Duty, Memory, and the Nation We Must Remain

On 19 April 2026, I was afforded the distinct honour of delivering the 2026 ANZAC Day Oration at the NSW Association of Jewish Service and Ex-Service Men and Women (NAJEX) Commemoration Event in Sydney.

It was a moving and dignified occasion, attended by veterans, community leaders, parliamentarians, and Her Excellency the Honourable Margaret Beazley AC KC, Governor of New South Wales. Gatherings of this kind matter. They remind us that remembrance is not a formality, but a living act of gratitude, continuity, and national seriousness.

AJEX holds an important place in Australian Jewish life and in the wider story of our nation. It stands in honour of Jewish Australians who have served this country loyally and with distinction across generations, and it affirms that Jewish service is not separate from the ANZAC story, but part of it. At a time when social cohesion, historical memory, and moral confidence are all under strain, that witness matters profoundly.

ANZAC Day calls a nation not only to remember the dead, but to reflect on the inheritance they left us and the responsibilities that still rest upon the living. It reminds us that peace is not the default setting of the human condition, and that the good things of civilised life endure only when they are valued, defended, and renewed.

What follows is the address as delivered on the day:

“Before dawn, on the 25th of April 1915, soldiers of ANZAC, the finest of their generation, sat silently together, in rowboats in the North Aegean Sea.
In darkness, onward the Australian and New Zealand Army Corps advanced towards their objective.

As the ANZACs approached the shore, they began to see more clearly the contours of the dark, dominating cliffs of the Gallipoli Peninsula.
Cliffs that occasionally exploded into light under allied naval gunfire support, or erupted with hostile machine gun fire from the entrenched Turk.
As the rowboats entered the wave zone, enemy machine gun fire became overwhelming. Casualties were taken. When arriving on the beach, enemy fire intensified. The ANZACs fought their way inland, up the slopes, into the face of the enemy, their mates by their side.

Soldiers alternated between fighting—often at the point of a bayonet—and digging into the rugged mountains, which became ‘home’ to them for almost eight months.

By the end of 1915, when the last allied ships withdrew to the west; over 8,700 Australians, 2,700 New Zealanders and 86,000 Ottoman Turks had been killed.

Ladies and Gentlemen, good morning.

It is a genuine privilege to be here with you today as we commemorate ANZAC Day.

And if I may make it personal for the briefest of moments, this is the first ANZAC Day since 1993 that I have not attended as a serving member, having recently retired after 32 years of regular service in the profession of arms.
While ANZAC Day marks the anniversary of the Gallipoli landings, it is not just Gallipoli we remember, nor even only the First World War.

This is a day set aside for us to acknowledge, and collectively give thanks, to all those servicemen and women who have put their lives at risk, who have known war, and who, in many cases, paid the ultimate sacrifice in service to our nation.

On this day, we remember ordinary Australians who performed extraordinary deeds.

We remember our values and our way of life.

We remember that peace is not the default setting of the human condition.
We remember our duty to take up the baton and to exercise our agency, so that those who have faithfully served and sacrificed in the past have not done so in vain.

We remember that our responsibility is to bequeath to the generations that follow a tomorrow of which we can be proud.

It is such an honour to be in company with the New South Wales Association of Jewish service and ex-Service Men and Women.
Jewish values are western values. Jewish values are Australian values. Free market economics. The rule of law. The emancipation of women. The protection of minorities.

Ours are values at risk. Ours are values worth defending. If not us, who? If not now, when?

Jewish service to Australia is not separate from the ANZAC story. It is part of the ANZAC story.

Jewish Australians, present in Australia since the First Fleet, have served this nation loyally and with distinction across the generations.

They served at Gallipoli. They served on the Western Front. They served in the Middle East, in North Africa, in New Guinea, in Korea, Vietnam, Iraq and Afghanistan. They served not separately, but indistinguishably — as Australians.

That matters. It matters because when Australia called, Jewish Australians answered.

Among them stands Sir John Monash, not only Australia’s finest general, but one of Australia’s finest citizens. Monash embodied intellect, duty, service and devotion to country. In Monash we see clearly that Jewish identity and Australian patriotism were never contradictory. In him, and in so many since, they were fused in exemplary form.

That same tradition did not end with the First World War.

It continued through later generations, including in Afghanistan. Private Greg Sher of the 1st Commando Regiment was killed in Uruzgan Province on the 4th of January 2009. He was 30 years old. He was an Australian soldier.
A Jewish Australian.

His name is written on the honour roll of those whom ANZAC Day asks us to remember.

Military service teaches us that duty is not a slogan. It is conduct. It is steadiness under burden.

