2015-11-10
Ms PENNICUIK (Southern Metropolitan) — I would like to thank the government which, in consultation with all parties, rearranged the schedule today to allow members to attend local Remembrance Day events. It is important that after 97 years we are still able to take time out of our busy lives to pause on 11 November to remember the 9 million combatants and 7 million civilians who died in World War I, and the millions who have died or been injured in conflicts since then.
Today I attended the service at the Caulfield RSL, where my grandfather was a founding member and my father also a long-term member. It is 10 years today since my father attended his last Remembrance Day at the Shrine of Remembrance. He was very frail but was determined to attend as he always did. By chance, he was interviewed by ABC TV, to which he said that he hoped the young people who were there were never caught up in a war as he had been.
As Caulfield RSL president Bob Larkin said today:
As we are here today commemorating the signing of the armistice …
…
We … remember the damage that was wrought by war and … the ordinary men and women who fought against —
dictators and authoritarians —
either lost their lives, or survived, though often scarred physically or mentally.
…
… whilst nearly a century has passed since the signing of that … armistice, war in one form or another has continued unabated, and always it is the innocent that suffer.