Mr CAUSLEY (12:10 PM) —It is a pleasure to speak to the motion moved by the Prime Minister and seconded by the Leader of the Opposition on the celebration of victory in the Pacific. I suppose I am revealing my age, but I was a very small boy during the Second World War and it is amazing the things that are indelibly imprinted on one’s mind. The fact is that Australia was so concerned, so scared in many ways, about what was happening. I know my parents were. As a small child, one may not have known what was going on, but one remembers the events that occurred. My mother tells me I was in a highchair, so I was probably 18 months or two years old, but I recall that every morning they would listen to the radio and dad would get a book out. I did not know what the book was at the time, but I now know it was an atlas. They were watching to see where the Japanese were, because the Japanese had been coming through China, at the fall of Singapore, into New Guinea, and Australia was at risk. There is no doubt that Australia was about to be invaded. They were very concerned. Australia was absolutely concerned. All of the main troop body was in the Middle East, so we had no-one to defend the country. We had to mobilise very quickly and the only people we had to mobilise were the very young and those who were considered to be over the age for serving in the Army. They were the people we had to send to New Guinea.

I recall that my uncles and my father’s cousins, boys aged 18 and 19 years, were called up. They were very poorly trained. As the member for Melbourne Ports said, they did not have time to train. They were sent to New Guinea to defend Australia in New Guinea. Most of them were sent to the Kokoda Track or Kokoda Trail. There is an argument about whether it is a track or a trail. I sat and listened to the memoires of veterans in Lismore on Monday and many of them were calling it a trail. I think there is some debate about what it is called—who cares?—but it is in Kokoda.

I come from a very small village called Chatsworth Island on the Lower Clarence. It has a population of 200 to 300. It always was around that; it was no bigger in the days of the Second World War. Two men from that small village were shot and killed on the Kokoda Track. One was shot and wounded and rescued by the fuzzy wuzzy angels. Neville Wiblen, a very young man from a well-known family in the area, and Billy Addison, also from another well-known family, were both shot by snipers. Allen Causley, my father’s cousin, was the man who was wounded. He was shot through the leg and carried out by the fuzzy wuzzy angels.

As a young man I talked to some of these people and became aware that it was a terrifying experience. They were fighting in the jungle; they could not see the enemy and they were being shot at by snipers. But they were sent there to do a job and they were determined to do it. We have to remember that it was that force—although they were reinforced later by the troops coming back from the Middle East—that inflicted the first defeat on the Japanese at Milne Bay. That in itself says a lot for the fighting courage of the men who went there.

But it was not just this area that was involved. I recall other local people who were involved in the fall of Singapore and captured. None of us really realised the horrors of the camps and the death marches until after the war. But there is one thing that sticks in my mind as a child aged about five. I saw some of these men coming back after the war ended. I recall one man in particular coming back to the township of Maclean—a man called Clive Carr. He had been a prisoner of war at Changi. As a small child I remember thinking to myself, ‘I have never seen anyone so thin who is walking.’ He was just skin and bone. The impression that I had of seeing this man who had come back from the war was just incredible.

These were very serious times—there is no doubt about that. I agree with the member for Melbourne Ports about much of what happened in Europe. There are many lessons to be learnt from this. Quite frankly, I wonder whether we have learned the lessons because all through the 1930s there were warnings, especially in Europe. Through the 1930s there were warnings about what was about to happen. I know that people had had enough in the Great War—it was such a shocking war—but you cannot run away from these types of people. As long as there are humans on this earth, there will be people who want to conquer others and subjugate them. There is no doubt in my mind about that. We have to heed the warnings. If ever we get anything through to our children and grandchildren, it should be that they heed history—what happened in the past. It will repeat itself if we allow it. In my mind, one of the great mottos is the RSL’s motto, ‘The price of liberty is eternal vigilance’. It is something we must remember.

