STATEMENTS BY SENATORS

Senator O'SULLIVAN (Western Australia—Deputy Manager of Opposition Business in the Senate) (13:36): Pozieres—for an entire generation, that name evokes memories of suffering, courage, mateship, 'the mincing machine' and, ultimately, sacrifice. The Battle of Pozieres and nearby Mouquet Farm was the Australian Imperial Force's first major action of the Somme offensive and, over the course of several weeks, claimed more than 23,000 casualties and witnessed some of the fierce fighting during the Great War.

The German high command ordered the village to be retaken at all costs. Again and again over several weeks, several German counterattacks were launched, and, each time, the Australians held firm. Author Les Carlyon later wrote: Men were being challenged to stay sane while madness came shrieking out of the summer sky.

Recently, in July, I had the opportunity to visit Pozieres with my wife. When you stand on the site of the old Pozieres windmill, you stand on ground that war correspondent and historian Charles Bean later wrote 'was more densely sown with Australian sacrifice than any other place on earth'. When you stand there, you can envisage a moon-like landscape, shattered by relentless artillery bombardments and littered with sacrifice, the scale of the loss almost impossible to comprehend.

Think of a generation of young Australians who fought there, dying in the mud, their final thoughts of families who waited for them and who they would never see again. When you stand there, you stand on sacred ground. You pause, reflect and remember.

It is in our remembrance that they endure. It's in our silence and our respect that we honour them. Those Australians that fell there never returned home.

Lest we forget.