Anzac Day

Prime Minister Chris Hipkins will today attend the Anzac Day National Commemoration Service at the National War Memorial in Wellington.

This Anzac Day could have a special poignancy for indigenous Australians. Thousands of them served in the First World War and other conflicts hoping it would help usher in greater equality at home. Those hopes have never been fully realised but later this year Australia will vote in a referendum on whether to amend the country's constitution to enshrine a voice for Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islanders. Wesley Enoch is an acclaimed aboriginal playwright and theatre director and he's a strong supporter of the referendum.

Earlier this morning Turkey's ambassador to New Zealand Omur Unsay attended the dawn service here at the National War Memorial. Her country's story of resistance as they defeated Allied forces at Gallipoli in 1915 is well known but what is perhaps less familiar is what happened to Turkey in the years that followed. After the end of the First World War in 1918 British, French, Italian and Greek forces occupied Constantinople - now called Istanbul. A Greek army invaded from the west and drove deep into the heart of mainland Turkey. Out of this chaos a Turkish nationalist movement emerged to fight a war of Independence which by 1923, they had won. And this October marks the one hundredth birthday of the Turkish Republic.

The Anzacs tasted nothing but defeat at Gallipoli but later on New Zealand soldiers were involved in victories over what was then the Ottoman Empire. One such place was the Sinai desert - which sits at the eastern edge of Egypt next to Israel. From April 1916 to January 1917 New Zealand troops took part in a series of battles in Sinai which pushed the Turks back towards Gaza. Now, New Zealand soldiers operate in the same part of the world as peacekeepers. They've been there for 40 years as part of a multinational force to monitor compliance of the peace treaty between Israel and Eygpt, after a war between the two in 1973.

A Field of Remembrance consisting of 569 memorial crosses with the names of Maori service personnel killed in action and buried overseas has been laid and will remain in place after Anzac Day. The last surviving member of the 28 (Maori) Battalion, Ta Robert Gillies will present the 28 (Maori) Battalion Campaign and Battle Honours Memorial flag with the Battalions' 42 Campaign and Battles Honours to the nation at Te Rau Aroha Museum of the Price of Citizenship where it will rest as a monument to the Battalions fallen Hoia who never returned home.

It's been a busy few years for Auckland lawyer David Stone. A curious question about his great uncle has led him on a years-long mission to reunite members of the Maori Battalion with their unclaimed medals. His work is paying off though. Over the past year, seven ceremonies have been held to reunite hundreds of whanau with more than a thousand unclaimed medals.

Earlier this morning Christchurch's Cathedral Square saw its first dawn service since the earthquake in 2011. The city's Mayor Phil Mauger was there.

After the 1915 Gallipoli campaign many of New Zealand's soldiers spent the next three years fighting in the trenches of northern France and Belgium and the French town of Le Quesnoy has a special significance. In 1918 our troops liberated the town from four years of German occupation and it will soon house New Zealand's first memorial museum for Kiwi soldiers who died in Europe during World War One. An Anzac commemoration ceremony was held at Le Quesnoy on Sunday and Jude Dobson was there to film it.

Defence Minister Andrew Little is at Gallipoli to lead the New Zealand delegation at the Anzac Cove dawn service.

About ten thousand New Zealand horses served in the First World War but only four made it home. One of them was Dolly who was the war horse of the decorated Hawke's Bay soldier Sir Andrew Russell, whose statue stands in the Civic Square in Hastings. The city's mayor, Sandra Hazlehurst, says a fundraising effort is underway to erect a statue of Dolly to stand alongside that of Sir Russell's.

New Zealanders abroad are marking Anzac Day. In South Korea's capital, Seoul, staff from the New Zealand Embassy held a service at the local war memorial museum. Philip Turner is New Zealand's ambassador to South Korea.

Next year will be the one hundredth anniversary of the founding of the Turkish Republic when Mustafa Kemal Ataturk was elected as the country's first president. He was also the man perhaps most instrumental in defeating the Anzac and Allied forces at Gallipoli in 1915. He led the Turkish counter attacks which swept New Zealand troops off Chunuk Bair, the dominant range of hills on the peninsula which came to define defeat or victory. Later as President he transformed Turkey into a secular country. New civil and legal codes were adopted along European lines. The wearing of the traditional Fez headwear was outlawed and the Turkish alphabet was changed into Latin script. But what sort of country is Turkey today under the government of President Erdogan? Ece Temelkuran is a Turkish writer who's written books about her homeland like The Insane and the Melancholy.

Last December was fifty years since one of the last New Zealand rifle companies left Vietnam but because of Covid-19 restrictions veterans from that war are still waiting to hold a reunion. Three thousand New Zealanders served in Vietnam between 1965 and 1972. Andy Peters served as a machine gunner in the New Zealand Army's Victor Four company and he's now the President of the Vietnam Veteran's Association. He says hundreds of veterans are planning a long awaited reunion in Christchurch in November.

The war in Ukraine is prompting radical changes to the way some smaller countries think about defence. Sweden and Finland have long been neutral but the Ukraine conflict is pushing them towards membership of NATO. Closer to home tensions between China and Taiwan have led some observers to speculate that war in the South China Sea could erupt in the future. So how should New Zealand position itself in the years ahead and is it time to ramp up our involvement with traditional allies like Australia and the United States? Geoffrey Miller is with the Democracy Project at Victoria University and writes about New Zealand foreign policy.

As we remember those who fell at Gallipoli and other past wars current events are sadly proving that war is still very much with us. And New Zealand is operating on the fringes of the biggest current conflict - the war in Ukraine. An air force Hercules transport plane is now in Europe helping to shift military aid towards Ukraine, but without entering that country. Air Marshal Kevin Short is the Chief of the New Zealand Defence Force.

Visits by New Zealand and Australian political leaders to Gallipoli on Anzac Day have been common for decades. But go back a little further and it was much more low key. Ahead of the 1965 commemorations the contributions of the New Zealand government were described as 'mean and shabby'. Those words appear in a new book by historian Rowan Light from Auckland University. Anzac Nations traces the changing shape of Anzac commemorations in New Zealand and Australia over the fifty years to 2015.

Veterans Minister Meka Whaitiri is leading the New Zealand delegation at the Anzac commemorations at Gallipoli in Turkey. It's the first official New Zealand delegation to attend since 2019.

For six months Paris in 1919 was the capital of the world,” said Professor Margaret Macmillan in her book The Peacemakers.

Military historian Professor Glyn Harper has a new book out as well - it's called For King and Other Countries and focuses on the New Zealanders who served outside the New Zealand forces in the first world war.

At the beginning of the First World War maori involvement in the NZ military forces was limited and there was robust debate about whether maori should serve in the New Zealand Expeditionary Force.