Motions — World War I Centenary—Commemoration of New Zealand’s Entry into War

Rt Hon JOHN KEY (Prime Minister): I move, That the House recognise that on 4 August 2014 we will mark the centenary of New Zealand entering the First World War. A few hours after the declaration of war by the British Empire, of which New Zealand was a part, the Governor of New Zealand, Lord Liverpool, told a crowd of thousands outside Parliament that New Zealand was at war with Germany.

The New Zealand Government’s offer to send an expeditionary force, a move endorsed by this Parliament, was hugely significant. New Zealand’s population in 1914 was just over 1 million. The initial deployment was of 8,000 men, but by 1919 over 100,000 New Zealanders, or 10 percent of the population, had left these shores to serve overseas. They were not just soldiers. They included, for example, medical staff, sailors, and tunnellers. Over 5,000 Māori served in the war alongside 500 Pacific Islanders. Five-hundred and fifty women served in the New Zealand Army Nursing Service.

Of those who served, 18,000 lost their lives and another 41,000 were wounded. One in 20 New Zealanders, therefore, became casualties of the First World War. This was a war on a scale beyond anything New Zealand had experienced before and the effect on the nation was profound. Worrying about loved ones, grieving for lost relatives, working to support the war effort, making do, going without; the war touched every person at every level in our country.

Today’s New Zealand has roots in the patience and endurance of those communities carrying on through the aftermath of the war and building a future for those who followed. It is no wonder that the First World War is marked by memorials that stand in almost every community in New Zealand. The contribution of that First World War generation, both on the battlefield and at home, has a deep significance for New Zealanders and is integral to our sense of nationhood.

In the last decade the number of New Zealanders attending Anzac Day services at home and overseas has risen. Many have travelled to battle sites and cemeteries in far-off places. We are proud of those who took part in the First World War, as we are proud of our current defence force. I believe New Zealanders will embrace this centenary. It will be a time to honour those who served, a time to remember those who died, and a time to remember our understanding of a formative event in New Zealand’s history.

Other nations are embarking on a similar journey. Many millions of people died as a result of the fighting, not just in Europe but in theatres across the globe. New Zealand will be marking the centenary alongside a number of countries, and it will be an opportunity to strengthen our relationship with the people and Governments of those nations.

There are too many commemorations and events to name, but I want to mention just a few. In November we proudly join Australia at the ceremony at Albany, Western Australia to mark the joint departure of the Australian Imperial Force and the New Zealand Expeditionary Force. Alongside our Australian, Turkish, and British friends, New Zealand will be commemorating the 100th anniversary of the Anzac landings at Gallipoli in 2015. Over the next 4 years we will be increasing our presence at Anzac Day services and commemorations in France and Belgium.

Although the Gallipoli campaign will always hold an important place for New Zealanders, the centenary is an opportunity to expand our awareness and knowledge of what happened after Gallipoli and in particular on the Western Front, where by far the majority of our casualties occurred. We will be commemorating New Zealand’s involvement in the battle of the Somme, at Passchendaele, and other major battles in France and Belgium. Plaques with the names of those battles and others New Zealanders fought in the First World War surround us in this debating chamber.

More broadly, New Zealand’s WW100 programme encompasses the whole range of this country’s commemorative activities, from State ceremonies and Government-led initiatives to grass-roots community projects. Part of that programme involves major legacy projects such as the National War Memorial Park, a place to commemorate New Zealand’s involvement in all military conflict and peacekeeping. Heritage trails in Europe will tell the story of New Zealanders at Gallipoli and the Western Front. These and other projects will be enduring reminders that ensure current and future generations never forget the sacrifices that have been made and the role of war in shaping this country.

The Government is also a major partner in the First World War Centenary History Programme, a series of up to 13 print publications covering the major campaigns in Europe and the Middle East, New Zealanders’ contribution in the air and at sea, the experiences of soldiers at the front and civilians at home, the Māori war effort, and the war impact and legacy.

Equally important are the many community projects that are under way around New Zealand. World War 100 is not a Government-run initiative. It is a collaboration between the Government, local bodies, communities, and individuals who seek to ensure that every New Zealander has the chance to be part of commemorations and to feel a sense of ownership.

When you travel around New Zealand, as I said before, you see a lot of war memorials with a list of the fallen from that town or city or country district. They remind us that each community has its stories to tell. The WW100 programme encourages communities to tell those stories and to honour their forebears in whatever way they feel is best. From now until 2019 we will mark the centenary of our troops returning. The various commemorations, events, and projects throughout the country will provide us with the opportunity to honour those who have gone before us and reflect on their legacy. We will always remember them.

