Anzac Day

The Advertiser: Largest crowd in years pays tribute :

"More than 10,000 people have gathered around the war memorial in Adelaide for the Anzac Day dawn service."

There is interesting debate and discussion at the moment. Some people are saying an even more conservative Pope has been elected , that our government has taken us back to the 50s and that the world has become ultra conservative. On the other side we have those who are saying everything is out of control, there is a breakdown in relationships and the bricks and mortar of society and everything is becoming chaotic. Then you look. Change is action. When more people turn up at the Anzac memorial service than ever before, then that means something. In our local area they had landscaped the park and painted very eye catching friezes and had gone to a great deal of trouble to provide a dignified venue and a ceremony that meant something. What people are doing tells us how we really feel. We care about people. People are everything.

Our talk is about whether Anzac Day should actually be our national day because it's the one day of the year (see, even that has meaning because of the play) where we do actually feel Australian and it means something to be Australian. Our national day is one we all forget and don't know that we are supposed to be thinking. Our heart isn't in it. On Anzac Day, even those who say we shouldn't honour and remember war, who think it is self destructive to praise and glorify war, have feeling about what they are saying. National Days should be about the people and the country. They should evoke feelings and debate. The truth is, we have made this day grow. As a nation it has become far more important to us each year and I do not get the impression it's about glorifying war. It's about remembering human beings are hurt, destroyed and damaged by war and that they are our people, our friends, our relatives. It's about perspective more than anything. National Days should strike the heart of the nation and for some reason, Anzac Day resonates with us irrespective of our opinion about the reason for the day. That we endorse it more strongly says something about us and I am curious to see whether the turn out was bigger elsewhere in Australia.