This speech was delivered by General the Honourable Sir Peter Cosgrove AK AC (Mil) CVO MC (Retired) at the Robert Menzies Institute 2025 ANZAC Day Oration on 29 April 2025 in Melbourne. 

The year 2025 marks the 60th anniversary since Sir Robert Menzies’s commitment of a battalion of troops to the Vietnam War. To honour the occasion, former Governor General and Chief of the Australian Defence Force delivered the annual ANZAC Oration on the topic ‘Vietnam as an Uncivil War: From the 60s to the new millennium. What’s happening to our Civility?’

“Good afternoon, ladies and gentlemen. Lynne and I need very little urging to return to Melbourne but because of the name in which this oration is given and our proximity to the cherished moment, the refreshing of our democracy through the ballot box, a national moment over which the late Sir Robert Menzies presided on numerous occasions it has special significance. Timing is everything in life and in my fortunate career, that has profound meaning for me. In political life, the factor of timing is an axiom. Menzies was not only our longest serving Prime Minister but deeply affected by and experienced in the political struggle and national implications inherent in Australia’s major wars. Back in the 50s my dear mum, who passed away many years ago as a lifetime socialist, took me off to see Menzies deliver an election campaign speech at the Bondi Surf Pavilion. Even though I was only around seven, I was surprised because I was pretty sure that she never voted on his side of the political divide and I said as much. She replied that even so I would never encounter a better debater and orator than him and it proved to be the case with the banter and repartee in the packed auditorium.

In those impressionable years, it seemed to me that social intercourse was different: intense, often robust but only rarely ad hominem. Every now and then a political issue would become heated, with some street marches and the like. But by and large people seemed more trusting, more accepting of governments and institutions in managing our interests and welfare. Some years ago, when delivering the Boyer lecture series, I opined that the political consideration of Communism in Australia during Menzies time was an example of the vexed, complex but ultimately sensible management of the way our political leaders and our people managed that issue into irrelevance.

Yet Communism as an external factor in Australia’s perspective was a serious consideration for the second half of Menzies’ stewardship of the nation. Nobody, not even the most sanguine of armchair warriors, could say that such a concern about Communism and its potential further intrusion into our strategic arena was confected or conveniently overblown.

It was apparent then and retrospectively accurate now that the Soviet Union and nations in East Asia and potentially in the Southeast Asian archipelago were in thrall or vulnerable to, Communism, much opposed to our form of democracy. Australia had received one hell of a fright during World War II. Having almost by rote, yet again sent our men and women in uniform halfway around the world, our doorstep remained open when our own neighbourhood turned bad in 1941. After 1945, the psyche of our nation was sensitive to this and Menzies’ political instincts were spot on: following on from our contributions to the conflict in Korea, Menzies’ governments, in proposing and signing up to ANZUS, our contributions to SEATO, to counterterrorism in fledgling Malaysia, to Konfrontasi and ultimately to Vietnam were reflections of the national mood. Of course, there were, on these commitments, opposing views within Australia but that is not only the nature of our democracy but one of its strengths. In modern times, three of our Prime Ministers were passed masters in managing these challenges: Menzies, Hawke and Howard. Sometimes consensus is natural and thus can be seized; as frequently consensus must be built. All these leaders though, understood that consensus is always elastic and frangible. Our participation in the Coalition to depose Saddam Hussein in 2003 was an example of this.

Around the time of our commitment to Vietnam is when my personal relevance as a professional agent of our military commitments gives me some increasing license for commentary on both some of the commitments and the public’s reaction to them. Imagine your way back to the days when the Menzies’ government was considering offering/negotiating an invitation to participate in the Vietnam war: the leadership and the backbone of the Australian Army in that part of the 60s was deeply experienced. Virtually every senior officer had war experience, some of it at high levels of intensity and in quite senior rank from World War II through to Korea. Thus, the Army advice to Menzies would have been profound, confident and compelling. I have no doubt that the advice was overwhelmingly that we could provide an initial contribution which would punch well above its weight but which would require supplementation if we were to be there for say several years or more. That advice would not have introduced notions of ‘being caught on the flypaper’ as no doubt to some degree eventuated when it became obvious down the track that our commitment had no emphatic end-state of either success or honourable withdrawal.

Our previous significant military commitments in World War II and before Vietnam had that end-state – overwhelming victory or diplomatically achieved cease-fires. If Menzies could have returned around the change of millennium, he would have had a wry smile observing some of our entanglements in the Middle East! So, for Vietnam there appear to me to be a sad acquiescence on the part of the Australian people of Australia ‘doing its bit’ in Vietnam. I might remark here that young soldiers such as myself were single mindedly-committed to serving in Vietnam. We commanded a mixture of regular and national service troops. The regular soldiers were similarly committed and indeed most of our national service mates were grimly determined to play their part and get home safely, even acknowledging that this was, using modern vernacular, participating in a ‘war of choice’. In battle and with the ever-present imminence of combat, nobody dwells on ‘how they’re feeling about this at home?’, the war for us in Vietnam was intimate.

