Allan has hit the nail on the head with this article. It is our ever controlling leaders and bureaucrats that seek ways to cause complaint. Nearly all immigrants couldn't care less what Australians celebrate. Why do they hate Australians so? GC.Ed.
According to a report by the Department of Veterans Affairs, ANZAC Day commemorations are a risk to multiculturalism and a source of “unexpected negative complications.” The report that says of the ANZAC commemorations, “Commemorating our military history in a multicultural society is something of a double-edged sword. While the 100th anniversary commemorations are thought to provide some opportunity for creating a greater sense of unity, it is also recognized as a potential area of divisiveness.”
How very true, and the division it is creating is between an arrogant interfering bureaucracy and the Veterans who march in remembrance of all Australians who didn’t come home and for those Australians who would like to commemorate ANZAC Day on the former battlefields of WWI.
The Government squandered $370,000 so that Veteran’s Affairs Bureaucrats could finance a number of ‘Focus Groups’ to develop still more political correctness and tell us that ANZAC Day commemorations were “unpopular with younger people” and offend recent Islamic immigrants. Someone forgot to tell the focus groups about the increasing numbers of young people that are attending dawn services and other ANZAC Day commemorations around Australia, at Gallipoli and other memorial sites on the battlefields of WWI and recent immigrants are offended by everything Australian.
Each year we have Allies and former enemies gathering side-by-side to commemorate those battles that stole so many young lives around the globe. Polish, German, Turkish, Japanese, British, Vietnamese, South African, Canadian and others gather to show respect and remember those that didn’t make it back home. There doesn’t seem to be any problem there, but it does appear that there are some immigrants who take offence at ANZAC Day as they do with Christmas and Easter and must therefore be placated to preserve the illusion that is the failed concept of multiculturalism.
From one Veteran’s group came the following comment, “We seem to be able to acknowledge war is not a nice thing and that people on both sides lose out – and we have never had to spend $300,000 combined, let alone in one year.” It is in fact almost $500,000.
In past years battlefields tour companies have catered adequately for those Australian and New Zealanders who wished to attend the dawn service at Gallipoli and other WWI memorials throughout the various former battlefields. Tour operators of long standing say that the Gallipoli site could easily manage up to 20,000 visitors, but experience also tells them that there is an average of only 8,000 ever attend because of the inconvenience in terms of travel and accommodation and also because many visitors are choosing to go to the other WWI sites where more comfortable transport and accommodation arrangements exist.
Tour operators had been offering places for the 2015 Centenary Dawn Service at Gallipoli for some time until the Minister for Veteran’s Affairs, Warren Snowden, decided that the Australian government should lead the way and convince the New Zealand and Turkish governments that there needed to be strict government management (interference).
They have decided to overlook the tour operators and limit the number that can attend to 6,000 Australians and 2,000 New Zealanders and deciding just who will be allowed to attend by ballot. Paul Murphy, chief executive of Military History Tours, who has been leading visits to Gallipoli since 1989, said he believed the beach could safely accommodate 20,000 visitors.
Too bad if you were planning on going to Gallipoli to remember and honour a family member who didn’t make it back, because if your name doesn’t come out in the ballot then you won’t be welcome.
However, there is one thing that you can be assured of and that is that there will be a small army of meddling bureaucratic ‘organisers’ and politicians spouting their insincere platitudes while smiling for the cameras. They will be milking this little ‘jolly’ for everything it is worth at taxpayers expense and taking up places that should rightly go to ordinary Australians and New Zealanders.
Allan is retired from active RAAF duty. In civilian life he was a
pilot and flight instructor. He was also the commander of an Royeal
Volunteer Coastal Patrol maritime rescue unit on the South Coast of NSW
and senior officer for the Far South Coast. He fights for a fair go for
ex-servicemen and women and is a harsh critic of the government's
treatment of serving and ex-service personnel.
