What with the 100th anniversary and all, Anzac Day 2015 was always going to be a big one. The coverage across TV One, TV3 and Maori TV was wall-to-bloody wall, generally impressive and often very moving.
When our TV overlords put their minds to it they can make us proud, something that is easy to forget during the 364 days that are not Anzac Day. The images of dawn services resplendent with weeping descendants wearing medals or holding photographs will always move me. The well-chosen words and sonorous tones of Ian Johnstone at the national service made me feel comforted, despite the grim reality of the slaughter.
Then there was the PM. On Twitter, he was the new Jimmy Savile, (thanks to his follicle harassment of a Parnell hospitality worker), but somehow there in Anzac Cove, John Key was almost heroic, delivering an impressive speech with humility as he considered how the Turks must have felt when all the Anzacs turned up to kill them 100 years ago.
"If for a moment we imagined the situation reversed," he said, with words that were way more thoughtful and less hawkish than Tony Abbott's. "A hundred years ago both sides thought what they were doing was right," said Key, in rare moment of clarity amongst the usual: "they died for our freedom" blather. As the last surviving Anzac, Alec Campbell said in 2002, "for god's sake, don't glorify Gallipoli - it was a terrible fiasco, total failure, best forgotten."