I recall very clearly that Australia was ill-prepared—most of our troops were in the Middle East. My father was one of those who were left behind. We had the Land Army girls and women working in munitions factories. Everyone in Australia was mobilised. There was no doubt that we were fighting for our freedom. My father was the eldest in the family. He was the farmer, and he was left behind to look after the farm, but he was also in the Volunteer Defence Corp. As a child, I remember a truck, in Army colours, coming around and picking him up. Obviously, they were training. I also recall that he took with him a piece of wood cut in the shape of a gun. They did not have guns. If the Japanese had come to this country, they would not have been able to defend it, because there were no guns in the country at that time. My father told me later that they used to go and guard the local bridge because there was a very real risk that the Japanese would skirt around New Guinea and land on the gentle sloping beaches around Ballina on the North Coast of New South Wales and move onto the Pacific Highway—the main east coast highway. Australia was alert to that, and the volunteers used to guard the bridges at night with pick handles. It was all they had.

I will never forget as a small child—it must have been towards the end of the war—that Dad came home one day and had a huge gun and huge bullets that were three or four inches long. I was in awe of the gun he brought home. For the first time, towards the end of the war, the locals had guns to defend Australia. That would have been far too late. Thank goodness for the Americans and the Battle of the Coral Sea. The Japanese had, no doubt, stirred them up at Pearl Harbour, but thank goodness for the Americans in the Battle of the Coral Sea. They stopped the Japanese from coming around New Guinea and onto the east coast of Australia, which, there is no doubt in my mind, they would have done. If you look at the attacks that happened in Sydney and Darwin, they were determined to come to Australia.

Let us talk about peace. As the member for Melbourne Ports said, people try to rewrite history in many of these things. I agree with his statements on many of the events in Europe. I concur completely with what he said on Europe. But have a look at the Pacific as well. A lot of people now tut tut and say, ‘Why did you drop the bombs on Japan?’ As an older man, I have spoken with veterans who were fighting in the Pacific. These people were on islands such as Balikpapan and Guadalcanal. The Americans had bombarded these islands mercilessly, as Americans can do. The veterans said that there was fierce fighting when they went ashore. The Japanese were fierce fighters. They fought to the last man. And there were a lot of casualties. If we had gone from island to island and on to Japan, there is no doubt that there would have been hundreds of thousands of Allied casualties. They would have fought to the last man. There would probably have been a guerilla war in Japan if we had gone there from the islands.

I honestly believe that even though the Allies knew that the Americans had big bombs—because they had been testing them in America—they did not know anything about radiation at that time. When they dropped the first bomb on Hiroshima, the Japanese did not surrender; they continued to fight. Even after they dropped the second bomb on Nagasaki, there was no immediate surrender. But I think it was made very clear to the Japanese that the next target was Tokyo, and they surrendered. I do not apologise, I never will apologise and I do not think anyone should apologise for the fact that those two bombs were dropped, because it was the only way that peace could have been obtained at that time in a short period of time. You would have had to fight till the end to get peace in any other way.

I think the lessons there are that we should not back away from what we have to do at a particular time. I was a five-year-old when the war finished. I remember the celebrations: the place went mad. I was a young child and I was saying, ‘What is going on here?’ I did not realise what a momentous occasion it was. In the evening the whole family went down to the local village. There was a dummy up a camphor laurel tree and I did not think for a moment what it was about until later that night a couple of men in uniform came along and shot up the dummy. It ignited, because it was soaked in petrol. And that was Tojo—they shot Tojo. That was the celebration—they were just euphoric that the war was over.

This is probably one of the last opportunities that we have to say thanks. At the ceremonies that I have been to, I have been overawed and impressed with these now old men and women who are coming along to receive their medals. They are so proud of the fact that they were there when we needed them. They gave everything, and many people lost their lives, but they were not frightened to defend their country. We should not forget why they defended this country. They defended this country because they believed in the democracy and the freedom that we have today. They defended our democracy and freedom. I think Australians, to this day, still believe that we will defend freedom and democracy around the world. I am sure that that generation would say to us, ‘That’s what we fought for; that’s what we expect you to do.’