Luke Gosling (Solomon, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I too would like to talk about these amazing ladies and gentlemen in the gallery behind me from the Defence and Strategic Studies Course The course is a year-long postgraduate education program with a strong practitioner focus that provides senior military and civilian officials with the knowledge, awareness and skills to operate at the highest levels of leadership, command, policy formulation and management. They have come to see how this place operates.

They come from a range of workplaces—Army, Navy, Air Force, Attorney-General's Department, Defence civilians. There are 48 of them in total; 27 Australians and 21 from other countries all around the world. They are the best of the best; they are the best of their countries; and, from an Australian perspective, they are the future of our Australian Defence Force, the Department of Defence and the Attorney-General's Department.

We have a former commander of Australian submarines, a former commander of the Special Air Services Regiment, a former Australian Defence Attache to Indonesia. We have Indonesian Army officers, a Tongan naval officer, the next chief of staff to the Timor-Leste Defence Force, a former commander of Taskforce Taji in Iraq, Afghanistan veterans, including those who have felt the grief of losing soldiers under their command. They are the best of the best. I commend them to the House.