Anzac bond dangerously decayed

[Violet_Crumble]

With Anzac Day upon us, Denis McLean reflects on the relationship between Australia and New Zealand and the need for us to have effective combat-capable armed forces.


On Anzac Day we shall salute great courage and endurance on the part of ordinary men caught up in the extraordinary circumstances of a dreadful military misadventure.

It is all most powerfully expressed in a Turkish film, Gallipoli, soon to be released, which left many in a Wellington audience in tears at a preview this week.

In these terms Anzac is a fixture in our national life. But what about the Australia-New Zealand relationship it symbolises? There is nothing to be taken for granted about that. We have to work on it, not least in matters to do with defence and security. Times have changed.

For all the legend, no lasting, genuinely integrated military relationship sprang from the Anzac experience. Australia soon hijacked it to serve a national purpose: the consolidation of nationhood in the new Commonwealth of Australia, born on January 1, 1901.

New Zealand was more tentative and probably more shell-shocked by the whole business. Ideas about national identity had to be firmly wrapped in unquestioning commitment to the British Empire.

http://www.stuff.co.nz/stuff/0,2106,3257027a1861,00.html