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Speaker 1: Anthony Moffatt or Harry as you've been known as Welcer

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Speaker 1: to Straight Talk mate.

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Speaker 2: Thank you Mark. Yeah, so pleasure to be here. So I.

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Speaker 1: Like, I always want to know how someone's name goes

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Speaker 1: from Anthony to Harry and your name, of course it Moffatt,

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Speaker 1: But like, tell me how that occurred? How did you

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Speaker 1: get that nickname?

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Speaker 2: Yeah, so Harry came from an old Rodney Rude character.

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Speaker 2: Harry Muff was his name, and a lot of people

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Speaker 2: called me mof so it was Harry moff in the end,

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Speaker 2: and I don't think there was much of a likeness.

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Speaker 2: Wasn't that funny?

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Speaker 3: But who named you?

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Speaker 2: Bloke by the name of Ken Studeley on our essays

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Speaker 2: selection course he made up a poem and a rhyme

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Speaker 2: about everyone. He's one of the funniest guys who you'll meet.

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Speaker 2: And yeah, he was one that gave me the night

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Speaker 2: the name in the part and stuck. It stuck. Yeah,

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Speaker 2: Well you resist these names and they stick hard.

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Speaker 3: I don't they totally. So that would have been in

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Speaker 3: like the eighties, nineteen ninety ninety nine.

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Speaker 1: Yeah, yeah, because I remember Rodney was he had a

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Speaker 1: Radis show on TV show. I also remember Kerry closing

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Speaker 1: his TV one of his programs now actually mid program

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Speaker 1: because carriage isn't like the way he went on. But

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Speaker 1: he was a funny barsad I remember him. And so

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Speaker 1: you're in the mid nineties. You were let's call it

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Speaker 1: trying out whatever the word is for essays.

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Speaker 2: Yeah, attempting essays selection, and it hasn't changed a great

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Speaker 2: deal as anywhere between five hundred and one thousand applicants,

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Speaker 2: they pick one hundred and fifty odd and you go

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Speaker 2: to Perth and out of that we generally get twenty.

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Speaker 2: I still return to the unit today to mentor the

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Speaker 2: new charges coming through, and the numbers haven't changed over time,

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Speaker 2: which is good.

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Speaker 3: So let's say that's in the nineties.

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Speaker 1: He obviously weren't born in nineteen eighty because you would

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Speaker 1: have been too young to be doing this. Were you

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Speaker 1: in the military. What's that process? Joining the military then

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Speaker 1: trying for essas? Were just decided one day at midday

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Speaker 1: I saw the SAS TV shows series on Channel seven

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Speaker 1: or Channel nine where it is, and I decided want

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Speaker 1: to become an essays soldier. I mean, how does that work?

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Speaker 1: I mean you become how do you become? Well, how

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Speaker 1: do you get the instinct and the ambition to join

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Speaker 1: the ESAs.

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Speaker 2: Yeah, it was a spark for me. I was going

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Speaker 2: to be running out of full Ford for Hawthorne football

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Speaker 2: team up until I was twelve years old. That was

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Speaker 2: my dream, or open the opening the batting for Australia.

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Speaker 2: But I saw the images you may remember Princess Gate,

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Speaker 2: the Iranian embassy siege in the UK and nineteen eighty

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Speaker 2: and that flickered across a grainy black and white television

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Speaker 2: set and it just captured my imagination. And I read

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Speaker 2: a bit in those days. I was reading from an

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Speaker 2: early age, and I started reading some books about counter

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Speaker 2: terrorism and anti terrorism. These are that was the golden

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Speaker 2: era in the eighties, you know, the aircraft hijackings and

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Speaker 2: et cetera. So it was in the geist, if you like.

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Speaker 2: It was in the background, and I just thought, whatever

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Speaker 2: they're doing looks awesome and sexy, and they're all dressed

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Speaker 2: in black. And the more I dug, the more I

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Speaker 2: was intrigued and the more I wanted to do it.

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Speaker 2: So I joined that the Army in nineteen eighty six

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Speaker 2: as a regular and when the SAS circus came to

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Speaker 2: town and beat the drums. I signed up and went

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Speaker 2: through started a selection process, pre selection into that one

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Speaker 2: hundred and fifty proper selection, and then you go into

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Speaker 2: a eighteen month odd reinforcement cycle, which is still part

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Speaker 2: of the selection. So it's probably all in a two

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Speaker 2: year process once you're in the system.

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Speaker 1: I wouldn't mind just talking about it because I've always

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Speaker 1: been fascinated with the process of being selected. And I

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Speaker 1: guess you're also self selecting too, because correct you might

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Speaker 1: decide I'm going to drop that as well. It's not

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Speaker 1: just somebody saying you're the dude. You might say I'm

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Speaker 1: not the dude. I want to go back to that

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Speaker 1: in a second.