What was different however, was the growing partition of opinion in Australia, the growing disenchantment of significant parts of the population around the long-drawn-out agonies of the ordinary people of Vietnam. With the phenomenon of war more and more a daily part of our media diet, more and more Australians wished our people out of there and for the war to stop.

To be clear, in retrospect with what was then North Vietnam behind the insurgency in the South and Russia and China standing behind the North and with the tremendously difficult operating environment in (then) South Vietnam, the only likely war winning strategies were unthinkable. Only one side of the belligerents was prepared to do ‘whatever it takes’ short of ‘going nuclear’.

In all of this, Australia’s small part of the war was conducted with huge professionalism and indeed avoided the sort of carnage of the innocents that from time to time horrified us all. But I think we’d all agree that’s hardly the point. So, in an atmosphere of growing angst here in Australia, if Menzies implausibly had served on as PM for say another 5 to 10 years, he would have observed from the plateau of noble intentions and the pragmatic high exercise of alliance politics, a descent into the streets and marketplaces of our cities where politicians were reviled and returning soldiers booed. Thus began a low level of spiritual estrangement between our armed forces (and especially the Army) and the public. It was my observation that in the vernacular, the Army sort of ‘pulled its head in’. National service soon concluded, for some time the RSL marginalised the Vietnam veterans, governments of various stripes only cautiously accepted small-contingent participation in UN missions and the Army licked its wounds. Menzies would have applauded when in October 1987 there was a belated, Australia-wide Welcome Home parade for the Vietnam veterans – it might have been welcome but it wasn’t transformational!

Here I want to offer an observation encapsulating my views from around this time – by then I was a seasoned commander with that Vietnam experience as well as two further overseas postings under my belt – one with the United States Marine Corps and one long posting with the British Army. Governments of an ideological stripe will evince that ideology in the workaday progress of governing their nations. When the chips are down, when a crisis occurs those challenges, say security or perhaps indeed when an urgent opportunity presents (say a UN call to arms) then their considerations, actions, fortitude and concerns are remarkably similar. That era after Vietnam, and say from 1987 onwards showed examples of determined and effective action by both Labor and conservative governments.

Over those years many hundreds of our young men and women of the three services went off with Australia’s blessing but almost instantly, ‘out of sight out, of mind’. Our venture into Somalia was a noted exception when our former Governor-General, David Hurley then as a Lieutenant Colonel commanded the deployed force, 1st Battalion of the Royal Australian Regiment. Robert Ray, then Defence Minister when challenged by the media to say how long they would be away (with the spectre of our seemingly endless commitment to Vietnam in mind) in typical fashion said, ‘six months!’ When asked, ‘what if the job’s not done by then?’ he succinctly replied ‘six months’ – and lo, they returned after six months. Other ventures such as Namibia and Cambodia had significant Australian troop contingents within them but by and large in Australia, it was a case of ‘out of sight, out of mind’. The irony is that while our men and women performed magnificently, this promoted Australia’s reputation as a ‘lifter’ rather than a ‘leaner’ in UN circles without attracting much attention from the Australian public.

Menzies would have understood all this. In fact, given the relative passivity Australia enjoyed under the umbrella of ‘Pax Americana’ after Vietnam, he would have quietly applauded the Hawke Government’s shrewd handling of the first Gulf War in 1990/91. One thing though, Menzies was a participant and witness to the awful launch of Australia into World War II wherein our defence forces were in no way ready for strong participation at the outset, much less the particular defence of Australia and its interests. So, Menzies would have applauded and quietly counselled that our quite small commitment to first Gulf War matched our quite small capability.

What then subsequently would have perhaps surprised the shade of the great man? Anyone of Menzies era would have been taken aback, astonished by the tsunami of this ‘Information Age’. Menzies avowedly was a senior, worldly-wise participant in the birth of the Nuclear Age. No doubt this phenomenon was part of his imperative to seek shelter under the umbrella of ‘Pax Americana’, through ANZUS in 1952. Quite a few of us in this room were around when information was sort of ‘out of the tap – when turned on’. Now of course it’s part of a deluge that rains and floods without pause or permission. It would take even that great politician Menzies some time to realise how it stimulates, mobilises, energises and shapes huge swathes of our polities, especially liberal democracies. It has meant and we have come to understand, that prejudices and hatreds, fads and follies are but a keystroke away for countless millions of people of all ages or even ten-year-olds in the privacy of their own bedrooms – all clothed as information.

