Such behaviors nullify all the remorse and apologies of the past

Australian PM John Howard is mighty peeved about trash left at Gallipoli after ANZAC Day yesterday. Who’s fault is it? Why, Turkey’s of course.

More bins needed at Gallipoli: PM

Mr Howard continues to defend the thousands of young Australians who treated the site of the landings at Gallipoli as a rubbish tip and says the Turkish authorities should put bins there next year. “This area of Gallipoli does not normally have to cope with such large numbers of people,” he told ABC radio in Athens where he travelled yesterday following Anzac Day in Turkey.

“OK, there weren’t a large number of rubbish bins there, whether we can organise that next year or not, that’s a matter for the Turkish authorities, we don’t own or run the place. “In the absence of there being rubbish bins, to criticise people in the way they have been criticised is very unreasonable and to ignore the fact that in our own country after major events we leave rubbish lying around.

“My experience was that the young Australians behaved magnificently.” He even refused to condemn the behaviour of the many Australians who were photographed at Lone Pine cemetery lying on the graves of slain Australian soldiers, sitting on headstones and some even using the headstones as pillows.

“You’ve got to look at the aggregate behaviour of the overwhelming majority of people,” he said. “There was 17,000 people there and the great bulk were young Australians, from what I saw they behaved magnificently… This attempt to brand them as hooligans is so unfair and wrong.”