We're still building memorials. But we're burying the values they were built to honour.
Without a genuine love for our forbears, how can we truly love - or even live - our lives today?
We must return to honouring everything we have earned and learned and teaching our young to learn from the past in order to build a future worth living in.
I began writing this to honour our war dead. I thought I was writing about cemeteries. But somewhere along the way, I realised I wasn’t writing about death at all...I was writing about neglect. Not only of the past, but of the present. Not of sacrifice, but of silence.
Because in Australia today, it seems something is very "off. " A soldier can serve, suffer, and survive, and be forgotten. A citizen can contribute a lifetime of work, and be priced out of their own home. A community can build and endure, and be buried under red tape.
Is the True Blue Australia we once knew - quietly proud, fiercely fair - already lying in a forgotten grave?
The Beauty of Remembrance
I recently watched a documentary on the Kokoda Campaign and was deeply moved by the reverence shown to the fallen. The cemeteries were immaculate. Quiet. Sacred. The Office of Australian War Graves (OAWG), in partnership with its British and American counterparts, has done exceptional work preserving the dignity of those who died far from home.
In places like Villers-Bretonneux and in Papua New Guinea, the grass is trimmed, the names engraved, the flowers fresh. Even in a world of increasing political division, we still manage to get this right. And we should.
Closer to home, places like Roma’s Heroes Avenue .... with its avenue of 93 bottle trees, each commemorating a lost soldier from WWI .... are living memorials that stir the heart. I have walked that avenue and it still stays in my mind as one of the most impactive experiences I have had. Each tree, a life.
If you have not been there, go.
As a child, I attended a school in rural New Zealand, with its own memorial grove. We kept the plaques clean. We knew their names. It meant something.
But that reverance has changed.
What We No Longer Tend
While our overseas war cemeteries remain pristine, many of our public cemeteries are in disrepair. The Melbourne General Cemetery... resting place of governors, artists, and Indigenous leaders... is cracked, overgrown, and forgotten in places. Graves fall apart while departments argue about who holds the 'right of interment.'
Meanwhile, volunteers from the Australian Remembrance Army quietly scrub moss from headstones and try to patch the gaps where the state has let memory rot. They operate on shoestrings, burdened by red tape.
It costs them about $20 to restore a headstone. It costs the government nothing to say "no."
The Quiet Disrespect
And if we look up from the graves, what do we see? A defence force asked to do more with less. Veterans navigating paperwork more complex than any battlefield. Soldiers returned from service only to face homelessness, broken promises, and silence.
We hear talk of loyalty to the ANZAC spirit. But when it comes time to fund it? Suddenly it’s all too hard.
And now our government refuses to raise our defence budget to 5% of GDP. But why should America defend us, if our own government won’t? Why should we expect others to value what we barely protect?
When Death Becomes Easier Than Duty
Maybe the truth is this: we honour the dead because they no longer ask anything of us. The living do. And that makes them inconvenient.
For anyone who's been to the Australian War Memorial in Canberra, you know it's a special place. It's always been my favorite place in our capital.
— Pauline Hanson 🇦🇺 (@PaulineHansonOz) June 29, 2026
The recent expansion has only made it even better.
It's unfortunate that they saw fit to swap the National Anthem with a welcome… pic.twitter.com/22MrHJI9LZ
The fallen ask for honour. The living ask for housing, healthcare, recognition. AND honour.
The dead soldier is easy to romanticise. The living one might need psychological care, might struggle with the system, might even question the very institutions that sent them away.
So we give statues. But not support.
We fund ceremonies. But not soldiers.
We polish gravestones. But let real lives crumble. And for some reason our governments seem to applaud this disrespect where so few have ever served in a combat role.
A Dying Ideal
And it’s not just about defence. It’s about who we are.
The "True Blue" Australian - the fair-go battler, the quiet helper, the one who shows up without fuss...is fading.
Not dead yet. But dying.
Dying under the weight of unaffordable housing, government overreach, and public apathy. Dying in classrooms where history is rewritten instead of taught. Dying on farms handed down through generations but priced out by policy. Dying in suburbs where respect, manners, and shared values are now considered old-fashioned.
We’re still building memorials. But we’re burying the values they were built to honour.
The Call We Must Hear
Every headstone, every tree, every plaque asks the same question:
What will you do with the peace they bought for you? Paid for with blood. Paid for with their lives.
If we no longer honour the living, we do not deserve the sacrifices of the dead. If we cannot care for a veteran while he walks among us, our tribute at his grave becomes little more than ceremony and hypocrisy.
We must restore more than stone. We must restore meaning, memory, responsibility and resolve.
Because nations rarely die in a single dramatic moment. They fade when they forget who they are. They weaken when they cease to value the things that once held them together.
The Anzac Hall redevelopment was officially opened at the Australian War Memorial this week. There was a 15-minute-long Welcome to Country, but the National Anthem was not played! These things matter. pic.twitter.com/9cauFr0sgl
— Pauline Hanson’s One Nation Party (@oneNationPau) June 28, 2026
And if we continue to neglect both our inheritance and our obligations, then perhaps one day Australia itself will become like an untended grave - its stories forgotten, its values eroded, and its people wondering how something so precious was allowed to slip away.
The choice is still ours.
The trees still stand. The names are still carved in stone. The question is whether we still have the courage to remember; and the will to live up to what they gave us.
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