11 November 2026
I thank the Member for Chaffey for moving this motion.
Of course, most, if not all of us in this place, and the other, will have attended Remembrance Day Services today, on the eleventh hour, on this the eleventh day of the eleventh month, to honour those who gave their lives with great courage to defend the values that we in this nation, and people around the world, still hold dear: that liberty belongs to all peoples, that human rights are not granted by the powerful but held by everyone, and that the dignity of every person is beyond the reach of any state to take away.
Today I attended the service at Kensington Park RSL, with my husband, himself a veteran, and I was particularly moved by the Remembrance Day Address given by LT COL (Ret) Fred Fairhead (Ex 6 RAR Second Tour, South Vietnam) and I asked Fred if he would allow me to enter his wonderful and moving account of how the poppy became a symbol of remembrance for those who have fallen in wars in our name. Fred kindly agreed and, Speaker, his words follow, with a few tiny edits for clarity.
This day was originally known as Armistice Day and is the primary day of commemoration in the UK, France and Belgium and most of the commonwealth nations except of course here and in New Zealand where Anzac Day has superseded it.
In 1939, the UK moved the day to the Sunday nearest to 11 November in order not to interfere with wartime production should 11 November fall on a weekday. This became Remembrance Sunday.
It is also held in the United States where it is called Veterans Day and held mainly in Birmingham Alabama where Fred was privileged to participate about 25 years ago.
Remembrance Day came as a result of World War l, or as it was known at the time, the Great War and also somewhat optimistically as "the war to end wars", given that two decades later a much more violent war was to commence - World War ll.
Before I speak briefly about those wars, I thought the origins of the wearing of poppies might be of interest.
The poem [in Flanders fields] which [we] heard [at today’s service] was written during the First World War by Canadian Army physician Lieutenant-Colonel John McCrae.
He was inspired to write it on May 3, 1915, after presiding over the funeral of a friend and fellow soldier lieutenant Alexis Helmer, who died in the second battle of Ypres a city in Belgium.
The poppy was one of few plants that survived in the churned-up battlefields of Flanders, growing by the thousands amidst chaos and destruction.
Inspired by McCrae’s poem an American professor at the university of Georgia, Moina Michael, resolved at the war's conclusion in 1918 to wear a red poppy year-round to honour the soldiers who had died in the war.
She also wrote a poem in response called "We Shall Keep the Faith".
Oh! You who sleep in Flanders fields,
Sleep sweet - to rise anew!
We caught the torch you threw
And holding high, we keep the faith
With all who died.
We cherish, too, the poppy red
That grows on fields where valor led;
It seems to signal to the skies
That blood of heroes never dies,
But lends a lustre to the red
Of the flower that blooms above the dead
In Flanders fields.
And now the torch and poppy red
We wear in honor of our dead.
Fear not that ye have died for naught;
We'll teach the lesson that ye wrought
In Flanders fields.
After the war Professor Michael recognised the need to provide financial and occupational support for disabled servicemen and pursued the idea of selling silk poppies as a means of raising funds to support them. In 1921, her efforts resulted in the poppy being adopted as a symbol of remembrance for war veterans by the American Legion Auxiliary, and by Field Marshal Douglas Haig’s British Legion Appeal Fund, later the Royal British Legion.
Haig supported and encouraged the sale of poppies and the practice quickly spread throughout the British Empire. The wearing of poppies in the days leading up to Remembrance Day remains popular in many areas of the Commonwealth of Nations, particularly the United Kingdom, Canada, Australia, New Zealand and South Africa.
There is a poppy factory in Edinburgh, established in 1926 by Lady Haig, where millions of poppies and poppy wreaths are made by disabled ex-service men and women. [Indeed, Fred] had a wreath made there some 10 years ago for a graveside ceremony in Dundee, for a Scottish soldier killed in action in Vietnam in 1969. The botanically correct [silk] poppy with four petals and no leaf [that Fred wore] today was designed by Lady Haig.
In 1914, World War l started as a squabble between the declining Austro-Hungarian Empire and Serbia, which was accused of acts of terrorism. Both had alliances, Austria-Hungary with Germany, and Italy and Serbia with Russia, who in turn had an alliance with France. The problem was that the management of these alliances was in the hands of a small group of men, some of whom were demented, some lecherous and all with terminal jingoism.
So, when the Archduke of Austria was assassinated by a Serb the various alliances each mobilized millions of troops which naturally were then seen as hostile by others. When Germany started to invade France through Belgium, the British, who held the view that any invasion of the low countries could not be tolerated also declared war on Germany, as did the whole of the British Empire, which included Australia and New Zealand.
It has been said that the start of World War l was jingoistic madness on a massive scale. Despite improved levels of leadership and communication between nations, World War ll began in a similar fashion, ostensibly to contain a fanatical and belligerent Germany. Most of the world's countries participated, with many engaging in total war on an unprecedented scale. World war ll was the deadliest conflict in history, causing the deaths of 60 to 75 million people, a majority of whom were civilians.
Millions died as a result of massacres, starvation, disease, and genocides, including the holocaust [which took the lives of six million Jews and in China, the Dutch East Indies, now Indonesia, and other parts of Asia, where between 20 and 30 million people died as a result of Japanese aggression.] An observation we could make about civilian casualties which also occurred in World War l, especially in Belgium, is that, whereas we remember the soldiers who fell in battle, we tend not to do so for the civilian dead, and perhaps we ought to, regardless of their country of origin.
Both of the world wars and many regional conflicts since, such as in SE Asia, the Middle East and Eastern Europe, have been started mainly by delusional and belligerent men. However, there is hope for the future as international relationships are conducted on an improved and more mature basis due to a range of factors including: the increasing involvement of women in the leadership of national affairs; modern communications; defence technology - especially intelligence surveillance; and of course, the nuclear arsenals of the major powers which continue to have a restraining influence.
We can but hope this will be so, and that we are of the persuasion to stay out of regional conflicts caused by, say, religious or ethnic differences, and which have little or no strategic bearing on Australia’s interests. Sadly, that has not always been the case in the recent past. As the great men, one German - Johann Sebastian Bach, the other Flemish - Ludwig Van Beethoven, might have advised: dona nobis pacem
And so concludes Fred’s words. I thank Fred, once again, for his moving and illuminating address, and I thank Kensington Park RSL for their service. I commend this motion to the House. Lest we forget.