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Labor’s time limit on Lest We Forget

16 September 2025

No-one could ever say Richard Norden and Teddy Sheean did not deserve Victoria Crosses for Australia.

Soldier Norden, known as Dick, dashed into an enemy ambush again and again and again to rescue a mate and recover another’s body, being severely wounded himself in the action, during the Vietnam War.

Sailor Sheean ignored orders to abandon a sinking ship in World War II, grabbed a 20-millimetre cannon and fired on swarming Japanese aircraft to save his mates in the water. He kept firing until the ship went down at which point he was dragged under, losing his life.

For Dick, as the famous Redgum war song goes, “I was only 19”. Teddy was a mere 18.

The families of both of these remarkable lads would wait decades to be told the news their brave boys had been posthumously awarded the nation’s highest military honour.

In Dick’s case, it took more than 56 years. For Teddy’s family, it would be 78 long years to the day from his deeds on the Timor Sea that his nephew Garry Ivory would accept the medal – the Royal Australian Navy’s first VC.

When these VCs were finally presented, it was not just their families celebrating, but also especially their surviving comrades and hometown local communities … indeed, the entire nation!

The beers flowed and the cheers rang out for Dick in the Gundagai District Services Club as old-timers reflected on what this meant for the town which will soon have a life-sized bronze statue of his heroics in the main street.

After returning from war, Dick pulled on the jumper of his beloved Gundagai Tigers and excelled as a hard running, tough tackling prop forward in country Rugby League’s fabled Maher Cup competition.

He then married his sweetheart Robynn Lenon and moved to Canberra where he joined the police. Tragically, this young father of two baby boys died in a motorcycle crash whilst on duty in 1972. He was just 24.

Teddy, the youngest of 14 children, hailed from a very proud Lower Barrington, a small rural town near Devonport in Tasmania.

Despite the joy the VCs have brought and the fact one Labor luminary after another has also lined up to extol the virtues of Delta Company 6RAR’s magnificent 10, finally awarded a Unit Citation for their valour at the 1966 Battle of Long Tan, legislation passed the House of Representatives in the Federal Parliament in the last sitting week to prevent future such awards being made.

When Coalition MPs, including decorated Army veteran Phillip Thompson OAM, tried to debate against this nonsensical legislation, Labor gagged us and used the weight of its numbers to put the issue to a vote and ram it through to the Senate.

Labor wants the medallic recognition consideration restricted to just 20 years, instead of back to 1939, as it presently stands.

Given this, it will not be long before this even precludes those who served in Iraq.

Why this had to be raised in the Parliament at all is anyone’s guess, particularly when there is a cost-of-living crisis, battlers desperately needing help to get a roof over their heads and businesses and households struggling with skyrocketing energy prices. These are the issues that ordinary, everyday Australians expect Canberra to be addressing, not disrespecting our veterans.

The shame of it all is that this would have been a recommendation put to the Veterans’ Affairs Minister Matt Keogh and for whatever stupid reason he has dutifully taken it up.

It should be that the minister runs the bureaucrats and the department – not the other way around, as in this case.

I’ve never wanted to be a Labor MP – but if I were one, I would want to be one of the four who happened to be out of the Chamber and did not vote with the Government on this contemptuous Bill.

Only they will escape the inevitable condemnation and derision of their RSLs and veterans when word of this disgraceful folly gets out.

For Labor … “we will remember them” … but, sadly, only in a timeframe that suits.

Opinion piece first appeared in The Daily Telegraph – 16 September 2025

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