It's time to talk and think about how we keep the Anzac Day tradition alive

Anzac Day double demerits come into effect

OPINION: OK, let’s talk and think about Anzac Day.

Out of respect for the 102,760 Australians who have died fighting for this country and the millions who have suffered, that’s not too much to ask.

This is a call for ideas, and a plea to keep the Anzac Day tradition alive and protect its future as an integral part of the moral and social fabric so threatened in this country.

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Because it’s happening again.

Just as we tend to tear ourselves apart about Australia Day every year, the same trend is developing with Anzac Day.

Next year it will be 110 years since the 25,000 Australian and New Zealand troops began what was to be a horrendous campaign marked by death, suffering, fear, futility, and military mistakes.

The year after will be the 110th anniversary of the first-ever Anzac Day march when Australian and New Zealand troops marched through London.

Either date provides the opportunity to reconfigure Anzac Day, to develop it and strengthen it so it resists the attacks from the left and embraces a symbol that I believe the people of Australia want and need.

To be brutal, the diggers are dying.

The marches are thinning.

Nobody who served in World War I is left.

There are under 8000 from World War II.

That leaves Korea (1650 still alive), Vietnam (35,000), Iraq (2000), Afghanistan (26,000) and various “police” actions.

It is time to talk to those left, to talk to those who support the tradition and discuss what lies ahead.

They have served. We owe them a great deal and we should begin by listening.

We need to listen to their first-hand accounts of what they have seen and done and we need to listen when they tell us how and why April 25 must remain such an integral part of our national calendar.

In 1995, the Labor government ran a superb program of events called “Australia Remembers”.

It marked the 50th anniversary of the end of the Second World War and one of the best ideas was to sit hundreds of veterans at lunch next to school students and allow them to ask, explain and just chat.

Is that an idea for years ahead?

Could remaining veterans of later wars sit with year 12 students and explain what it all means and why they did it?

And yes, explain how they were frightened and it was awful and how it never feels good to kill another human even when you have no choice.

Governments seem to have lost focus.

The prime minister is walking a section of Kokoda, but that feels more photo opportunity than pilgrimage.

In Victoria, the government boasts about free travel for veterans on Anzac Day.

But by Friday, they will have to pay again.

Can’t we afford year-round free transport for veterans?

Or, another idea: upgrade the discussion of our military history in secondary schools.

Don’t sugarcoat it, the kids are too smart for that.

Explain history with first-hand accounts from contemporary war historians and with the brilliant analysis and reporting from people like the late Les Carlyon and his classic history Gallipoli.

This is not dusty stuff to bore students witless.

It is written like a novel by a man who wrote like an angel.

It shows you the terrified faces and explains their unfathomable bravery and suffering, on both sides.

It is 543 pages exposing the futility of wear.

Other ideas?

As a country, we must now accept that the Anzac marches will be small, even when families of dead veterans march, something about which the RSL remains uncomfortable.

Should we open the march to anybody who wants to say thank you?

It happens in country towns but in the city it may sadly, be open to ugly political intrusion.

The dangers are there already this year.

A pro-Palestinian group is holding a “picnic” on Anzac Day in the heart of Melbourne.

It will be horribly tempting for some idiots in that crowd to chase attention by trying to disrupt the march.

If they do it would be sacrilege and should be treated as such.

Hopefully, common sense will prevail.

Added to that, a group called “Teachers for Palestine” has vowed to oppose what Anzac Day represents and is highlighting a 1918 massacre in Palestine which involved Australian and New Zealand soldiers.

The teachers plan to take their message to the kids and they say this: “Schools are deliberate targets for government-funded mystification about Australia’s role in wars.

“These efforts crowd out the realities of war and the consequences of Australia’s role in imperialism.”

Strange words.

Japan was an imperial expansive power.

Nazi Germany followed an evil doctrine of mass murder.

Was Australia wrong to stand against them?

There’s compelling evidence the people of Australia, as distinct from the academics and left lobbyists, understand Anzac Day and support it.

That’s obvious when they turn out in huge numbers for the dawn service at major cities and at every little country town across the nation.

There were 40,000 last year in Melbourne.

There are no sideshows or filmed highlights.

These services are powerful, solemn and meaningful.

This is where the rethinking can begin.

From here the ideas can grow.

Let’s embrace the essence of the dawn service, not tart it up.

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If there are not the numbers to march then make the dawn service the focus, followed by traditional gunfire breakfast and a time for subdued remembrance.

That’s the mood we need to capture and defend, before the football and the party.

Please, look at the haunted eyes of some of the frontline Gallipoli soldiers in the photographs in Les Carlyon’s book.

There’s no glorification of war in those eyes.

The eyes from any soldier in any war will look tragically similar.

We owe them. It’s time to stand up.

Neil Mitchell is a 3AW news analyst and hosts the weekly Nine podcast Neil Mitchell Asks Why?