Hon DAVID CUNLIFFE (Leader of the Opposition): On a bare, windswept hill above a little South Canterbury village called Cave stands a stark, lonely cenotaph. Cave is a tiny village of a few dozen souls surrounded by the rolling downland that slopes up to the Hunters Hills. It is surrounded by farms. It was the place where I can first remember an Anzac Dawn Service. What I remember is that for all of the small size of that town, inscribed on the cenotaph are the names of dozens of local lads who lost their lives in the war to end wars—the so-called Great War. It is 100 years since the Great War, which broke and refashioned so many ideas of who we are, which underscored emerging concepts of nation and nationhood, which hurled humanity into modernity, and which birthed a new international age. It is an age that in many ways we are still living in.

For New Zealand it was no less than a formative moment of mud and fire, one of those points in our national history that defined us. It defined us in grief and in loss, and it was a great loss. One hundred years on, it seems so distant, but that sheer weight of loss remains with us. Of the over 100,000 deployed, nearly one in six was killed and over 40,000 were wounded from a country with a population of just over a million. Less than half returned unscathed in body; almost none returned unscathed in mind. It is no exaggeration to say that the effects of this war rippled viscerally through our nation—those empty farms, the endlessly damaged families, the silenced fathers and brothers, and the stoically silent ones who returned—and was a rupture that changed us for ever. It was a loss but it was also a fundamental and violent change to who we were and a part of who we are now. It is ever-present in the memorials of town after town like Cave, each holding the names of the lost, and in the Dawn Service. It is still with us in the way we think of ourselves as New Zealanders, in our sense of independence, in our great sense of uniqueness, in our drive for self-determination, and in our desire to be exactly who we are.

Today is a day to commemorate the First World War. In doing so, we do not lose sight of the immense sacrifices made by millions on both sides. Indeed, the concept of there being any other side than that of humanity seems alien so many decades later, because today we also commemorate the strength and compassion of our soldiers, of their families, and of what they brought to us. Their stories are our stories. They are deeply and resonantly a part of who we are as individuals and as a nation.

Like many New Zealanders, I have a strong connection to this watershed moment in our history. My maternal grandfather, Bob Tuke, served at Gallipoli. His brother, my great-uncle, Athol, served in France. Both were decorated. They were lucky; both survived. Another brother was gassed. On my father’s side, my great-uncle Thomas Henry Walsh was killed in action on 21 May 1918. Even now it is impossible to truly grasp just what they went through in that savage industrial mincer of warfare. From the beaches of Anzac Cove to the pocked, barbed wire fence - strewn fields of the Western Front, our troops and those who supported them must be celebrated and remembered. They are all part of the fashioning of New Zealand as a proud and independent nation. Their experiences and those of the people they left behind were the start of New Zealand casting off its colonial outlook and recognising that we could and must stand on our own two feet as a nation that honours the sacrifices of its forebears and through those sacrifices sees pity, not glory, in war. It is reflected in our pride of being a nation that uses its voice on the world stage to promote peace and a better world for all.

In commemorating World War I, we are commemorating the New Zealand that that conflict helped shape. The famous ode states: “Age shall not weary them,”. Nor will it weary the spirit they have imbued our beautiful nation with.

Dr KENNEDY GRAHAM (Green): The Green Party supports the motion that this House recognise that on 4 August 2014 we will mark the centenary of New Zealand entering the First World War. It may be that no military conflict, no war has scarred the human psyche as did World War I. The Great War has taken its toll not only in death but on the continuation of life, for death reigned supreme a century ago in the days of our grandparents. They who fell, they who never grew old, paid the supreme sacrifice.

One hundred years ago New Zealand numbered 1 million souls. One-tenth of our compatriots went to fight in distant lands. About one-fifth of them were killed, never to return. Twice as many lay wounded. For a young country the sheer scale was difficult to comprehend.

I stand also to acknowledge those who displayed a different courage, they who stood against the fighting itself, firm in their belief as conscientious objectors, for they too paid a heavy human price of a kind unique to their own.

Those who did return, they who grew old among us, paid a price equivalent in human pain. For even as the cenotaphs went up, they lived to see another conflict of equal intensity and greater destruction, making the war to end all wars tragic rather than seminal. If the sacrifice of our people and that of others—Russian and German, French and British, Australian and Turk—is to have meaning, it is to be found in the lessons we draw.

