At the going down of the sun we will forget them

Embedded in the hypocrisy, political expediency and Government manipulation of this sacred day is the foul stench of treachery of the very people we purport to celebrate.

Julia Gillard's Gallipoli speech made no mention of the Second World War, Korea, Vietnam, Timor, Iraq, Afghanistan et al. Too embarassing; couldn't let the descendants of Colonel Mustafa Ataturk

who clearly thought better of our Diggers than Gillard does, know how wretchedly Australia treats Veterans and serving personnel.

Our politicians can afford to mouth empty words and disgorge empty platitudes upon our dead, in this country and on foreign shores.

The dead do not vote. Gillard and our other fat-walleted politicians deify the dead with impunity.

They stand erect and proud alongside battlegrounds, graves and coffins draped with the Australian flag, exhorting heroic deeds and payment of the 'ultimate' sacrifice, basking in the going down of the sun, like the political vultures they are, feeding off the well-picked carcass of our military history.

They shamelessly dress the corpses of those killed in action in Afghanistan in hypocrisy and hyperpole, anointing them with perfumes of patriotism, assuring family members and the Australian public, loved ones did not die in vain in this vanity war. More lies.

Our Prime Minister and politicians have the audacity to treat these funeral services as little more than a poll bolstering photo opportunity; laboring under the delusion that some of the grandeur and solemn pathos of the moment might rub off on them.

Many of our Veterans are tired of such grotesque political exhibitionism and their hostility is palpable.

They have grown older as we who are left grow older. It is up to those of us who can to fight on their behalf - with them and for them.

In the ghostly light, Daylesford students deliver an incisive homage to our war dead that far eclipses the contrived spin of politicians. Schoolgirls sing Advance Australia Fair and the lone magpie would not fault their sweet voices warming the cold air, nor wish to.

Later in the service, they sing 'God Save the Queen'