Lest we Forget... and politicians...
Don Chips Senate speech of 27 may 1985:
REPATRIATION LEGISLATION AMENDMENT BILL 1985 Second Reading
………” one of the most despicable, rotten things that politicians can do, and we, as politicians,can do despicable, rotten things during our career, is to promise everything to people who are prepared to risk their lives for their country, but renege on those promises as soon as the war is over. At that time those persons who served their country, who risked their lives, who ran the risk of allowing their wives and children to be widowed or orphaned were promised by glib politicians: 'Go and fight for your country and when you come back we will look after you.
We will look after your kids'. After all of that, politicians reneged on those promises.”..
.."The second kind of person is the conscript. An equally, if not more, powerful argument could be made out concerning him. I am someone who was concerned, as were many of my colleagues here, with the controversial aspects of Vietnam and its war. We were responsible for a number of
young men and women going to Vietnam against their will to fight in a war in which they did not believe and to come back as non-heroes. They were possibly the only people to have been sent overseas who came back, as ex-servicemen, to raspberries and jeers, rather than cheers and acclamation. Of course, some of those people died; they left widows. Others came back with war-caused injuries"