Anzac Day celebration must evolve

This was published 1 year ago


Anzac Day celebration must evolve

Anzac Day  is so much a part of modern Australian life that it can seem as though it has always existed in its current form. But in reality the event has had to evolve to remain relevant.

The Herald this week reported on one way that Anzac Day has changed. For 82 years after the Gallipoli landings Indigenous Australians had no specific commemoration for their sacrifice. Even though an estimated 1000 Aboriginal Diggers served in World War I, when they returned they were not even counted as Australian citizens and the official celebrations largely ignored them.

Colin Watego and MP Tanya Plibersek at the commemoration service last Anzac Day.

Colin Watego and MP Tanya Plibersek at the commemoration service last Anzac Day.Credit:Dominic Lorrimer

That was until a group of Indigenous people decided, in 2007, to hold the first Coloured Diggers march, in the afternoon, finishing with a service at the Redfern War Memorial. As the Herald reports this week, it is on again this year and one of the marchers, warrant officer Col Watego, recalls his father's sense of injustice.

Mr Watego's father and uncle, both soldiers in World War II and proud Bundjalung men, went to a pub for a drink in 1942 after they learned another brother had died fighting in North Africa. The bartender told the Wategos to go drink ''out the back with the blacks''.


The belated recognition of Indigenous veterans is just one example of the evolution in the celebration of Anzac Day. This year will mark a different sort of turning point because it is now more than 100 years since the end of World War I. For the past four years, the major focus of annual commemorations has been the centenaries of the terrible battles of the Great War. Australians flocked to battlefields in Gallipoli, Flanders and the Middle East and Australia spent $350 million on memorials to provide a focus for their pilgrimage.

Yet this is the centenary of the first year of peace, a time when Diggers, many of them shattered by their experiences, returned to Australia. In fact, some Diggers were still in action but it was in wars that many have forgotten and which do not fit so easily into the common Anzac story. Light horsemen fought in Egypt but it was to suppress riots against British rule and two Australians won the Victoria Cross for their service during the British intervention in the Russian Civil War.

Some would argue that given the success of the centenaries of the Great War there is a popular mandate for even more investment in commemoration. Yet a group of prominent Australians, including writers  Thomas Keneally and Richard Flanagan, have questioned the wisdom of a proposed $500 million extension to the National War Memorial in Canberra. Many veterans have said they would prefer the money be spent on looking after their families.

For the past few decades a focus of Anzac Day has been the joint dawn service in Turkey between the descendants of Anzacs and of their former Turkish enemies, which celebrated a universal brotherhood of man. Yet this year, that is also changing. Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan made some hostile comments about Australians who shared the anti-Muslim sentiments of the Christchurch attacker. These remarks have now been withdrawn but, regrettably, Turkish participation has been limited.

None of this will, or should, change the basic meaning of Anzac Day as a time when we reflect on the terrible sacrifices of those who fought for Australia and the impact they have had on our national identity. Yet debate about how to celebrate Anzac Day must continue to make sure it is meaningful for future generations.


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