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Speaker 2: But self selection is a really important part to grew insight.

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Speaker 1: I can imagine because it happens in business too, and

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Speaker 1: people think they're going to be an entrepreneur, but ultimately

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Speaker 1: you self select yourself and or the market will tell

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Speaker 1: you whether you can do it or not. But some

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Speaker 1: people fail to self select out when they should, when

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Speaker 1: they should be getting out. And it's not there's nothing

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Speaker 1: wrong with selecting to get out of these things. Self

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Speaker 1: selecting out, that's just what your instincts telling you. After

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Speaker 1: you've gone through the process. It's not instinct. With our process.

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Speaker 1: Process informs your instinct at the end of the day.

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Speaker 1: But we'll come back to that in a second. Because

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Speaker 1: it seems like you have a view on it, a

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Speaker 1: strong view on it. But you were a like use,

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Speaker 1: I think you said, regular soldier, Yeah, what does that mean?

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Speaker 2: So you just join the ADF you going to any

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Speaker 2: number of cores infantry. I went into signals core. You

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Speaker 2: can be in catering, transport, artillery. And so the regular

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Speaker 2: I suppose process is the military picks you and where

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Speaker 2: you go, whereas the self selection part of the SAS

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Speaker 2: is entirely voluntary and you hand yourself over to them completely.

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Speaker 2: You don't really have much in the way of hands

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Speaker 2: on your own destiny, whereas in the regular army you

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Speaker 2: pick a call, you get put in, and then you

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Speaker 2: start a career, regular career.

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Speaker 1: In that way, it's pretty full on. If you go

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Speaker 1: back forty years, which we are to be, for a

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Speaker 1: young man to be reading articles about or reading articles

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Speaker 1: about war and what's going on in the various territories

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Speaker 1: war territories, it's pretty out there, pretty unusual. I would

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Speaker 1: have thought back then, for because I don't know anybody.

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Speaker 1: I had one mate, Andy Nolan. He became an SS guy.

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Speaker 1: But that's the only person I know, And I don't

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Speaker 1: even know how he became one. But he's just weird

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Speaker 1: shit though. I can to you, Like when it used

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Speaker 1: to rain really heavy down in rose Bay, he used

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Speaker 1: to get into the after after having he's also an architect,

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Speaker 1: but after having left the sas, he used to get

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Speaker 1: in a like a one man canoe and get into

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Speaker 1: the canals when the heavy rain.

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Speaker 3: Was just to test himself, is that right?

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Speaker 1: And go through weird tunnels you think, And like he

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Speaker 1: was the most unassuming person in the world that you

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Speaker 1: would never think he was a morement architect, but he

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Speaker 1: went through the whole process. Yeah, a massive risk taker.

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Speaker 1: And just every now and then when it's a heavy rain.

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Speaker 1: You know, I did see him this is this is

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Speaker 1: back in the eighties. He say, I've just been going

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Speaker 1: down the canals and lunatic.

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Speaker 3: What's wrong with you?

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Speaker 2: Like what.

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Speaker 1: Is wide sort of like effectively rapids because it's filling

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Speaker 1: it with water down rose By and end up out

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Speaker 1: in the harbor somehow. But it's I don't know anyone

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Speaker 1: who thinks this way. Other than him, and now I'm

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Speaker 1: meeting somebody else. What is it that makes you a

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Speaker 1: or having such an inquiring mind that you start rooting

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Speaker 1: me this sort of stuff and then makes you when

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Speaker 1: you mentioned the circus comes to down, you know, the

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Speaker 1: sas recruitment comes to town. What was it that made

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Speaker 1: you feel as though, yeah, this is for me, I'm

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Speaker 1: going to have a crack at this.

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Speaker 2: Yeah, I've thought about this, and we've studied this in

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Speaker 2: fact in the unit. But I resolve my thinking to

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Speaker 2: it's an internal competitiveness, as an internal drive, which you

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Speaker 2: would be very familiar with. It happens in the business

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Speaker 2: what I see it in the business world in sports,

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Speaker 2: and I think when the essays in particular, it's it's

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Speaker 2: the opportunity to test yourself to see if you have

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Speaker 2: what it takes. And you're not impressing anyone at that

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Speaker 2: stage because no one really knows about it. It's very

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Speaker 2: done in house, very much. But it's that just that

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Speaker 2: drive to see you do I have what it takes?

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Speaker 2: You know? And the more you read you go you

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Speaker 2: think you question yourself, you know, is this would I

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Speaker 2: would this suit me? And that kind of in a

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Speaker 2: way attracts you even more some of the common characteristics

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Speaker 2: that I've observed over time, high tolerance to ambiguity, and

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Speaker 2: an appetite for risk taking. But it's generally quite measured.

