Wednesday, 17 June 2026
Government House
Her Excellency the Honourable Margaret Beazley AC KC

Bujari Gamarruwa 

Diyn Babana, Gamarada Gadigal Ngura

In greeting you in the language of the Gadigal, Traditional Owners of these lands and waterways, I pay my respects to their Elders past, present, and emerging.

Welcome representatives, volunteers and members from the Families of Veterans Guild, owned by Australian War Widows NSW. It is a joy to welcome you here today in celebration of your 80th anniversary.

It is poignant, too, to be gathering at Government House, where a long tradition of Vice Regal patronage with your organisation began 75 years ago, with the then War Widows Guild. NSW Governors have maintained that support ever since, and I am honoured to continue it today. 

As it so happens, your remarkable story began not far from here – just a 15-minute walk in fact – at 149 Castlereagh Street.^[1]

It was there, on the 4th of June 1946, that 300 war widows gathered in a hall for the inaugural meeting of the NSW War Widows' Craft Guild. These women had lost husbands, many were raising children on their own, and all were deeply affected by the war. By the end of that meeting, 100 women had enrolled in the Guild.  

The Sun newspaper reported on this meeting in their ‘news for women’ section, on page 10 in an article entitled ‘Craft work to aid widows.’ If you blinked you might have missed it because the article was only 100 words long, and buried between advertisements for beauty creams and dresses.^[2]

Well, that soon changed. The Guild quickly grew into one of the most influential women's advocacy groups of its time - and your founder, Jessie Vasey, was instrumental in forcing Australia to pay attention. 

By 1952, the newspaper headlines were looking quite different. One article proclaimed: “War Widow’s Champion – Jessie Vasey” and went on to say: “If Mrs. Jessie Vasey ever decides to go into politics, it should be a glad day for Australian women - and a lively one for her male colleagues.”^[3]

Indeed, Mrs Vasey was exceptional. Who can forget her famous quips to: “Think big, wear your prettiest hat – tell that man behind the desk he’s here to help you!” And this zinger: “Nagging is very good in a woman.” 

Mrs Vasey, and the war widows who built your organisation, did not wait to be invited to the table – they took a seat and made sure their voices were heard. 

They successfully lobbied for an increase in the war widows' pension. They advocated for housing stability. They inspired war widows to take control of their futures as they navigated their own grief and bore and consoled and managed the grief of the children who were to grow up without their father. And let’s not forget this was all in the 1940s and 50s.  

Since those early days, the Guild has been a pillar of support for women when no or little support was available. Today, that has continued in the friendship, advocacy, and collective care that the Guild offers. 

Most importantly, your relevance has never waned nor has your deep understanding of what is required across different generations and in different times. With more than half a million families of veterans in Australia,^[4] your community is there for women and families across the full life of service, not just widowhood. The Rise Together Initiative^[5] is another example of the support being given to the female partners and widows of current or former ADF members to strengthen their career and leadership skills. 

In a word, you are a remarkable group of women. You have been courageous from the day you entered the service, which was the day your husband or partner signed up. You have been courageous from the day your lives changed when your husband or partner was no longer with you. You have been courageous every day since: every time that you stood up for yourselves, when you stood up for each other, and when you stood up to the Service when it didn’t look after you. 

Your badge could not have captured things better. Its inspiration was very much part of Jessie Vasey’s story, the kookaburra being the mascot of the 7th Division of the 2nd AIF, commanded by Mrs Vasey’s husband, Major-General Vasey, who died in a plane crash just before the war ended.^[6]  

For us here in New South Wales it is of course our state bird, signifying the bringing of good luck. But for Jessie it had another significance. The kookaburra is territorial and industrious – and its call is not a song but a laugh, “… a call to win the widow back to laughter.”^[7]

I wish to conclude by adding one thing which will always remain with me – and that is what you do for the rest of us who don’t bear your grief. Your determination and your friendship is a signal to us all that war has many victims and many heroes. 

At the Vietnam Veterans Memorial Day Service on 18 August 2023, on the first occasion ever that you were given, not the opportunity, but the right to lay a flower for the person you were there to remember and honour, as the first flower was laid, it struck me like a bolt of lightning – this was important. And I said so, out loud – and I stood up. I stood up for you, because for so long you had stood up for each other. And one by one every service personnel beside me and behind me stood up. They stood up for you. 

Thank you for showing us what service really means and where it starts – at home on that first day when the Defence Force became a part of your lives – and the service you have rendered ever since, at home and with and for each other. 

And so, I am privileged to be with you today at Government House Sydney, to honour each of you and your work and to celebrate this remarkable milestone. Happy 80th anniversary!