Ever since I taught Australian History to high school
students I have felt uncomfortable using Anzac Day as a cause of celebration,
let alone espousing it as some kind of event that forged our
national identity.
From a historical perspective the verdict is pretty clear: the
ANZAC campaign was a disaster. Australian and New Zealand soldiers were used as
decoys and sent as lambs to the slaughter to distract the Turks from another
region the British intended to attack. It was a disgrace that was best
forgotten.
Yet we go on making it bigger and grander with each passing
year. Richard Flanagan in his recent address to the National Press Club says
that in his family Anzac Day was always about remembering those who went to
war, and especially those who didn’t come home.
From around the mid-80s, in the hands of politicians – beginning with
Bob Hawke – it has become something else. It’s become a patriotic rallying call
to define who we are as a nation and the values and beliefs that go with it,
and if you don’t subscribe to those beliefs you are somehow un-Australian. Well
let me say right here and now that I am un-Australian. Which of course just
means that I think differently to those who hold up the ‘Anzac spirit’ as some kind
of mirror that all Australians must look into to find themselves.
I do a lot of walking around Australian towns and cities,
and as I watch the churches become homes, cafes and bars, and the war memorials
shine and proliferate, and see the vast sums of money being spent on more of
them at Gallipoli, France, and here in Adelaide, it’s become clear to me that
Australia’s real religion is war, or at least the memorialising if it. It feels
like an unhealthy obsession.
What bothers me, and as Flanagan noted is really quite
dangerous, is none of this is up for discussion with mainstream Australia. War,
and the militarisation of national memory, is a no go area. Question its relevance or
importance and you are immediately dismissed as un-Australian, left-leaning,
hippy, radical or some other insult that consigns you to the margins. It’s a
closed book, and sadly is in large part based on myth rather than fact.
We are going down a dead end street that offers no solace
for the growing number of Australians who are unhappy – who smash up churches
and graves, eat themselves to obesity, or express their life’s emptiness
through road rage….
Flanagan wonders whether there may be another path Australia
could take to seek the roots of its national identity. We have been given the priceless
gift of sharing this remarkable continent with the oldest unbroken culture on
the planet. This could be our legacy to the world. Why isn’t there a national
museum dedicated to our indigenous culture? Why would we rather spend $100
million on a war museum in France honouring the lives of those who died
fighting for another country’s wars rather than spend that money on a national
monument honouring Australia’s vast pre-history? Why aren’t we standing on the hilltops boasting about the fact that we
host an ancient civilization whose ancestors are still with us? And this story
happened on this land – not in Turkey or France or Vietnam. These are the real, authentic stories of our ancient land: our true past. Who knows - it might even make us
feel more connected to it, and perhaps lead us to appreciate the unique place in history
that our co-existence with the earth’s oldest culture affords us. 
