By Tony Abbott (or his press secretary)

We acknowledge that the worst of times brought out the best in them: extraordinary courage, perseverance against all odds, and selflessness in doing their duty. These qualities were found too in the Anzacs who went on to serve in the Middle East and on the Western Front.

In the sands of the Middle East, Australian soldiers fought with skill and determination alongside British troops to capture Jerusalem and Damascus.

In the trenches of the Western Front, our servicemen and women saw the most atrocious carnage in military history but in 1918, led by Sir John Monash, perhaps the finest allied general, they helped to turn the tide of the war.

http://www.smh.com.au/comment/exemplary-anzac-spirit-guides-successive-generations-tony-abbott-20150421-1mpmps.html

Meanwhile at sacrifice cliff-face...:

Prime Minister Tony Abbott is under fire from groups representing military pensioners and war widows who say the government's proposed changes to veterans' payments threaten the quality of life and dignity in retirement of nearly 300,000 people who sacrificed for Australia.

Mr Abbott, who is en route to Turkey for the Anzac centenary at Gallipoli, met with the leadership of the RSL last month but refused to back down on a decision to index payments to the rate of inflation rather than wages.

Veterans groups have been working behind the scenes since the budget but recent meetings between the Federation of Totally and Permanently Incapacitated Ex-Servicemen & Women (known as TPI), the Defence Force Welfare Association and the Alliance of Defence Service Organisations resolved to increase the pressure to coincide with Anzac Day and as Treasurer Joe Hockey finalises his second budget.

"It's all very well to commemorate the fallen – and we support the centenary commemorations – but we have to fully support the living as well," TPI national vice-president Pat McCabe told Fairfax Media.

read more: http://www.smh.com.au/federal-politics/political-news/veterans-groups-use-anzac-centenary-to-fire-up-over-pension-reforms-20150421-1mpzj4.html

A week is a long time in politics, especially when the Government is on a half a billion dollar spending spree on military nostalgia and myth peddling, writes David Tyler.

A week is a long climb in politics, but last week lasted a hundred years.

Or so it seemed to most Australians, as time warped into an ANZAC wormhole, stopping the nation in its tracks with a heavy bombardment of all things old Digger; a frenzied bout of military nostalgia, myth peddling, sentimentality and falsehood. No expense was spared by a Government which had to underfund advocacy groups for poor and needy citizens, so desperate was it to find “savings”.

Australia’s half billion dollar effort to commemorate World War One will cost more than three times as much as those of the UK, helping to cement Australia's place amongst nations as "without doubt the most aggressive of the centenary commentators", in the words of one international scholar as reported by UNSW Canberra military historian Professor Jeffrey Grey. We are even outspending the French, whose cause to remember is rather more substantial than a nation never at threat of invasion.

read more: https://independentaustralia.net/politics/politics-display/tony-abbotts-half-a-billion-dollar-anzac-week,7637

"They come like sacrifices in their trim,

And to the fire-eyed maid of smoky war

All hot and bleeding will we offer them.

The mailèd Mars shall on his altar sit

Up to the ears in blood. I am on fire

To hear this rich reprisal is so nigh

And yet not ours. Come, let me taste my horse,

Who is to bear me like a thunderbolt

Against the bosom of the Prince of Wales.

Harry to Harry shall, hot horse to horse,

Meet and ne'er part till one drop down a cor[p]se."

Shakespeare — Henry IV

"His [Mars] attendants, or some say his children, sympathised heartily with his quarrelsome tastes, and delighted in following his lead. They were Eris (Discord), Phobos (Alarm), Metus (Fear), Demios (Dread) and Pallor (Terror)...

Bellona, or Enyo, Goddess of war also accompanied him, drove his chariot, parried dangerous thrusts, and watched over his general safety. Mars and Bellona were therefore worshipped together in the self-same temple, and their altars were the only ones ever polluted by human sacrifices."

                                 H. A. Guerber — The Myths of Greece and Rome

Is our Turd-in-Chief the inhuman reincarnation of Mars, while our Peta that of Bellona?... Got me fouled for a while... I mean fooled, of course...