A patriotic senator has walked out during a “welcome to country” during the official opening of the Australian War Memorial’s Anzac Hall, where the national anthem was omitted.
The hall is part of $550 million redevelopment project, significantly expanded the memorial’s exhibition space with new galleries dedicated to Australia’s post-Vietnam conflicts in Iraq, Afghanistan, East Timor and peacekeeping missions.
United Australia Party senator Ralph Babet on Thursday shared an account of his attendance at the event in Canberra on Tuesday, and described the new space as “magnificent” and a “fitting tribute to those Australians who served and sacrificed for this nation”.
But he wrote that the opening ceremony “quickly descended into farce” when attendees were forced to sit through an indigenous land acknowledgement which seems to last for 15 minutes.
On Tuesday I attended the opening of the renovated and expanded Australian War Memorial. The project cost us half a billion dollars, and I have to say it was money well spent. The memorial is magnificent.
But then came what felt like a 15 minute Welcome to Country by someone… pic.twitter.com/MlRPYclbSY
— Senator Babet (@senatorbabet) June 24, 2026
“Curiously, the Welcome to Country was delivered by a man introduced to those assembled as an Aboriginal elder but who appeared about as indigenous as a Scandinavian ski instructor,” he said on X.
“What was billed as a welcome increasingly felt like a humiliation ritual. Everyone assembled was expected to nod along and enthusiastically agree that they were on someone else’s land, and second class citizens at that. I eventually gave up and walked outside. Life is finite.”
Mr Babet also he was “astonished” by the omission of the national anthem, and said the Anzacs who fought and died for Australia would be “rolling in their graves”.
“The whole unfortunate charade was the perfect symbol of modern Canberra, a political class so consumed by fashionable ideology that it increasingly struggles to recognise the nation it’s supposed to represent,” he said.
“The opening of the beautifully renovated War Memorial was a classic illustration of what so many Australians already know. Canberra isn’t merely out of touch. It’s completely broken.
“That’s why the Albanese Government must go and the weak woke Coalition must be banished to history. Only then can the important work of salvaging what remains of our country begin.”
SAS hero Ben Roberts-Smith originally intended to attend the ceremony, and successfully applied for variations to his bail conditions, which were imposed after he was charged with five counts of “war crimes – murder” in April.
But the Victoria Cross winner was struck down with a stomach bug and did not make the event, his lawyers told a Sydney court.
Header image: Left, the opening ceremony “welcome to country” (Ralph Babet – X). Right, the new gallery (AWM).
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