Australian lays into NZ Anzac address

No fan of New Zealand's defence policies, Australian senior journalist Greg Sheridan has lashed the Anzac Day speech by Defence Force chief Bruce Ferguson at Gallipoli.

Air Marshal Ferguson told the crowd at Anzac Cove marking the 90th anniversary of the landing there of New Zealand and Australian soldiers there was no glory in what happened at Gallipoli.

It was a folly of high command and joint warfare at its worst from the British side, he said, laying the blame at their leadership for the deaths of 44,000 Allied soldiers.

Sheridan, a columnist for The Australian newspaper, has long been a critic of New Zealand's defence role. He said yesterday Australia had commemorated Anzac Day magnificently, with a full exploration, and much debate, of its story and meaning.

"The only sour note came from the New Zealand Chief of the Defence Force, Bruce Ferguson, who gave a bizarre and puerile speech, bashing the English (who lost more than 20,000 dead in the Dardanelles campaign) and saying Gallipoli represented, for Australia and New Zealand, the high-water mark of our 'imperial subservience'.

"It's a sad commentary on New Zealand that this form of politically correct adolescent pouting finds expression at the top of its military."

Sheridan said New Zealand had turned its back on having a modern defence force, while Australia had not.

"While Anzac Day unites us, it also shows how different we are. Those in Australia who would like us to take the New Zealand option, of isolation, irrelevance and military irresponsibility, have the greatest trouble with Anzac Day. They can't get a grip on it. It's too popular. They don't know where to attack."

Sheridan said those critics often took refuge in two cliches of dishonesty. "One, that all war is futile. Two, that Australia has a history of fighting other people's wars, which it should have stayed out of."

Sheridan pointed to a recent speech by Australian Labor Party leader Kim Beazley, who said the Gallipoli legend minimised the important strategic decisions by Australia's political leaders to take part at Gallipoli.

Beazley said this was a travesty of the truth.

"Australians as a people thought carefully about their security in the decades before 1914.

"As the strategic challenge from Germany grew from the 1880s, they recognised that Britain would be less and less able to continue guaranteeing Australia's security.

"We cannot understand the decisions of 1914, and we cannot understand Gallipoli, if we do not understand that Australia had compelling, direct and distinctively Australian strategic reasons to play its part in helping to ensure that British power was not eclipsed."

- NZPA