Official opening of Anzac Hall and Atrium
Welcome Address delivered by Mr Matt Anderson, Director of the Australian War Memorial
My thanks Michael Bell for his heartfelt and thoughtful welcome to country.
I would also like to thank the Prime Minister for the idea of suspending Parliament.
Charles Bean had this Memorial built to overlook Parliament, so that when the Government of the day sends our sailors, soldiers and aviators into harm’s way, the first thing they would see is where we tally that cost.
But the Parliamentary axis works both ways. In 1988 I stood on the ramparts of this Memorial with mates from my Duntroon graduating class, flanked by the names of 103,000 of our fallen. I looked back at you. And took an oath. To defend the process by which you entered Parliament, and the service to our nation you render within it.
Prime Minister, thank you for this most powerful gesture.
And I thank all Senators and Members of Parliament for the bipartisan support the Memorial Development has enjoyed. Especially my Ministers for Veterans Affairs on this journey: Darren Chester, Andrew Gee and Matt Keogh.
A breach of Protocol – other than my Mum, the real VIPs here today are the men and women who have worn our nation’s uniform and those who work here at this Memorial and who made all this happen.
When Bean – whose granddaughter Anne Carrol is here tonight - set out to build this institution, he wanted a museum and memorial worthy of what he had seen Australians do for this nation and for each other — on the beaches of Gallipoli, in the slaughter of the Western Front, in the skies and on and under the waves.
This has always been a place of moral purpose and national unity, where every Australian — through birth or through choice — could understand what had been asked of those who served, and what they had given.
A place that unites us in common grief and shared understanding, and in Lord Gowrie’s ask at this Memorial’s opening in 1941: when we leave here, we must utter — ‘Never again! Never again!’
Bean understood that memory is not passive — it must be tended, renewed as a living obligation, never a fixed point.
Our former Chairman, Kerry Stokes, and Director, Dr Brendan Nelson and their Council Members understood that too.
Shortly, our Chairman, Kim Beazley, the GG and the PM will unveil the plaque, and our veterans will cut the ribbon to ANZAC Hall — built for a new generation in uniform: soldiers of Timor-Leste and Afghanistan, sailors who kept watch far from home, aviators who carried the weight of our most demanding operations, and peacekeepers who went forward without fanfare in the belief an Australian uniform could make a difference.
On 12 November 1974, two Australian peacekeepers in Cyprus were escorting a local family — Abdullah Omer and his three children — through the buffer zone, when their UN Land Rover struck a landmine.
Sergeant Ian Ward and Abdullah Omer were killed. Senior Sergeant John Woolcott was seriously wounded but survived, as did the three children.
Landmines don’t discriminate.
Ian Ward had been in Cyprus five days. He was a Vietnam veteran.
He was 25 years old.
The remains of his vehicle, gifted by UNFICYP in 2024, were repatriated with the help of the Australian High Commission in Cyprus, the RAAF, and the determination of our Registrar, Robert Fisher.
It is the first thing you will see in the peacekeeping gallery. Omer’s granddaughter is with us tonight.
Every sailor, soldier and aviator has carried a weight: the weight to uphold to the example and the values of those who have marched before them.
We have carried a weight too.
The weight of doing justice to their stories. The weight of getting it right.
That has been, and remains, our ‘why’.
Bean knew why he was building this place.
And when you know why, the how takes care of itself.
We knew why it was time to expand it too: so today’s veterans would have their stories told in the same place as the men Bean watched land at Gallipoli.
We have built this space for the more than 100,000 veterans this nation has produced over the past four decades alone, using 3843 objects of story. From a Chinhook to a Sherrin!
Bean’s generation built this place through the Depression, with what little money a struggling nation could spare — Canberra red brick with a sandstone facade. To make it stretch, in places they cut corners: foundations, lead paint, asbestos.
Wayne Hitches and his team found them. And fixed them.
And we faced our own version of their hardship. Not the Depression. COVID. A pandemic, a labour market stretched thin, costs rising faster than in two generations.
And where we found those corners that had once been cut, we built back better.
This has been an undertaking without precedent.
Four major works projects simultaneously while remaining open to the public. Staff working from temporary offices across three sites.
Then Russia invaded Ukraine and our gas bill became unaffordable, we didn’t cut corners — we pivoted, building one of the largest closed-loop geothermal systems in the Southern Hemisphere, delivered within budget. We built the aeroplane while flying it.
This achievement belongs to all members of Council and all staff — through a pandemic and every challenge this project threw up - the Development Team, curators, conservators, registrars, educators, facilities, front and back of house, kept this place open, safe, and worthy of the stories we tell. 1 million visitors a year. 100,000 school kids.
They have tended the eternal flame of this nation’s memory and proved this Memorial is as resilient as those it honours.
Whatever divides us elsewhere, this ground unites us.
We carried this weight together. And tonight, we will, briefly, lay it down together — not because it is finished, but because it is shared.
This nation’s history is not behind us. What we have written here is only another chapter.
It is unfolding tonight, in men and women standing watch and in harm’s way, on operations whose names have not yet entered our consciousness.
We still have the pre-1914 galleries and Discovery Zone to finish, the Hall of Valour to move, and a gallery to build honouring our humanitarian service in the region and beyond. And then we will turn our mind to the centenary of the Second World War.
This place has always asked us to stand united, to carry what must be carried, and to build something worthy of those who carried – and still carry - so much more.
The nation should be as proud of the service honoured here as I am of the men and women who built it, and who continue to tend this nation’s most grateful memory.
It stands, as it always has, as a place where a nation comes together as one behind all those who chose to put others before themselves.
Hugh and Janny Poate sent me a remembrance band in 2015, in honour of their son, Robbie, killed on 29 August 2012 in a green on blue, and which I have worn every day since.
When you leave the Afghanistan Gallery, we ask you to reflect on this service.
Andrew Rielly, 2nd Commando Regiment features in the Afghanistan Reflections Gallery, and offered up his remembrance bracelets. He also offered us these words:
“I carry your names on my wrist. A metal band engraved.
A broken circle like a life unfinished., a story half told, a reminder.
To tell mine well. To finish for you.”
It is my prayer, that in these galleries, we have done just that.