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The Returned & Services League of Australia (RSL) has called for all States and Territories to increase penalties for people who intentionally or recklessly damage the nation’s war memorials.
The RSL says that war memorials are increasingly being desecrated as part of protests and demonstrations or in wanton acts of vandalism, with the latest attack on Sydney’s Hyde Park memorial last week.
RSL Australia National President Peter Tinley said the New South Wales Parliamenthad passed legislation to significantly increase the penalties for those convicted of damaging war memorials in that State.
The maximum penalty has been increased from five to seven years imprisonment and courts have the power to order offenders to pay up to $4,400 in compensation to cover the cost of cleaning and repairing cenotaphs and memorials.
“With the spotlight on our war memorials in the lead up to Remembrance Day, the RSL welcomes the New South Wales initiative and urges all the other States and Territories to follow and enact similar legislation,” Mr Tinley said.
“Our war memorials honour those who have sacrificed to protect and preserve the freedoms that all Australians enjoy, and the daubing of protest slogans or damaging the monuments is nothing short of despicable,” he said.
“It is dishonourable in the extreme to use war memorials as a platform for protest.
“The RSL trusts that the vandals responsible for such damage are apprehended and receive the strongest appropriate punishment from the courts, and that punishment should be increased as it has been in New South Wales.
“That is what all fair-minded Australians would expect.”
Mr Tinley said people are entitled to protest, but the defilement of memorials to those who served, suffered and died in the service of the Australian nation does absolutely nothing to advance protesters’ causes.
“They are desecrating the memory of those who served and sacrificed to protect our freedom and give people the right to protest, a right that does not exist in many other countries. Australians should always exercise that right responsibly and with respect,” he said.
