OPINION: Aus­tralia still fight­ing other peo­ple’s wars

 In the early hours of April 25, 1915, Aus­tralia and New Zealand en­tered World War 1.

Nei­ther coun­try was be­ing di­rectly in­vaded or even threat­ened.

The Anzac troops were off­loaded on the beaches of Geli­bolu (or Gal­lipoli as we know it) at the Can­nakale penin­sula of west­ern Turkey. The land­ing was part of a dis­as­trous war strat­egy de­vel­oped by their Bri­tish war com­man­ders.

The young men were part of an im­pe­rial army, fight­ing for King more than their own coun­try. As if to un­der­score just how much this bat­tle was the war for for­eign pow­ers, one of the most char­ac­ter­is­ti­cally Aus­tralian sym­bols of the cam­paign was the im­age of Simp­son and his don­key trudg­ing through the hills above Anzac Cove res­cu­ing the war wounded.

The re­al­ity, of course, is that John Simp­son Kirk­patrick was an English il­le­gal im­mi­grant who joined the war ef­fort in Aus­tralia by ac­ci­dent when he boarded a ship car­ry­ing Anzac troops to the front­line. Kirk­patrick was not seek­ing to fight but rather just a free ride back home to Mother Eng­land.

Yet for many non-Ir­ish dig­gers, be­ing Bri­tish did not make you any less Aus­tralian. In fact, even us­ing Aus­tralian sym­bols to the ex­clu­sion of Bri­tish ones was re­garded as ex­tremely provoca­tive. In a re­cent book re­view pub­lished in The Can­berra Times, Frank O’Shea writes about Ir­ish re­turned sol­diers caus­ing ma­jor con­tro­versy when they marched in 1920 un­der the Aus­tralian flag, not the Union Jack. In do­ing so, they ef­fec­tively de­clared that they had fought for Aus­tralia rather than for Bri­tain The Ir­ish in Aus­tralia were Aus­tralians as well as Ir­ish, whereas the loy­al­ists were Bri­tish first and Aus­tralian second.

Try telling the drunken racist ri­ot­ers at Cronulla that they should also be hold­ing up the Union Jack!

Few Aus­tralians know that New Zealand lost a much higher pro­por­tion of troops than Aus­tralia. Over 85 per cent of Kiwi troops were killed or wounded, com­pared to 50% of the Aussies.

The com­par­a­tively lesser Aus­tralian war losses may ex­plain why Aus­tralians are still much keener to par­tic­i­pate in other peo­ple’s wars than their cousins across the Tas­man. The largest New Zealand force in the Viet­nam War was hardly 540 men, al­though over 3000 Ki­wis did vol­un­teer to join the war ef­fort.

Since then, New Zealand has been far more cir­cum­spect about its mil­i­tary and even broader se­cu­rity re­la­tions with the United States. In a 2003 pa­per pub­lished by the Strate­gic Stud­ies In­sti­tute of the US Army War Col­lege, Dr Andrew Sco­bell notes that New Zealand had made its in­volve­ment in the war con­di­tional on it re­ceiv­ing the im­pri­matur of the United Na­tions. Even then, New Zealand’s in­volve­ment would be lim­ited to pro­vid­ing lo­gis­ti­cal and hu­man­i­tar­ian as­sis­tance and spe­cialised mil­i­tary forces such as med­i­cal, en­gi­neer­ing and mine clear­ance units.

Com­pare this to the gov­ern­ment of then Prime Min­is­ter John Howard. Sco­bell notes that Howard, apart from for­mer Bri­tish PM Blair, was the staunch­est sup­porter of a US-led mil­i­tary ac­tion against Iraq. More­over, Aus­tralia is one of the few coun­tries ready and will­ing to pro­vide com­bat forces for a con­flict with Iraq. In do­ing so, of course, Aus­tralia has also placed it­self in the fir­ing line of a variety of in­ter­na­tional ter­ror­ist groups.

Iraq is not the only for­eign mil­i­tary ad­ven­ture in which Aus­tralians are in­volved and which is go­ing rather pear­shaped. How many Aus­tralians ex­pected the Tal­iban to suc­cess­fully re­group and fight so hard af­ter their crush­ing de­feat in 2001? Aus­tralia’s new Defence Min­is­ter, Joel Fitzgib­bon, has been call­ing on Nato com­man­ders to re­con­sider mil­i­tary strate­gies in Afghanistan that are clearly fail­ing and have al­ready cost Aus­tralian lives. Not to men­tion that ter­ror­ists now have two rea­sons to eye Aus­tralia.

Per­haps the most shame­ful as­pect of Aus­tralia’s mil­i­tary his­tory is its mis­treat­ment of In­dige­nous ser­vice­men and women. Thou­sands of In­dige­nous Aus­tralians fought over­seas, with many hun­dreds giv­ing the ul­ti­mate sac­ri­fice to de­fend their na­tion. Yet the dead were buried in un­marked graves whilst the sur­vivors were in­el­i­gi­ble for re­turned ser­vice­men land grants or even mem­ber­ship of Re­turned Ser­vices League (RSL) clubs.

Un­til re­cently, Abo­rig­i­nal exser­vice­men were forced to march at the back of Anzac Day pa­rades or­gan­ised by the RSL. As the Na­tional In­dige­nous Times news­pa­per ed­i­to­ri­alised on Anzac Day in 2005: 

So black­fel­las were good enough to fight along­side white Aus­tralia, but that’s where the new-found equal­ity ended. How could this hap­pen in a na­tion that de­fines it­self by the noble dig­ger? The tech­ni­cal an­swer is be­cause Abo­rig­i­nal peo­ple weren’t con­sid­ered Aus­tralian cit­i­zens un­til the ref­er­en­dum of 1967, so they didn’t qual­ify for all the ben­e­fits that comes with be­ing an Aussie.

So un­til 40 years ago, In­dige­nous Aus­tralians were cer­tainly fight­ing the wars of a coun­try that did not recog­nise them as its own. What dif­fer­ence ex­ists be­tween this and fight­ing for a for­eign power?

And thanks to the com­pul­sory quar­an­tin­ing of pen­sions as part of the North­ern Ter­ri­tory In­ter­ven­tion in Abo­rig­i­nal com­mu­ni­ties, many in­dige­nous exser­vice­men are hav­ing their pen­sions com­pul­so­rily quar­an­tined.

With big­ger bat­tles against pro­found In­dige­nous dis­ad­van­tage to fight at home, why does my gov­ern­ment con­tinue to fight oth­ers’ wars over­seas.

(Ir­fan Yusuf is a Syd­ney lawyer and writer. First published in The Press of Christchurch on 25 April 2028. Also published on the Planet Irf blog here.)