Labor MP promises $100,000 for running of Victory in the Pacific milestone year

Townsville Labor MP Scott Stewart has promised $100,000 towards Victory of the Pacific’s 80th year commemorations in Townsville next year if he is re-elected.

Wreaths being laid at the VP Parade Townsville event celebrating the end of World War II.

Townsville Labor MP Scott Stewart has promised $100,000 towards Victory in the Pacific’s 80th-year commemorations in Townsville next year if he is re-elected.

Mr Stewart said the funds would be used to establish an organiser for the milestone commemoration event next August, and he said this needed to happen as soon as possible.

The Townsville MP’s commitment is the second military-focused Labor promise in Townsville this week, after Mundingburra MP Les Walker promised $500,000 for an Oonoonba war memorial for a Japanese bombing site.

But Mr Stewart downplayed appealing to the military voter in the week before the state election, but more on Townsville deserving a well-run event considering its enormous contributions in World War II in protecting Australia.

“This was the place that during the Battle of the Coral Sea that troops were positioned down at Alligator Creek, and were told to fix bayonets and face the ocean,” Mr Stewart said.

Townsville crowds celebrating Victory in the Pacific on 25 August 1945. Also shown is the concrete air raid shelter in Flinders Street.

“They each had six rounds of ammunition and that was to defend an invasion by the Japanese, that’s how serious things became here.”

Mr Stewart, who had attended the VP70 event shortly after being elected in 2015, said the Townsville City Council had not yet been as active towards driving VP80 and it was not within the federal government’s focus either.

“We need to get things happening now and start to plan so we can start to organise people and the logistics behind it all,” Mr Stewart told the Bulletin while handing out how-to-vote cards at an early voting centre.

In 2015 during the Victory In the Pacific 70 year event, new MPs Aaron Harper and Scott Stewart lay down wreaths on behalf of the state government.

“While it’s a commemoration it’s also a celebration, I think it’s a celebration of what we value and love in Australia, and that’s the democratic process that we’re going through right now, but also the ability to do whatever we want, so to speak.

“We’re a free nation and that’s all back to our defence troops.”

Originally published as Labor MP promises $100,000 for running of Victory in the Pacific milestone year