(Whew – back to my knitting!). So, what happened to the Army, (and our Defence Force more broadly) – the boys and girls next door who, having chosen to wear a uniform, then disappeared into barracks, air bases and ships, thereafter rarely to be seen and hardly ever heard in public again? Well, what happened Sir Robert, was the information Age and East Timor and then 9/11 and then Iraq and then, almost endlessly Afghanistan (much like Vietnam in your time) all these happened.

In particular what happened was out of the blue! It was in 1999 in East Timor, yet another peacemaking operation but this one right on our doorstep. Urgent, unanticipated, it gave the Australian people what they wanted to do – find a reason to fall back in love with those boys and girls in uniform.

Menzies relationship with Indonesia was pragmatic and manageable even through Konfrontasi. Specifically, the events that led to the Indonesian annexation of East Timor in 1974/75 were outside of Menzies’ ambit and I won’t speculate on what the great man would have done if he had been in Gough Whitlam’s shoes. But I’m prepared to bet that later, his shade would have shouted encouragement to John Howard for the courage and skill he showed in this walking of the political tightrope in 98/99. The operation in September 1999 was preceded by terrible scenes of violence and misery, followed by the clarion call of the huge vote for independence and then by a horde of media folks describing the peacemaking operation. 21 nations hastened to join us in the military mission. We enjoyed bipartisan, indeed comprehensive political support here in Australia and overwhelming approval from the Australian people. But that regard drew attention to our limitations as well as our adaptive capabilities.

9/11 was another watershed. Enabled by the Information Age, terrorism, a practice reaching back to sentient humankind, could be made global in influence and outcomes. Mass murder came to Manhattan and soon enough to Bali. Huntington’s Clash of Civilisations found its pulpit.

That long agony after 9/11 until Australia’s withdrawal from Afghanistan, concomitant with that of the United States, is a modern narrative of our kinship with that great, similar democracy. Although from time to time, Menzies and his successors would feel that ANZUS was written on flypaper rather than simple parchment. Every now and then, we are reminded within the web of security, intelligence, trade and cultural arrangements and events we experience with our major ally, of Lord Palmerston’s dictum, ‘We have no eternal allies and we have no perpetual enemies. Our interests are eternal and perpetual and those interests it is our duty to follow.’

With my background, it is my conceit that I have a competent grasp of Defence and Security issues from an Australian perspective. Even as Governor General, while one sees less of the minutiae of Defence and Security activities, you obtain a different and valuable perspective of the diplomatic, cultural and economic aspects of the equation. Baldly, I would have given more chance of a snowball surviving in hell than the creation of AUKUS.

It would not have happened without the building blocks of 1952 and beyond: the shared concerns and visions, the shared burdens on battlefields, in the air and oceans, the ceaseless and vital relationships between generations of political, cultural and business folk and of course military leaders and strategic scholars. While it is the highest interest of our military and security organisations it has to be seen as a vital whole-of-community concern. To the nub of the matter, AUKUS, its reasons and enactions must be seen as alongside and equal to other perpetual economic and social programmes. It has high urgency exacerbated by the cost of unreadiness. It is potentially an existential matter for younger Australians, not only in extremis to their lives but as importantly to our precious way of life.

In preparing these remarks, I read James Paterson’s excellent oration to you from last year and concurred with his views in so many ways: I think he knows that I have great regard for his acumen and energy. He was seized by our national shortcomings under the AUKUS banner. Another year has passed and to many of us it still seems that there is an element of diligent dithering in the pillars of the programme. I am experienced enough to know that all Ministers, Departments and Agencies must press for every possible dollar for their programmes and constituencies. These pressures are real, vital and growing and immediate and perpetual. This is the eternal dilemma for democratic, representative government. Menzies faced with war, faced it resolutely. He and his successors mobilised the nation. Traumatised but triumphant, Australia sighed with relief and became a wonderfully successful economic giant, a human haven and an exemplar of modern democracy. The killing technologies of the times, of those wars formerly allowed months and years for preparation. That time now, of warning and preparation to defend has shrunk enormously.

Australia is intent on doing the right thing but is doing it in a disjointed way and perhaps a traditionally internally-competitive way. The eminent Journalist and author, Paul Kelly has deemed that the Australians of the twenties, thirties and forties were our ‘greatest generation’ and given that included my immediate forbears, I happily agree with him. Menzies, speaking from the clouds on their behalf and now with a grasp of contemporary geopolitics and modern technology, would surely call out, ‘get a move on!’”