It is loyalty in action. It is doing what must be done, even when tired, frightened, grieving, or uncertain.

It also teaches us something else. Service to one’s country has great value.

It shapes character. It builds discipline. It provides perspective, inculcates gratitude and instils responsibility.

Service in the profession of arms evolves civilians into citizens.

The state owes so much to its war fighters.

One of the sadder chapters in our national story, save perhaps the one we are living through today, followed Vietnam, when the nation asked much of the soldier and then, too often, failed them on their return.
The failure was not theirs. It was ours.

A decent nation should never ask its young to bear heavy burdens on its behalf, and then meet their service with indifference, embarrassment, or contempt.

That lesson remains relevant in our own time.

A serious society may debate wars. It may question governments. It may argue fiercely over policy. But it should be very careful before it learns to sneer at service itself.

Some are getting that wrong now in their treatment of the Israel defense forces and, in a matter, currently before the courts.
One need not agree with every decision made in war to recognise a simple truth:

A serious society should be slow to disparage those who bear the burden of its defence.

That matters here in Australia.

Because our generation faces not only threats abroad, but moral tests at home. Among them is the scourge of antisemitism, an ancient hatred again making itself felt in contemporary life.

When antisemitism rises, it is not only the Jewish community that is threatened. It is a warning sign that something deeper is going wrong within a society.

It tells us that standards are slipping, that truth is weakening, and that fellow citizens are becoming easier to isolate, misrepresent, and abandon.
It is my judgment that across our western civilisation and here in Australia the next 25 years will present greater challenges than the last 25. That is saying something when we consider that this period has included 9/11, the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, the atrocities of 7 October, the shameful display at our opera house on 9 October 2023, and the Bondi Massacre of 14 December 2025.

I say this not as someone eager for conflict, but as a father, a citizen, and a humanist who believes that the good things of civilised life do not defend themselves.

I say it as someone who chooses not to go gentle into that good night. I will rage, rage against the dying of the light.

That is why I founded the 2023 foundation. A charity to combat antisemitism through education and lived experience.

That is why this gathering matters.

That is why AJEX matters.

Because in a time of drift, confusion, and intimidation, gatherings such as this affirm memory, duty, solidarity, and moral courage.

And that is why ANZAC Day is not merely a day of remembrance.

It is also a day on which we ask:

What kind of people we are,
What kind of nation we are, and
Whether we remain worthy of the inheritance we have received.

To me, the great meaning of ANZAC Day is how Australians, in adversity, have again and again shown courage, resilience, humour, mateship, and moral strength.

On the beaches of Gallipoli, in the mud of Kokoda, in the tunnels of

Vietnam, and in the mountains of Afghanistan, ordinary Australians, when faced with hardship, have done extraordinary things.

Those young men sitting in the rowboats off Gallipoli before dawn were no different in human terms from us.

No doubt they too knew fear. No doubt they too had moments of uncertainty. No doubt they too wondered: am I up to this? How will I cope? What will the next few hours bring?

And yet they went forward.

That is why ANZAC Day still speaks to us. It reminds us that courage is not the absence of doubt, but the decision to press on despite it. It reminds us that strength is found in duty, in purpose, and in the mates beside us.

Let us take up the baton.

Let us work together.

Let us prove worthy of those who came before us, and resolve to bequeath to those who follow a tomorrow of which we can be proud.

Thank you, ladies and gentlemen.

Lest we forget.”

ANZAC Day endures because it is not merely retrospective. It is not only an act of remembrance, but an act of reckoning. It asks us to honour the fallen, to give thanks for those who served, and to consider whether we still possess the seriousness, gratitude, and moral confidence required to preserve what they bequeathed to us.

That is why AJEX and gatherings such as this matter. They keep faith with memory. They affirm the place of Jewish Australians within the national story. And they remind us that service, loyalty, and sacrifice are not abstractions, but lived contributions made by citizens who answered when Australia called.

If the address reproduced above carries a wider message, it is surely this: peace is not the default setting of the human condition, and the good things of civilised life endure only when a people is prepared to value and defend them. ANZAC Day therefore remains a summons as much as a commemoration, a call not only to remember the dead, but to prove worthy of them in the way we live, what we defend, and the nation we choose to remain.

Colonel Michael Scott CSC retired from the Australian Army in 2026 after more than three decades of service. His career included operational deployments to East Timor, Bougainville, Iraq and Afghanistan, as well as a 27-month posting in Jerusalem as Head of Military for the United Nations Truce Supervision Organisation, operating in Israel, Lebanon, Syria, Jordan and Egypt.