World War I gave rise to the first attempt at universal organisation, in the League of Nations. If the league was fated to fail and to be replaced by the United Nations a quarter of a century later, then so be it, provided we have drawn the necessary lessons. That remains the unanswered question. With the going down of the sun, we shall remember them.

ANDREW WILLIAMS (NZ First): New Zealand First joins with other parties in recognising that on 4 August 1914 New Zealand entered the First World War, alongside Britain and the rest of the British Empire. That followed from 3 August, when neutral Belgium was invaded. Also on that day war was declared on France. Those of us in this House and many New Zealanders and, indeed, those from around the Commonwealth, must all recognise that that was a hugely significant date for this country, and it changed the course of history.

For those of us who have been fortunate to visit Flanders, and the World War I fields in Flanders, it is a most moving place and occasion. I can recall, in the 10 years while I represented the Belgian and the Flemish Government here in New Zealand, visiting the fields on a number of occasions, and going to the Passchendaele cemetery and seeing the thousands and thousands of white crosses with New Zealand ferns on them. To see all those names of so many young New Zealanders—and many without names; many in unmarked graves—was very moving. I remember one day walking in complete mist through the cemetery. I was just there on my own. To be walking through the mist where you could see only 20 or 30 feet in front of you, and just see gravestone after gravestone coming up before you, wondering when they would ever end, and seeing all the silver ferns was most moving.

I was fortunate also to represent New Zealand at the laying of a wreath at the Messines Gate at Ypres. Every night at 8 p.m. the Belgians have a ceremony there—they have done so since the 1920s—to mark the tragedy of the First World War. The fact that they still recognise the great sacrifices that were made by so many young people coming from all over the world to uphold democracy is most moving.

A few years ago we did the same here in New Zealand. In 2009 we held the Fields of Remembrance event in Takapuna to mark the Battle of Passchendaele commemorations. It was most moving to have 5,000 crosses up on the headland at Fort Takapuna. People from all over Auckland and, indeed, from around New Zealand came to see those white crosses. Again, it was most moving to see the equivalent of the cemeteries in Flanders and in France transported to the shores of New Zealand. It was great to see so many young people want to go and see those crosses, be a part of it, and understand the history of it. When 100 white pigeons were released into the air, I was very, very proud, as mayor of the city at that time, to see how we were taking on that important part of history and how people were very much recognising the part that New Zealand played.

The First World War is now history, but it has shaped the world of today. Anyone speaking of that catastrophic event does so with due respect for all the loss and suffering it entailed. Although far distant from New Zealand, this country paid a heavy price in that conflict. Historians and others have produced volumes about the war. We may think we understand that war, its causes, and its consequences, but we should observe due discretion about judging those events.

New Zealanders can be proud of the part their country took in that conflict. It was a war in which our country found a deeper sense of national identity in the terrible carnage of Gallipoli and in the fields of France and Flanders. New Zealand First considers that this is a time for all who value New Zealand and its democracy to acknowledge the sacrifices made in the First World War. We will remember them.

TE URUROA FLAVELL (Co-Leader—Māori Party): Tēnā koe, Mr Speaker. Kia ora tātou katoa i tēnei ahiahi. If you were to attend any significant Māori hui these days, you are likely to hear waiata, songs, that connect directly to the trenches of Passchendaele and the Somme. The unofficial national anthem, “Pokare Kare Ana”, was popular with Māori soldiers preparing to go to war in 1915. “Te Ope Tuatahi” was popular in 1916, a recruiting song crafted by Sir Apirana Ngata and Paraire Tōmoana. “I Runga o Ngā Puke” was sung in September 1915 to farewell the second Māori contingent. “Hoea Rā Te Waka Nei” derives from a call for financial support for men in the trenches in France in 1917. “E Pari Rā” was a song for Māori soldiers lost in battle during World War I.

I remember all of those songs. We learnt them as a part of our kapa haka at school at St Stephen’s. They were songs that we learnt, maybe not necessarily recognising the significance of these particular songs and their message. The fact that these waiata amongst many, many others are still part of our lives in effect means that the history and tragedies experienced in World War I live on in the hearts and the memories of this generation.

