Thursday, 7 April 2022

Shrine of Remembrance

Ms TAYLOR (Southern Metropolitan) (11:18): I would like to speak to the theme of love in the time of war. We can see with the horrific occurrences in Ukraine the shocking separation of families and the torment that it causes, but thankfully actually social media is allowing us a bit of a window into that—stay with me on this. Recently I was very kindly invited to the Shrine of Remembrance by a very passionate Minister for Veterans, Shaun Leane, and I also had colleagues Matt Fregon MP and Will Fowles MP accompanying me. The chair of the board of trustees, Stephen Bowater OAM, RAN, kindly gave us a tour. We saw an exhibit which had the theme ‘Love in the time of war’, and it took me back to my late great-grandfather, who during his wartime experience actually had to leave his fiancée behind to go away to war. Thankfully he did come back, but these experiences stay with us, don’t they? They change us forever. The hope is, though, that with our beautiful shrine it will inspire—and I believe it does—current and future generations to work hard for peace but also respect the sacrifices of the past and hence honour the sanctity of the shrine as it, at the same time, evolves through music, wonderful exhibits and even coffee and other mechanisms to reach an even broader audience of Victorians. It was a wonderful visit, and I commend the evolution of our beautiful shrine.