On Remembrance Day, Australia’s leaders are failing to learn from history

The last post is performed at the Shrine of Remembrance in Melbourne. Photograph: Asanka Ratnayake/Getty Images

It seems inappropriate that politicians have centre stage at moments when Australia and many other countries stop to contemplate what is, now more than ever, the imponderable human cost of war.

This anomaly has never been more pronounced than this Remembrance Day, as political structures, national and global, so manifestly fail to reckon with history’s legacies and stop them repeating.