The unfolding disaster in the Ukraine and the recent US and Coalition retreat from Afghanistan were both a long way away and seemingly remote from Australia’s comfortable way of life, Air Marshall Geoff Shepherd said at the Anzac Day Dawn Service at Verrierdale on Monday.
“We must guard against complacency, however, and not become so insular and convinced of the inevitable triumph of totalitarianism that we lose our capacity to understand the real and increasingly challenging nature of the world around us.”
The former chief of the Royal Australian Air Force who was guest speaker said: “We are The Lucky Country but we must not forget how much hard work and sacrifice went into making us safe.
“It will take much more of the same to keep us so. Just yesterday our Defence Minister Peter Dutton said our strategic position is as dire as in the 1930s.”
Air Marshall Shepherd said it was vital liberal democracies prepared for greater security and defence expenditure.
He added: “They should also ensure the loyalty of their citizens rests with the west. The enemy within of internal divisiveness and overly critical national self-flagellation is as much a threat to Australia as external aggression.
“A society where the current Australian of the Year publicly rebukes the Prime Minister for saying he was blessed by having healthy children while the Solomon Islands signs a security pact with an ever more assertive and expansionist China has its priorities wrong.
“Serious debate over vital and pressing policy issues and governance should not be diverted into cultural arguments and trivial insults with the power of the negative becoming dominant.”
He described Anzac Day as a “solemn duty to remember and pay honour to the 102,980 Australians who died in defence of our nation.
“From the beaches of Gallipoli to the muddy hell holes of the French Western Front, to the deserts of the Middle East and North Africa, to the jungles of PNG and our Asian neighbours, the freezing conditions of Korea, to the vast open spaces of the Pacific and in all the seas and skies above, young Aussies have heeded the call to defend freedom.”
He said it was common in many Anzac Day speeches to invoke the spirit, the courage, the sense of humour in adversity, the mateship, the honour of the original Anzacs and all the soldiers, sailors and aviators who have served since.
“But there is one attribute they and earlier generations had in abundance—something we are desperately in need of in our future—the attribute of resilience.
“It is the ability to bounce back, to maintain the aim in adversity, to stay true to your ideals and values, in spite of the odds.
“We need more of it as a nation and we need more of personally as we navigate an increasingly self-obsessed domestic and societal environment and a challenging world order.
“We should draw on the experience of the original Anzacs in conditions so adverse we cannot really imagine as well as those who gave their service and their lives in the years since Gallipoli.
“I have no doubt that it is deep within us individually and can be rebuilt in our national institutions but it does need to come to the fore and we do need to cut through to what is fundamentally important to our future.
“This Anzac Day should be an opportunity for national and personal reflections on just what those, who gave so much, might think of us as their heirs to the freedoms they secured.” Air Marshall Shepherd said.
Air Marshall Shepherd lives in Eumundi and also spoke at the Eumundi Anzac Day Observance.
