ANZAC Day is a proud and solemn occasion for many Australians, but the event shouldn’t be taken out of context.
That’s the message of UQ political science expert Dr Matt McDonald, who has recently conducted research on how governments in the United States, the UK and Australia pushed the case for military intervention in the “war on terror”.
“It’s important to be cautious of the ANZAC story because of its power, and because of what (and whom) it excludes,” Dr McDonald said.
“The ANZAC myth has become the dominant story of ‘Australianness’ and Australian values, and the experiences at Gallipoli have come to be viewed as the founding moment of the Australian nation.”
More than 10,000 Australian and New Zealand soldiers lost their lives during the failed attempt to capture the Gallipoli Peninsula on the morning of April 25, 1915.
The tragedy was felt immediately across the Tasman and has since been referred to as the “ground zero” of Australian history, evoking the September 11 attacks in New York City.
Even before the end of the World War I, the term ANZAC was legally protected from commercial use, with then-Prime Minister Billy Hughes successfully advocating for a national holiday in the 1920s.
Dr McDonald said former Prime Minister John Howard had regularly referenced the ANZAC legend during his time in office, particularly in relation to military strategy and campaigns.
“Notions of standing shoulder-to-shoulder with mates (especially the US and UK), of Australians being willing to fight for core values, of values under threat being the same as those fought for in the world wars were all invoked by Prime Minister Howard to justify military intervention as a natural Australian response to the ‘war on terror’,” he said.
“In some cases, the Prime Minister directly invoked Gallipoli or the experience of Australians in the World Wars to describe the experiences of soldiers in Afghanistan and Iraq, as well as the parallels with the values and beliefs under threat.”
Dr McDonald said ANZAC ceremonies now bordered on religious experiences, which made questioning what they represented difficult.
He said the patriotic pilgrimages to Turkey by young Australians today didn’t necessarily capture Gallipoli as the avoidable military disaster it was.
Dr McDonald’s research will appear in an upcoming edition of the International Political Sociology journal, and forms part of his broader research into the role of trauma and memory in forming foreign policy.
To hear Dr McDonald speak in depth about his research, tune in to ABC Radio’s Encounter program at 7.10am on ANZAC Day.
Media: Dr McDonald (07 3365 2655, matt.mcdonald@uq.edu.au) or Cameron Pegg at UQ Communications (07 3365 2049, c.pegg@uq.edu.au)
