For many years now, Anzac has not just been a single Day but more a season, starting somewhere around 1 April and running till after the Anzac Day holiday, this year a long weekend. There have come to be as many football matches as commemorative services.
This Anzac season, a number of posts arrived or were generated on – or were linked to by – our younger sister site, Defending Country. Here they are:
- Defending Country President, Professor Peter Stanley, has a post for Anzac Day on the Australian Academy of the Humanities website: ‘Anzac in a time of uncertainty’.
- It’s eight years since Yassmin Abdel-Magied was monstered for a rather mild Anzac Day tweet; have Australia’s racist and Anzacker quotients improved or got worse since then?
- During the election campaign, there has been a resounding silence on the Australian Wars, the conflict that effectively founded Australia.
- There were reviews of two new books by Federica Caso and Steve Vizard on the Anzac legend, a legend that has been an inspiration for some, a burden for others.
- We did a promo for an Anzac Day radio play by Peter Stanley, about a Canberra romance in 1920.
- And check out our analysis, flat and factual (Part I, Part II) of the fallout of the ABC Four Corners program about the War Memorial, including a speech and a legal letter from the Memorial, and a legal response from the ABC Ombudsman.
The Defending Country campaign argues that the Australian War Memorial must properly recognise and commemorate the Australian (Frontier) Wars as an essential part of Truth-telling and as a first step to reframing Australian national commemoration.
Lest We Forget.
24 April 2025
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