Australia’s Anzac Day highlights sacrifice

AUSTRALIA: Australian cities and states celebrate the annual national event of Anzac Day (Australian and New Zealand Army Corps) on Sunday with Prime Minister Kevin Rudd highlighting Anzacs’ values of courage, sacrifice in his commemorative address here in Canberra.

Those values were courage, sacrifice, compassion, mateship, and a deeper humanity. “These are good values, important values, values for a nation, yet values still of a broader and richer canvas that a narrow nationalism that simply lauds one people over another,” Rudd said.

Rudd said each generation of Australians had a duty to pass the Anzac torch of values onto the next generation. He said Australia’s identity has been shaped by the sacrifices made by the Anzacs. “It shapes deeply our nation’s memory, it shapes deeply how we see the world, 100 years later it shapes still what we do in the world,” Rudd told thousands of people gathered in front of the Australian War Memorial Sunday morning in Canberra.

In his address, Rudd has also announced the appointment of a national commission for the 100th anniversary of Anzac in 2015.

Canberra, Sunday, Xinhua