STATEMENTS BY SENATORS

Senator CICCONE (Victoria) (13:44): Twenty-five years ago this week, I was a year 12 student sitting in my career counsellor's office trying to work out my university course options. On the television in the corner, I watched, along with the rest of the world, replayed footage of the planes flying into the Twin Towers. Like so many Australians of my generation, that morning is etched in my memory in a way few other events have matched.

Sadly, nearly 3,000 people were killed that day, including 10 Australians. Families lost loved ones in New York, at the Pentagon and in a field in Pennsylvania. Days later, Australia invoked article IV of the ANZUS treaty—the first and only time it has been formally activated.

It was a declaration that an attack on our closest ally was an attack on us all, and it led our military forces into Afghanistan alongside the US. In July, while in Washington at the Australian American Leadership Dialogue, I visited the Pentagon memorial. Walking among the 184 benches, each bearing a victim's name, brought home the human cost of what, for me, had begun as replayed footage on a television screen 25 years earlier.

Twenty-five years on, we remember the victims, we honour the first responders, and we reflect on the lives changed forever by that day, not just in America and not just in Australia but around the free world. For Australia and the US, we commit to an alliance that has only grown stronger since that day by standing together when it matters most.