Senator CHRIS EVANS (Leader of the Opposition in the Senate) (3:37 PM) —I rise to support the motion and support Senator Hill’s comments. In December 1941 war came to the Pacific on a day, as US President Franklin D Roosevelt said at the time, that will live in infamy. The attack on Pearl Harbour marked not only the beginning of the war in the Pacific but also the expansion of the war in Europe and North Africa into a truly global conflict. It is hard to imagine that any Australians were untouched by the conflict. In all, more than 900,000 Australians from a total population of around only seven million enlisted in the armed forces between 1939 and 1945. Thousands more served with organisations such as the Women’s Land Army, the Red Cross and the Red Shield.

Sixty years on, we owe the freedom we enjoy to those who fell, were wounded and injured or endured the horrors of captivity. In the Pacific theatre 9,470 Australians were killed in action or died of wounds, 8,031 died as prisoners of war and 14,081 were wounded in action. There is some uncertainty about the total number of Australian prisoners of war. However, the Australian War Memorial records that more than 22,000 were captive to the Japanese in South-East Asia. The disease, starvation, torture, forced labour and execution that were endured by prisoners of war in the Pacific are unfathomable to many of us today, but theirs is a sacrifice that we should never forget.

In addition, more than 1,500 people died in non-battlefield situations, there were more than 24,000 non-battlefield injuries and more than 430,000 people suffered from illness and diseases such as malaria. The scale of suffering and sacrifice was immense. The figures I have referred to include only Australians. They are, of course, only part of a much wider story of global conflict, death, casualty and destruction on a scale unseen before or since.

The war in the Pacific was the first and only time that war has touched our Australian shores. Certain events in the Pacific war occupy a particular place in Australian history. On 19 February 1942, Australia was for the first time attacked by a foreign enemy, with two Japanese aircraft bombing raids on Darwin that day. In May 1942, the Battle of the Coral Sea saw the Japanese Port Moresby invasion force turned back, an event that was of huge importance in the struggle to secure Australia. That month also saw the Japanese submarine attack on Sydney Harbour and the loss of 21 lives with the sinking of the converted submarine, the Kuttabul.

The fighting on the Kokoda Trail in late 1942 and early 1943, which Senator McEwen referred to in her first speech yesterday, saw many more Australian deaths than any other campaign in the war, and was the closest the Japanese ground forces came to the Australian mainland during any campaign. Success in Papua New Guinea ensured the integrity of Australian bases in Northern Australia, from where the counteroffensive would be launched. In other battles in other places Australian and allied forces distinguished themselves and made terrible sacrifices that we remember today.

The war in the Pacific was also a turning point in the relationship between Australia and the United States. With many US service personnel stationed in Australia and General MacArthur basing himself here, we established a relationship that to this day remains our most important strategic alliance. We have also been reminded this week that the Pacific war represented the birth of the nuclear age, with the use of the atomic bombs in Hiroshima and Nagasaki. This set the scene for the Cold War nuclear stand-off that would dominate international relations for nearly half a century.

On 15 August 1945, the Emperor of Japan announced the surrender of the Japanese empire and the end of the march of totalitarianism launched by the Axis powers. It is a sad fact that John Curtin, the then Labor Prime minister who led Australia during this period of greatest threat to our nation, our freedom and our way of life, did not live to see the final victory. It fell to his successor, Ben Chifley, to lead Australia in those final weeks and days.

Sixty years on, the Pacific rim is emerging as a key theatre in international relations. Our relationship with Japan today is marked by cooperation and friendship. We hope that our children and their children never have to endure the sacrifices that were made by the generation who fought and won the Pacific war. So it is fitting that today the parliament remembers them, that on Monday all Australians celebrate Victory in the Pacific Day, and that we all take a moment to mark the occasion and to remember that we should never forget the sacrifices that were made 60 years ago to safeguard our freedom and our way of life.