Image: burial at sea, September 1915, of the author's great-uncle Corporal Sid Ferrier, 10th Light Horse (?Telegraph, London). Standing to right is his commander, Lieutenant Hugo Throssell VC. In 2021, Sid Ferrier received a posthumous Medal for Gallantry. Story.
There are plenty of precedents for Barnaby Joyce's recent remarks about the irrelevance (as he claims) of the lack of an approved business case for the Australian War Memorial extensions. They are characterised by slippage in normal standards of judgement and balance.
On 25 April 1915 a new world was born [wrote Colonel Arthur Burke OAM]. A new side of man's character was revealed. The Spirit of ANZAC was kindled. It flared with a previously unknown, almost superhuman strength. There was a determination, a zest, a drive which swept up from the beaches on Gallipoli Peninsula as the ANZACs thrust forward with their torch of freedom.
As they fell, they threw those following the torch so their quest would maintain its momentum. That Torch of Freedom has continually been thrown from falling hands, has kindled in the catchers' souls a zeal and desire for both our individual liberty and our countries' liberty. That desire has been handed down with the memory and burns as brightly as the flame which first kindled it.
But the Spirit of ANZAC is not confined to the battlefield. It lives in the schools, on the sports fields, in fact all over these great countries of Australia and New Zealand. The sun invades our bodies and makes us "mad"; mad for freedom - freedom of speech, freedom of worship, freedom to live and think as you will.
The Spirit of ANZAC is not something we can see but a powerful driving sensation that can only be felt. It is a feeling that burns in the heart of every Australian and New Zealand countryman. A warm, tender, fiery, even melancholy ideal that nurtures intense patriotism in the innermost soul of every body.
Colonel Burke (1943-2019) was for many years an RSL, retired Artillery and Legacy stalwart in Queensland. He wrote many pieces like the one above and they were familiar to Queensland school children over decades. The above quote can still be found on the website of the Anzac Day Commemoration Committee of Queensland.
As a Queensland child of that era, Prime Minister Kevin Rudd may have been influenced by Colonel Burke's work. Here is Mr Rudd in 2010:
For Australia, our identity has been etched deeply by what we call ANZAC. For nearly a century, in fact for most of our federated history, ANZAC has occupied a sacred place not far from the nation’s soul. It shapes deeply our nation’s memory. It shapes deeply how we see the world. A hundred years later, it shapes too what we do in the world.
Neither religious nor secular, whatever our beliefs are, ANZAC is profoundly spiritual – inspiring pilgrimages still to that far-off place where our modern-day pilgrims drink deep from the well of national memory. So what is this legend that we call ANZAC? How has it shaped our nation’s life? How does it offer quiet counsel and gentle direction as we seek to chart our future? And how do we best nurture its flame for another century as we approach the first centenary of the ANZAC landings? I believe each generation of Australians has a duty to pass this torch to the next.
Then there was Barnaby Joyce, who said this to AAP in response to the Audit Office report that Prime Minister Morrison had waved through the War Memorial Big Build despite the lack of government agreement on the Detailed Business Case:
'We say "Lest we Forget"; we have never said "Lest we Forget, dependent on a business case" ...
'While the auditor has identified important improvements for better processes and ministerial oversight, I am supremely relaxed that our government made the decision to announce the project before a business case had been completed.'
He maintained Australian veterans should be honoured regardless of the findings in a business case and said the upgrade would create a memorial the nation would be proud of.
'I am uncomfortable when the words "business case" and "remembering them" are used in the same sentence - very uncomfortable', Mr Joyce said.
'We didn't send our fine men and women to war based on a business case, they didn't die and get shot-up based on a business case, and we shouldn't decide whether we remember them or not, based on a business case.'
Mr Joyce didn't consider whether those 'fine men and women' might have hoped the country they were fighting for spent its people's money carefully.
Burke, Rudd and Joyce were all, of course, spouting drivel. What writer Peter Cochrane called 'the Anzac cloak' has covered lots of similar nonsense.
Yet, many Australians go along with it, without too much thought. Their lack of thought vacates the space and makes it easy for governments to fall back on the drivel.
There will be lots of Anzackery drivel trotted out this week; we Australians kind of expect it.
Lest We Forget indeed.
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