Other speakers have spoken of the loss. I want to focus instead on the decimation of whakapapa Māori experienced during World War I. The first Māori contingent, Te Hokowhitu a Tū, which has a kapa haka group named after it, sailed from Aotearoa in February 1915 and fought as combat engineers and snipers in Gallipoli. In all, 477 men marched in; only 134 marched out. More than 2,000 Māori served in the Māori Pioneer Battalion, a native contingent. I note that the word “native” was not dropped from official use until 1947. There was an interesting context to Māori participation in World War I. Promoters of imperial policy opposed the idea of “natives” fighting in a war amongst Europeans, fearing that they might seek equal treatment with European soldiers or, worse still, might turn on their colonial masters. Indeed, imperial policy had officially excluded Māori from fighting in South Africa.

But some Māori leaders, such as Tā Apirana Ngata, saw participation in war as the price of citizenship. It was a view that involvement by Māori would strengthen the ability of other New Zealanders to accord tangata whenua equal status with non-Māori. Many years later, at the onset of the Second World War, Sir Apirana Ngata explained this view in the booklet he wrote in 1943, entitled The Price of Citizenship, which asks “whether the civilians of New Zealand, men, and women, fully realised the implications of the joint participation of Pakeha and Maori in this last demonstration of the highest citizenship.” So it was that perhaps for the first time some New Zealanders went to Gallipoli and France to find out about their own indigenous peoples, the first peoples of the land.

The four Māori members of Parliament at the time were united in their support for Māori participation in war. Indeed, the MP for Northern Māori, Te Rangi Hīroa, led the charge literally and sailed with the first contingent in February 1915. In that recruitment waiata I mentioned earlier, Ngata singled out recruits from Te Arawa, my area, Te Aitanga-a-Māhaki, Te Aitanga-a-Hauiti, Ngati Porou, and Ngāti Kahungunu as stepping up for the obligations and ideals of patriotic service. His waiata, in fact, names these tribes as an expression of honour.

It is important to note that there was also considerable opposition from Māori. Although some supported the approach and rushed in to join up, others did not see the value of fighting for the British Crown, which had done so much harm to whānau, hapū, and iwi throughout the 19th century. So when compulsory conscription of Māori was introduced into the Military Service Act in 1917, those Māori who had had land confiscated for being deemed to have been in rebellion against the British Crown mounted a campaign of resistance. The Kīngitanga leader Te Pūea Hērangi was notable in her courage and determination to support the men who resisted conscription. She openly questioned why Māori should fight for an empire that had, from within living memory, invaded and occupied their lands. If the land that had been confiscated in the 1860s had been returned, then perhaps Waikato may well have reconsidered their position.

The Māori King at the time, Te Rata, also adopted the position that it was a matter of individual choice and no one should be forced to serve. Many of the men who refused to serve were imprisoned for refusing to serve. Some who refused to wear the army uniform were subjected to severe military punishments, being fed only bread and water and provided with minimal bedding. The imposition of conscription had long-lasting effects on the people of Waikato, and it is important that we also remember that history as we acknowledge today the onset of World War I.

Finally, when the Māori contingent returned in March 1919, it received a rousing welcome with parades and receptions throughout the country. A Māori Pioneer Battalion rugby team even toured the country for a series of provincial games. There are, indeed, many faces to war and many experiences that have followed us throughout this century. The native contingent suffered heavily in France and by early 1919 the Māori reinforcements were being supplemented by our brothers from Te Moana-nui-a-Kiwa, the Pacific, particularly Niue, Samoa, Rarotonga, and Tonga. Today we remember the courage and the sacrifices of those who occupied the ranks of the mighty Te Hokowhitu-a-Tū. We remember those who were evacuated from Gallipoli and survived physically, but they bore the scars of psychological warfare for the rest of their time on this earth.

We will remember the whānau who supported their families, their fathers, their husbands and brothers as they wrestled with the demons and their memories of devastation in the trenches, many of them turning to alcohol as a medicine to try to help them forget—a coping mechanism that would have disastrous effects. We remember the sheer determination of those who constructed the trenches, earning them the name of the “diggers”, the expertise and the genius evident in the military architecture they created. We remember the whānau who, through the policy of compulsory conscription, were deprived of their men either on the battlefields or from being imprisoned and we remember the suffering of family members who became casualties of that spirit. I tēnei wā e koro mā i te pō, takoto mai, takoto mai, takoto mai. Ko koutou i tae ki te mura o te ahi. Ko koutou rā i kite i ngā uauatanga o tēnei mea o te pakanga. Kāre anō kia oti noa te wāhi o tēnei mea o te pakanga. Ko te pakanga kei tēnei wā, kei tēnei whakatipuranga ēngari, ko koutou tērā i whakaritea mai ai te wāhi kia tau mai te rangimārie ki tēnei whenua. Ahakoa ngā uauatanga i pā atu ki a koutou, e kore koutou e warewaretia mō te āhuatanga o tā koutou tū ki mua i te aroaro o te hoariri. Mō te aha? Mō te painga o tēnei whakatipuranga. Koutou i te pō, e moe, e moe.

