Gallipoli capacity a guess, says Warren Snowdon

THE government's plan to restrict attendance at the 100th Anzac Day dawn service at Gallipoli in 2015 has been undermined by official assessments that the site can hold almost 50 per cent more people than has been claimed.

A letter written to the Turkish government in 2004 by then veterans affairs minister Danna Vale, and obtained by The Australian, states that the "design limit" for the dawn service site at Gallipoli is 15,000 people, many more than the 10,500 maximum the government is trying to impose.

The higher figure is further supported by a detailed 1999 study by the Department of Veterans Affairs, which also stated that the dawn service site at North Beach "has a capacity of 15,000".


Veteran Affairs Minister Warren Snowdon has claimed that only 10,500 people can safely fit into the dawn service site and that these people will have to be chosen by ballot, meaning many thousands will be unable to attend the historic occasion.

The decision to hold a ballot has been criticised as unAustralian by tour operators who say they have paid-up clients for the 2015 service who will now be locked out by the ballot system.

Mr Snowdon said claims made by his department prior to 2006 about capacity should be ignored, because it had been guessing.

"The advice provided to the then minister Vale regarding a site capacity of the Anzac commemorative site of 15,000 was simply an estimate with no scientific basis," a spokesman for Mr Snowdon told The Australian.

He said that until 2006, when formal wristbanding was introduced, "flawed methods of calculation were used to determine crowd numbers".

The annual report of the Department of Veterans Affairs says that 17,000 people attended the 90th anniversary service in 2005 - a figure the department now says was a "miscalculation". Mr Snowdon's spokesman said the government had no choice but to limit numbers to ensure the safety of the crowd.

"This government has taken a robust investigation into the safe carrying capacity of 10,500, based on rigorous analysis of data and application of international engineering and safety standards."

The government says no more than 10,000 people have attended the Anzac Day dawn service at Gallipoli since 2006, but anywhere between 15,000 to 20,000 people would be expected to attend the centenary commemoration of the 1915 landing.

Mr Snowdon says the government will limit entry for the Anzac Day dawn service to 8000 Australians (as well as 2000 New Zealanders and 500 dignitaries), to be chosen by ballot.

It has not yet released details of how the ballot will be conducted.

Critics say the ballot system will be chaotic, unfair and unworkable, pointing out that the government's stated intention to give priority to direct descendants of Gallipoli veterans is meaningless because there are about a million of them.