I begin by acknowledging the traditional owners of the land on which we meet, and pay my respects to Elders past, present and emerging.
I also acknowledge the Leader of the Opposition, and all my colleagues from across the Parliament;
Admiral David Johnston, Chief of the Defence Force;
Brigadier Philip Winter, representing the National President of the RSL;
Sharon Bown, representing the Chair of the Council of the Australian War Memorial;
Matt Anderson, Director of the Australian War Memorial;
Vice Admiral Mark Hammond, Chief of Navy;
Lieutenant General Simon Stuart, Chief of Army; and
Air Vice Marshal Harvey Reynolds, representing Chief of Air Force.
If only these walls could speak.
It’s a familiar figure of speech, one that holds within it the strength of our yearning to touch the past, to know all that has gone into building the present.
Close your eyes for a moment and let these walls speak to you.
Let them speak to you through the constellations of names arrayed upon them.
Let them tell you about generations of Australian sacrifice.
Of courage. Of resilience.
Of suffering and fear.
Not some lofty ideal, but stories of flesh and blood.
Of ordinary people facing the extraordinary.
Of victory and loss.
Of mateship tempered in the fire of combat.
And the light of humanity refusing to be dimmed even in the most pitiless darkness.
Like every cenotaph and war memorial across Australia, from the biggest city to the smallest country town and so many military cemeteries around the world, these walls tell us the strength of the Australian character and how it has been tested – and proven – time and time again.
Here we feel the weight of history, yet our hearts are lifted by all that Australians have stood against – and the difference they have made in the world.
Every name recorded at the Australian War Memorial reminds us of all we owe to every Australian who has served in our name.
Every Australian who fell.
Every Australian who came home, but never fully left the battle.
And every Australian who serves now.
Every military family that has shouldered the weight.
Every family that has known the pride of a loved one who has taken on the responsibility of the uniform.
And every family that has known that grief which has no ending, only a beginning.
Not every final resting place is mapped out in this atlas of loss.
It is a gulf we acknowledge with the extraordinary grave we are gathered before.
The tomb that is the final resting place for one of our fallen, brought home from the Western Front to stand for every Australian cast into the ranks of the unknown soldier.
We gather here on the eve of the new parliament for the same reason Parliament House and the Australian War Memorial face each other across our capital.
It is because the spirit of democracy that our national Parliament embodies is built upon the spirit that permeates these very walls.
A spirit that, even in the face of the fiercest challenge, never relinquishes what it means to be Australian.
A spirit that holds within it the determination that the power of the ballot – our collective voice as a people – must never yield to the power of the bullet.
Even in the depths of World War II, Australians in uniform voted.
Whether they were in besieged Britain, or in the jungles of Papua New Guinea, where ballot papers were airdropped to remote units, our soldiers, sailors and aviators kept the heartbeat of our democracy strong, a beacon of hope held high to a world darkened by tyranny.
Each day delivers a stark reminder of just how elusive peace can be.
Yet, as the walls around us remind us, peace is a cause we can never resile from.
Look to the constellations of names above us. Like the stars in the night sky, so many of those names – and the lives they stood for – are so distant from us now, yet their light touches us still.
Even as the late afternoon gathers our land in shadows, it is a light upon which no darkness will fall.
Like an eternal flame of the heart, we tend the fire of memory so that its glow touches generations to come.
And we keep returning to three words as perfect in their simplicity as they are profound in their power:
Lest we forget.