[At this point in time, lie down, lie stretched out and rest there in the underworld veterans. You were the ones who got to the battlefront and witnessed the difficulties related to this thing about waging war. It is not over yet. It is present still in this generation, but you were the ones who sorted out this matter about war so that peace would prevail over this land. Regardless of the difficulties that affected you, you collectively will never be forgotten in regards to the stance taken against the enemy at the battlefront. And what was the purpose for that? So that this generation will be better off. So slumber on those of you in the world of the dead and rest.]

Hon PETER DUNNE (Leader—United Future): When this raw, young, enthusiastic but naive country joined with the declaration of war in August 1914, we set in train a series of events that changed the face of this land for ever. The statistics do not tell the full and clear story. We know our population was about a million people at the time, of whom around 120,000 were to enlist and 59,000 were to be wounded, and, of that 59,000, 18,000 were to be killed over the next 4 years. The picture is even more stark when we look at the breakdown of our population at that time. Men between the age of 20 and 45, the fighting age, numbered around 200,000 only. So, over the next 4 years, the majority of that working population of men—and they were mainly men; there were a few hundred women involved—went overseas to war, and a significant proportion of them were wounded and killed.

Let us fast forward 100 years and put that into today’s context. In today’s context we would be looking at casualties of around 270,000 people. That is the population of Wellington and the Hutt Valley. Eighty-one thousand of those in today’s figures would have been killed. I ask this House how we would comprehend and cope with tragedy and destruction of that magnitude, because that is what our forebears 100 years ago had to deal with. It was not just the tragedy of the events of World War I but the ongoing ripping out of the heart of a generation or more of New Zealand’s youth that these events unleashed.

When they sailed in February 1915 with the first New Zealand Expeditionary Force, there was that sense of excitement, of adventure, and of duty to the mother country, although I have to say that my forebears, who were staunch Irish republicans, were not of that bent and did cause some trouble in this country. But, generally speaking, this was an adventure to be hailed and embarked upon. When they landed in Egypt for their training, that sense of mystery and excitement continued. It was only when some of them found that their eventual destination was Gallipoli and even more found that they were heading for the intractable difficulty of the Western Front that the awful reality of the adventure that they had embarked upon struck home. Over the next 4 years New Zealand forces, with distinction, admirable courage, valour, and strength, carried out their mission. They were loyal, they were effective, they were united, and they were committed. They believed very strongly—and their country backed them—that they were doing their duty to make a better world.

When they came home it was not the land fit for heroes that Lloyd George promised in Britain. They came home to the outbreak of the Spanish flu and more misery and a troublesome decade through the 1920s leading to the Great Depression of the 1930s. It is little wonder that the next generation is captured in that seminal novel by John Mulgan, Man Alone—the essential spirit of the New Zealander fighting against the world. Those images and influences have shaped our heritage today—for the better, I think. We are determined, we are courageous, and we are a plucky nation that is prepared to stand up for the things we believe are right and that is the legacy of those who went away 100 years ago.

Sadly, it was not the war to end all wars. If anything, it was the war to start the ongoing round of difficulties we still face today. The legacy of unwise decisions of World War I is still felt in the Middle East. We still see it in parts of Europe in the constant attempts to rewrite national boundaries. We still see it in some of the lingering enmities that are abroad. But let not that detract from the courage, the passion, or the commitment of those New Zealanders whose sacrifice we see reflected around these walls. They went with the best of intentions, they made a huge sacrifice on behalf of a fledging nation, and they carried out their duty bravely, courageously, and proudly. If there can be an epitaph for those New Zealanders, it must surely be around those terms.

It is appropriate that this Parliament remembers them. It is appropriate that this Parliament draws some courage from their determination. But it is appropriate too to remember that the challenges that they confronted when they went away in that naive sense of optimism have not been resolved, are still with us today in a more horrific and more dramatic sense than ever, and challenge New Zealand and all nations to continue to work for peace, to work for freedom, and to work for a world where people actually feel quite good about each other.

• Motion agreed to.