Mr. Chairman, thank you very much indeed. It's a great pleasure and a great honour to be here today. I've appeared before various parliamentary committees in Ottawa, and that is a reflection I think of the policy closeness that exists between Canada and Australia as places to govern. By that I mean that the similarities and commonalities we share mean that the experiences we face as governments, as legislators, and as parliaments make the problems we have to handle of a very similar nature.
As you alluded to in your introduction, we have continent-sized countries; we have federal systems; we are Westminster systems; we have a very dispersed population; we have a similar income per head; we have similar expectations by the electorate; and of course we have an immigrant population drawn from all over the world.
But I think this committee adds a special area of interest and similarity between Australia and Canada, and that is the reflection of the common experience in warfare that Australia and Canada have shared over the last century or so. Australian and Canadian troops have fought side by side in most of the major conflicts over the last century. They were together in the First World War, quite spectacularly so--in fact, both Canadian and Newfoundland troops, in those days. We especially recall Newfoundland troops because they were the forces who came into Gallipoli with us in 1915, and they accounted so well for themselves there that a great deal of literature has sprung up from that experience. Australian and Canadian troops were, of course, side by side in the trenches of northern France in the First World War. The Battle of Amiens, perhaps the turning point of the First World War, was a battle fought essentially by Canadian and Australian troops. That's something we are very aware of today. In fact, just last month I think about 5,000 Australians visited northern France in commemoration of that great battle.
We were together again in World War II. I don't know if members of the committee are aware, but virtually all the Australian pilots, the Australian air crews who participated in the air war in Europe in the Second World War, trained in Canada. In fact, my colleague's father-in-law trained in many dozens of sites right across Canada in the Second World War. There resulted a number of marriages and mixed families between Australians and Canadians, as young Canadian girls went back to Australia with them, and of course quite a number of the Australian boys stayed and have now become good Canadian citizens. I think the greatest number of Australians in Canada date from that time of the empire air training scheme.
More recently, Australian and Canadian troops were together again and fought the same battles in the Korean War, where again, one of the turning points was a battle fought by Canadians and Australians.
You were with us in Timor, and of course we are now in adjacent provinces in Afghanistan.
We have, therefore, very similar experiences in terms of having sent our forces overseas. We have had troops killed in almost every continent; we have cemeteries in every continent except Antarctica; and we have a duty of care of a very similar order of magnitude, distances, and complexity as you. We are co-participants in the Commonwealth War Graves Commission, and that gives us an obligation to watch over gravesites in so many countries of the world.
I've been a diplomat now for 40 years and I have never been in a posting on any continent where there has not been close at hand a Commonwealth war graves cemetery with Australian and Canadian forces buried in it.
The reason I say all of this is that the commonality of our experience is something that I think gives us a real interest in the workings of your committee. The former minister told me that she had used some Australian practices, and I can tell you that we'll be watching the debates of your committee and, if at all possible, we will be absolutely shameless in plagiarizing your good conclusions to bring to bear in Australia as well.
My colleague, Adam Luckhurst, is the personification of this. We have an arrangement with the Canadian veterans services administration to have a permanent exchange of staff. Adam is the lucky candidate from the Australian Department of Veterans' Affairs in Canberra who has been posted to work inside the Canadian administration in Prince Edward Island. I'm very lucky that he is here today. He is actually the man who knows the real substance of the issue, and he'll make a speech about the issue and will be available to answer questions.
I just want to say that the functions of our Department of Veterans' Affairs are very like your own, covering not just the maintenance of the services to those survivors, but also a very important national role in the promotion of awareness of the sacrifices of earlier generations, particularly in outreach to schools and the public—in which I think we have quite a good record—on the national significance of these sacrifices of earlier, and now current, generations and their meaning to Australia. Every year, as you might know, we have a national celebration, Anzac Day. It is certainly the most important day of the year for Australians. It's essentially a commemoration of the sacrifice of our fallen soldiers in all wars, on all continents, in all times.
With that, Mr. Chairman, perhaps I'll pass this across to my colleague. Thank you once again for inviting us to come and speak to you today.