“The war that finished 100 years ago today was tragic for our nation and catastrophic for the world – a global conflagration that took no fewer than 16 million lives, violently. In Australia, we had sent 332,000 Australians to serve overseas. Of them, 61,000 never came home. That’s right. Sixty-one thousand families around Australia in the course of that war received the dreadful death knock, and opened the door to be given the horrifying cable: Your son, flesh of your flesh, blood of your blood, has been killed, and will not be coming home.”

“Our starting point for all commemorations thus must be deep sorrow, not only for the lives lost, but the effects on those who remained – survivors and families that lasted for generations after the war was over.”