Statement on Remembrance Day | Prime Minister of Australia
On Remembrance Day, our nation marks the moment when the guns of the Western Front fell silent, with a silence of our own.
We take a pause from everything in our own lives just for a moment, and reflect.’
We think of everyone in that extraordinary moment 105 years ago, emerging from a war that had gone on for year after year on an unprecedented scale – and into the peace in all its relief and uncertainty.
We also remember who didn’t live to see the end of war. Every one of our diggers and aviators and sailors and medics who experienced the horror of conflict, but never got the reward of peace that they had so badly earned.
It was meant to be the war to end all wars. Now that silence that fell across the Western Front has come to stand for every war that has followed – and every Australian who has gone in our name.
At 11am, all of us pause to honour the Australians who fought and fell in the First World War and the generations who have followed them in the service of our country and the cause of peace.
Lest We Forget is Australia’s eternal promise to all those who have worn our nation’s uniform.
It pledges each of us to remember their sacrifices, to care for their loved ones left behind and to support those who have returned home as they meet the new challenges of civilian life.
As we pin on our poppies today, we remind ourselves that just as our Veterans have always stepped up for us, we have an obligation to step up for them.
Remembrance Day is a chance to give thanks for all we know and cherish, for the freedoms we enjoy, the opportunities we can pursue, the peace we live in.
Above all we give thanks for those who have given this to us, who have defended it for us, who even today are working to keep it safe.
We honour them. We will remember them. Lest We Forget.