On this Remembrance Day, as political leaders across Australia and beyond prepare to deliver their annual solemn addresses, a troubling question emerges: has the political-military establishment truly learned from the millions of combatant and civilian deaths that have occurred since the First World War ended on this day in 1918?
The Commemorative Dissonance in Modern Warfare
There exists a profound disconnect between how leaders evocatively remember the 'fallen' of past conflicts and their passive responses to contemporary mass slaughter of non-combatants in regions like the Middle East, Africa, and eastern Europe. This commemorative dissonance raises important questions about the sincerity of our collective remembrance.
Australia's military history reveals a consistent pattern of following powerful empires into distant conflicts. The recent $368 billion Aukus submarine deal continues this tradition by binding Australia militarily and strategically to what many consider the most unpredictable United States administration in history. Critics argue that should Australia ever actually receive the promised submarines, the agreement would inherently increase danger for Australian personnel through greater interoperability with the US navy.
The Human Cost Beyond the Statistics
Approximately 103,000 Australians have died in various wars and peacekeeping missions, but this number only begins to capture the true human cost. The First World War remains Australia's most storied conflict, with staggering figures that continue to resonate: from a population of barely 5 million, 416,000 Australian men enlisted (half of those eligible), with just over 331,000 deployed. The casualties were devastating - more than 60,000 were killed, while 155,000 returned physically wounded and countless others suffered psychological and emotional damage.
The aftermath extended far beyond the battlefield. Veterans frequently struggled with drug and alcohol addiction, and many families experienced terrible domestic violence. Despite these historical lessons, Australia continues to treat many veterans and serving personnel with what can only be described as shabby contempt, as evidenced by the recent royal commission into defence and veteran suicide and the appalling treatment of its key witness.
Selective Remembrance and National Identity
Remembrance represents a conscious act - political, cultural, and personal - that involves deliberate choices about who and what we commemorate, and what we choose to omit. Since the era of former prime minister Billy Hughes, Australia has tightly woven its national identity with military adventurism, often at the exclusion of other important narratives.
This selective memory overlooks the contributions of women and migrants, as well as Australia's pioneering democratic advancements including women's suffrage and workers' rights. Most significantly, it deliberately forgets the foundation of racial discrimination and Indigenous dispossession, whose profound generational legacies continue to reverberate today.
The continental-wide frontier conflicts between British and Australian military forces and Aboriginal resistance fighters remain semi-officially excluded from national genesis acknowledgment. Despite increasing historical and cultural recognition, political acknowledgment of these frontier wars and their importance to establishing the new white federation on stolen lands pitifully lags behind.
The Australian War Memorial, where much of today's political remembrance will unfold, has been glacially slow to acknowledge the seminal importance of frontier wars to national and military experience. The institution's recent controversy surrounding its prestigious military history writing prize exemplifies this reluctance. Judges initially determined that journalist Chris Masters should win for his book examining the alleged war crimes of Ben Roberts-Smith, but Masters was ultimately denied the prize for chronicling deeply unpalatable truths about Australian military personnel that conflict with the memorial's Anzac mythology.
As we observe a minute's silence today, it seems reasonable to question whether we have come to sentimentalise the horrific battlefield suffering of those who died long ago at the expense of living veterans whose ongoing suffering is too frequently overlooked. War and politics, truth-telling and commemorative dissonance all warrant private contemplation on this Remembrance Day. And that meaningful reflection undoubtedly requires more than just a minute.
