turned 19.
His Dad didn’t want him to enlist.
But Sydney’s determination prevailed and he joined the 2/48th Battalion.
He was among the first in Tobruk, defending against the Nazi march on Egypt.
There were months of scorching days, bitter nights and frayed nerves from the constant threat of enemy fire.
Later, he’d fight in the First Battle of El Alamein.
Before being taken as a prisoner of war.
Eventually escaping – hiking under the cover of darkness, with a Kiwi mate and a Victorian mate, across the Alps from Italy to Switzerland.
That teenager who joined up eight decades ago is now a centenarian who lives in Alice Springs, and I caught up with him yesterday.
Sydney says “Anzac Day is a day you remember so much”.
Today, we also pause to remember another Australian who served.
He, too, faced resistance enlisting.
His name was Frederick Prentice.
He spent his early years at Powell Creek Telegraph Station about 800 kilometres south of here.
When war commenced in 1915, he wanted to join up.
But wasn’t allowed – because he was Aboriginal.
The Defence Act prohibited “men not of substantial European origin” from joining, it said at the time.
But he enlisted anyway.
And as a soldier, he faced the worst of war.
Four years active service.
He experienced the carnage of the Western Front.
On two occasions, he was the only survivor of a six-man machine gun team ripped apart by enemy fire.
In 1916, Private Prentice was awarded the Military Medal for his actions at Mouquet Farm, Pozieres.
The citation read: “he showed great courage, resource, and ability in bringing machine guns and ammunition through the enemy barrage and broken ground”.
He served our country despite the racism and discrimination endemic of those times.
It’s easy to love a country that loves you; much harder if you don’t feel loved in return. That shows true love for our nation, which extends to this day.
After the war, he became a gold miner and eventually settled in Katherine and died alone in 1957 and was buried in an unmarked grave.
Fortunately, the story of Frederick Prentice doesn’t end there.
Over half a century after his death, local members of the Stolen Generations petitioned for him to receive a headstone and a soldier’s funeral.
And last year, on Remembrance Day Lance Corporal Federick Prentice MM received the honour he so richly deserved.
One hundred and six years had passed since he joined up.
But Australia remembered. And Australia has changed also, since that time he enlisted.
We are becoming the country he might have dreamed of.
A country both fair and free.
As our 19th Prime Minister, Sir John Gorton, was also a veteran – an aviator who had been shot out of the sky. He described Anzac Day as a day “when we look back and we look forward.”
He also said that if our fallen could speak to us they would say this: “We bought your freedom with our lives. So take this freedom. Guard it as we have guarded it, use it as we can no longer use it, and with it as a foundation, build. Build a world in which meanness and poverty, tyranny and hate, have no existence”.
“Do not fail them”, he said.
And on this sacred day, the citizens of our country who face the challenges of our times, of our generation, pledge solemnly together, that we will not.
Lest We Forget.
