http://www.smh.com.au/national/fraser-hawke-to-lead-anzac-centenary-efforts-20100425-tlnt.htmlFraser, Hawke to lead Anzac centenary efforts Kirsty Needham
April 26, 2010
Quote [Former prime ministers from both sides of politics will join the president of the RSL, Rear-Admiral Ken Doolan, in seeking ideas from the community on how to mark the Anzac centenary in 2015.
The former Labor prime minister Bob Hawke and the former Liberal prime minister Malcolm Fraser will head the commission on the commemoration of the Anzac centenary, taking submissions and reporting to the government by the end of the year, the Prime Minister said.
''April 1915 is now beyond nearly all our living memory,'' he said. It was time for a ''national conversation'' involving schools and Returned and Services League branches on how to mark the Gallipoli landings and the ''other great centenaries that lie ahead between Anzac Day and Armistice Day''.
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Ideas ranged from enhancing memorials to raising the AE2, the first submarine to navigate the Dardanelles, on the day of the Gallipoli landing. It showed the way for Allied forces but was later sunk in Turkey.
''Whatever our beliefs are, Anzac is profoundly spiritual - inspiring pilgrimages still to that far-off place,'' said Kevin Rudd.
The opposition spokeswoman for Veterans' Affairs, Louise Markus, said the Anzac centenary was ''an important next step in our nation's history''.
The Coalition supported ''any measure which will bipartisanly plan for this important national event and which takes fully into consideration the wishes and views of the veterans''.
Mr Rudd made the announcement at the national ceremony at the Australian War Memorial, where the Opposition Leader, Tony Abbott, also laid a wreath.
Mr Rudd had earlier attended the dawn service in Canberra, where the army senior chaplain, Catie Inches-Ogden, said that Australians who dismissed Anzac Day as a glorification of war had ''missed the point''. The sacrifice of the soldiers had given Australians examples to follow and live by, with hope and integrity.
Julie Cronin, one of 10,000 people huddled against the cold at the service, said she attended each year because ''it is not about militarism, but respecting the values they have instilled in the community''. She had three great-uncles fight at Gallipoli.
A kookaburra broke the one-minute silence that followed the Last Post in the bush capital.
Politicians in various spots around the world told of the personal dimension of the day, sharing family histories.
The Treasurer, Wayne Swan, said at a dawn service in Washington that his grandfather had died of war-related ill health, broken by the fighting, mud and gas of Flanders.
The Foreign Minister, Stephen Smith, at Villers-Bretonneux in France, said a great uncle had died there on April 24. Another had died at Gallipoli a day later.] Unquote
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