Anzac Day

ANZAC Day is a day for commemoration and celebration of Australian identity, so long as we remember the gays and the Muslims were never a part of this.

Anzac Day has become much more than a day of commemorating a military campaign; it has become a national focal point through which we locate what it means to be “Australian.” While the notion of “Australian values” raises disparate and often romantic ideas of mateship, courage and loyalty, it is sometimes insidiously mobilised to express prejudices.

Jim Wallace, Managing Director of the Australian Christian Lobby, made this point painfully clear when he lamented over Twitter  “that as we remember servicemen and women we remember [the] Australia they fought for - wasn’t gay marriage & Islamic!”

Continue reading "Christian lobby chief violates the true Anzac spirit" »

Ray Martin has suffered an uncharacteristic lack of judgment - and possibly also taste - in using our most important national day to reignite debate over the Australian flag.

In doing so he has damaged the republican cause, by exposing himself and the broader republican movement to accusations of opportunitism and grand-standing.

Don’t get me wrong - I don’t love our flag, for the simple reason that it’s got another country’s flag plastered all over it. As a modern and independent and multicultural nation it is a total anachronism that one-quarter of our national ensign is occupied by the Union Jack, regardless of the (generally positive) role of Britain in settling and colonising our nation.

Continue reading "Why Ray was wrong to trash the flag on ANZAC Day" »

It worked for playwright Alan Seymour 50 years ago and it is working for historians Henry Reynolds and Marilyn Lake today. Having a dig at Anzac, that is.

Reynolds and Lake, fine historians both, are making ripples with their new book, the provocatively titled What’s Wrong with Anzac?  The questionmark is a fig leaf, as the book sets out, in emphatic fashion, what the authors think is wrong with our most cherished piece of national mythology. Their subtitle is The Militarisation of Australian History.

In short, Reynolds and Lake believe recent emphasis on our military past, and especially Gallipoli and its commemoration on Anzac Day, has distorted and devalued Australia’s true history. They blame governments past and present, which probably makes them long odds to go back-to-back in the Prime Minister’s Literary Award for nonfiction (they got the nod last year for Drawing the Global Colour Line.)

Continue reading "A dig at the diggers - what’s wrong with Anzac Day" »

Growing up in Sydney with a father who served in the British Commonwealth Occupation Forces (BCOF), Anzac Day was a special day.

We would rise early, catch the bus into the city and wait for my father to march past with his mates. 

It was important to him that we understood the significance of Anzac Day so that we could carry on the tradition of remembering those who gave us the freedom we enjoy today.

Continue reading "Anzac Day will die without a new generation of marchers" »

It’s hard for anyone under the age of at least 50 to say they truly understood Ted Kenna, except for his family and perhaps anyone who’s almost died in combat.

And Ted was probably easier to understand than others famed or prominent among his World War II generation, a laconic, uncomplicated country guy who happened to have been given a medal called the Victoria Cross.

For valour. It’s the highest honour you can get.

But judging by the muted reaction to Ted’s death, at 90, a lot of people didn’t really get what he was about.

The story broke in the local Geelong news media on Thursday, which covers where he lived his final few years in a nursing home, in an understated manner befitting Ted, (”Nedda” to his mates).

By 4 pm, ABC radio in Melbourne hadn’t picked it up or, if maybe they did they didn’t think the news worthy to include in their bulletin.

In one way you can’t blame them, for not ‘getting it’ because 20 or 30 years ago many people of my baby boomer generation may not have only been indifferent, but possibly hostile to men of Ted Kenna’s background.

How could you expect much younger people, in their 20s, to rate the significance of a VC holder?

Continue reading "Ted Kenna understood life in a way that we can’t" »