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Speaker 2: They kept within the informed risk informed, and also a

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Speaker 2: competence level of risk within your own competence. You have

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Speaker 2: a good sound understanding of the scope and limit of

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Speaker 2: your scope and limitations.

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Speaker 1: So it's not much as so are you saying though

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Speaker 1: it's not reckless.

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Speaker 2: I would say that, although.

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Speaker 1: In other words, it's not like And that's actually quite

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Speaker 1: an interesting point because I noticed in the briefing that

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Speaker 1: I got that, you know, a lot of the stuff

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Speaker 1: you talk about your book is the Fourth Pillar, your

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Speaker 1: most recent book, the Fourth Pillar. But one of the

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Speaker 1: things I noticed in the description of the book is

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Speaker 1: modern Stoicism. So you know, what's interesting to me anyway,

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Speaker 1: is that you just mentioned the word reckless. And we'll

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Speaker 1: come back to that. And one of the headings of

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Speaker 1: your book is Stoicism. And the Stoicism, of course, is

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Speaker 1: a you know, thousands of year old virtue, you know,

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Speaker 1: like going right back to the Stoics, and Aristotle talked

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Speaker 1: about stoicism, but you talked about recklessness and then there's

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Speaker 1: a an Aristotle himself talked about the difference between courage

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Speaker 1: and recklessness is somewhere in between the two, the gold,

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Speaker 1: the gold what he called gold mean, it's not in

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Speaker 1: the middle, it's somewhere else.

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Speaker 3: And for each individual it's different for everybody else.

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Speaker 1: Someone might be closer to recklessness, and someone might be

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Speaker 1: closest closer to courage. But it's definitely not recklessness. In

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Speaker 1: other words, it's not and fearless is different to courage.

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Speaker 1: And do they in the when you're training for the sas,

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Speaker 1: do they go through this virtue type deal to start

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Speaker 1: talking to you about these old school things that our

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Speaker 1: old school I don't mean that in a disrespectful way,

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Speaker 1: but old school virtues. Do you talk about these things stoicism, recklessness, courage,

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Speaker 1: blah blah blah.

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Speaker 2: We do now and back then it really was a

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Speaker 2: matter of survival. And so if you were tough enough

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Speaker 2: to wait it out, to run it out, to just

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Speaker 2: persist and in a very pure stoic fashion, you know,

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Speaker 2: just to be able to persist and put up with it.

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Speaker 2: Stand your ground, stand your ground, don't complain. In fact,

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Speaker 2: no one's listening anyway. It's a nail feedback environment, which

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Speaker 2: is very, very harsh, and that's what makes something like

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Speaker 2: tolerance to ambiguity very such a valuable measuring or measure

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Speaker 2: of someone who's suitable.

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Speaker 3: For virtue words tolerance.

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Speaker 2: Yeah and so, yeah, and you do you need to survive.

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Speaker 2: But these days I actually go back and teach applied

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Speaker 2: ethics to our junior operators, not only for the moral

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Speaker 2: challenges that they will face in their careers, you know, physical, mental,

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Speaker 2: and moral in service. But back in those days, it

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Speaker 2: was how how how hard you could go for how long,

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Speaker 2: and what you could tolerate and put up with. So

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Speaker 2: there's there's two kind of sides to that coin. My

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Speaker 2: generation is the pure stoic, just put up with it

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Speaker 2: and keep persisting. These days we have a more virtue

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Speaker 2: approach to it, because we realize now that servicing this

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Speaker 2: this kind of these kinds of units has a moral

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Speaker 2: toll as well, and that gets mixed up with the

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Speaker 2: mental health toll that it takes on people, or.

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Speaker 1: With the final outcome, you know, like because you know,

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Speaker 1: you don't want people being all these things and then

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Speaker 1: walk out and their and their careers finished, and all

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Speaker 1: of a sudden there are a wreck.

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Speaker 2: Yeah, but inside that's correct exactly. And I'm as a

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Speaker 2: psychologist now, I spend a fair bit of time in that.

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Speaker 2: But I guess at the start of an sas soldier's journey,

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Speaker 2: what we want is to give some guidance around what

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Speaker 2: is reckless and what is controlled and informed. And I

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Speaker 2: think we always want to select people who are probably

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Speaker 2: going to lean towards the reckless part because some of

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Speaker 2: the nature of the work is such that it's high risk,

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Speaker 2: high consequence, catastrophic consequences not only for ourselves but for

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Speaker 2: the people around us. So we need people to be

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Speaker 2: willing to step into that space without question, without being afraid,

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Speaker 2: a feared, or or without hesitation in most cases. So

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Speaker 2: we want people who are probably that side of it.

