Don, well said.

It's all cyclical, unfortunately our kids are going to be fighting the next big, pointless ideological confrontation which is due to roll along in the next decade or so and they'll go off to the "kindermord" with the same "larrikin spirit" that described their great, great grandfathers.

‘… after the Vietnam War it seemed to me that Anzac Day might dwindle away too. But it is reborn, and in robust health.’

And how was it reborn? The short answer is: money. As has been exhaustively researched and skillfully argued in the book ‘What’s Wrong With Anzac: the militarisation of Australian history’, hundreds of millions of taxpayer dollars have fuelled a very slick marketing machine since the early 90s, which has gradually co-opted the AWM, the DVA and the RSL into becoming the propaganda arm of the Department of Defence. Millions of dollars per year are spent on educational, cultural and marketing resources/campaigns to glorify and further the goals and aims of the DoD. School children are the main targets, but also the nation’s youth are co-opted into the glories of the Anzac legend. Even toddlers are encouraged to march in the yearly parade wearing their ancestors’ medals.

What saddens me the most about these young people being emotionally captured by all this military marketing is that the real ‘fighters’ who made Australia one of the most freedom-cherishing, egalitarian and socially progressive on earth – i.e. the labour and worker activists who fought on home soil for decent working conditions, pay rates and an adequate welfare safety net – have been either forgotten or demonised as bullies and troublemakers.