September 03, 2009
70th Anniversary of Australia’s entry into the Second World War.
As Australia went onto a war footing, seventy years ago the Australian Parliament readied itself for action. ‘Strained relations exist with Germany. … Take necessary action in accordance with Commonwealth and Departmental War Books’, the Secretary of the Prime Minister’s Department wrote to the Clerks of the Houses on 2 September 1939. A day later Robert Menzies sadly announced that we were at war, broadcasting from the Commonwealth Offices in Melbourne: ‘It is my melancholy duty to inform you officially that, in consequence of a persistence by Germany in her invasion of Poland, Great Britain has declared war upon her, and that, as a result,…