SYDNEY: The Armenian National Committee of Australia (ANC Australia) has welcomed the appointment of noted Armenian Genocide recognition advocate and former Deputy Prime Minister, Mr. Kim Beazley to the post of Australia's Ambassador to the United States of America.

After serving Australia's Federal Parliament in roles including Defence Minister and Opposition Leader as head of the Labor Party, Mr. Beazley returned to academia in 2007 as Professor of Political Science and International Relations at the University of Western Australia, and more recently as Chancellor of the Australian National University.

In 2002, during a speech to the Australian House of Representatives in relation to the 2002 International Criminal Court Bill, Mr. Beazley stated:

"The Armenian genocide looked as though it might be punished at the conclusion of World War I. But by 1923, in the Treaty of Lausanne, they decided, `Perhaps it's better for the peace of the show if we forget about all of that; perhaps it's better if we just ignore the murders'."

ANC Australia welcomed the new appointment, with President Mr. Varant Meguerditchian stating that Mr Beazley's long service to Australian public life and his firm belief in justice for crimes against humanity meant the next Australian Ambassador to the United States would be a fine representative of the values of mainstream Australia.

Mr. Meguerditchian said: "Mr. Beazley has a strong understanding of the historical reality of the Armenian Genocide despite the Australian government's preference to remain silent on this matter of international human rights significance."

He added: "Mr Beazley's appointment to this post adds to the great number of advocates in Washington who seek the international recognition for and condemnation of the Armenian Genocide."

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The passage of Mr Beazley's Parliamentary Speech relating to the Armenian Genocide can be viewed below:

...Yet with all of that, the mark of the last century is not scientific progress but grand-scale murder. It started badly: the Armenian Genocide looked as though it might be punished at the conclusion of World War I. There is no doubt that those who sat down to think their way through the consequences of the peace after that bloody conflict believed that they had to address in some way the horror that they had confronted-and the individual parts of that horror. But by 1923, in the Treaty of Lausanne, they decided, `Perhaps it's better for the peace of the show if we forget about all of that; perhaps it's better if we just ignore the murders which have occurred and allow punishment insofar as it is meted out not as punishment for the perpetrators of aggressive war or of mass murder to be brought to justice but as punishment for a whole society in the form of reparations'.

So those who were guilty of offences both before and during World War I actually got away while whole societies were punished in a way that made absolutely certain that we would get World War II...

(Tuesday 25 June, 2002 - SOURCE: Hansard)