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Speaker 2: But I think the golden mean of Aristotle, if you will,

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Speaker 2: it's a navigable space. What we also want is people

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Speaker 2: to come back to a normal setting, a civilian setting,

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Speaker 2: and readjust those parameters as well, And that takes a

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Speaker 2: certain kind of person. We don't always get right, but

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Speaker 2: I think we're pretty bloody good at it.

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Speaker 1: So recently Donald Trump announced and Peter X announced that

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Speaker 1: they're going to change their Department of defense to the

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Speaker 1: Department of War and got all sorts of reactions around

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Speaker 1: the world. And initially I thought to myself that might

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Speaker 1: be good for recruitment, because recruitment is a big deal.

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Speaker 1: For we don't have national service, and so recruitment is

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Speaker 1: really a big deal important to have recruits. It's not

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Speaker 1: saying you the whole country to join the army or

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Speaker 1: whatever it is, whatever the military is, but you definitely

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Speaker 1: want you've got to recruit and or retain as well.

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Speaker 1: And maybe that has a bit of marketing appeal to it.

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Speaker 1: But how does that fit into the narrative in a

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Speaker 1: modern day, modern day in terms of the types of

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Speaker 1: people might attract.

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Speaker 2: Do you think, yeah, I think it's it can be

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Speaker 2: a concern, and particularly in a nation like America where

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Speaker 2: they're in a marshall footing your martial kind of culture.

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Speaker 2: Australia not so much. I'm not sure it would fly

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Speaker 2: well here. I get I get the idea we want

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Speaker 2: to be proactive, I guess, and maybe at war rather

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Speaker 2: than being defensive and on the back foot. And I

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Speaker 2: heard a bit more and I think I've punched out

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Speaker 2: a semi poem or something like that to Romance Donald

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Speaker 2: but I don't know that it would make a marked

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Speaker 2: difference on recruiting. That would be have to play out.

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Speaker 2: I think what's important to state is during times of peace,

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Speaker 2: recruiting naturally goes down. You know, the boys that turn

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Speaker 2: out to want to go on the adventures and go

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Speaker 2: to war seem to spike when that's imminent or in

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Speaker 2: the in the news. I've had a few people say

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Speaker 2: or ask me the question. You know it means Australian

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Speaker 2: Defense Force in trouble and recruitings down and all the

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Speaker 2: rest of But I'd say, look, you know, it's never

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Speaker 2: as bad as it seems, never as good as it seems,

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Speaker 2: and we probably need a more moderate conversation about it.

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Speaker 2: But it's a lot of money to sustain a standing

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Speaker 2: army that's not doing anything and not going anywhere. And

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Speaker 2: if the example I give is at the end of

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Speaker 2: World War One, a lot of the old guys were

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Speaker 2: saying because a lot of men we died in World

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Speaker 2: War One, and they were having a shot at the

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Speaker 2: next generation coming through, saying they're all soft and weak,

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Speaker 2: and you know they need to be trained up, and

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Speaker 2: things like scouts and outward bound and you know these

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Speaker 2: will will forced and all of these other things were

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Speaker 2: invented to make to toughen up the next generation. And

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Speaker 2: when the sixteen and eighteen year olds went off to

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Speaker 2: Kokoda Track, they did a pretty bloody good job. And

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Speaker 2: the young charges I see come into contact with regularly.

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Speaker 2: I think Australia's in good stead. I don't think we

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Speaker 2: should panic. If we do need to raise an army,

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Speaker 2: we'll do so. Capability is still strong. This is the

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Speaker 2: time to spend a bit of money on the on

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Speaker 2: the hardware. And I think hardware being tech, yeah, tech

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Speaker 2: and hardware and some decent chips and things like that. Yeah,

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Speaker 2: But I think Australia, I think we should just calm

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Speaker 2: the farm a little bit. On that. I think Australian

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Speaker 2: the essence of the Australian soldiers still here and will

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Speaker 2: serve our country well come the time.

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Speaker 1: So do you think that essence that you're talking about

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Speaker 1: cuts across Australian Australian values?

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Speaker 3: Do you think? Because is that essence and Australian value.

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Speaker 1: And given our immigration and our change in the sort

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Speaker 1: of the makeup of our nation, and it's rapidly changing,

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Speaker 1: probably faster now than has ever done. As past in

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Speaker 1: terms of cultural changes, sense of nationalism, perhaps religious relationships,

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Speaker 1: like at one stage pretty much a Christian nation.

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Speaker 3: These days we're much more mixed.

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Speaker 1: Then there's conflict overseas relative to some of the some

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Speaker 1: of the religions relative to other religions, and that's pretty

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Speaker 1: obviously we'll be talking about who might be talking.

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Speaker 3: About we're thinking about at the moment. Do you think

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Speaker 3: these things will.

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Speaker 1: Ultimately create a bit of a chasm in our armed

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Speaker 1: forces military?

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Speaker 2: Yeah, potentially. I think there's parts of the military which

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Speaker 2: have been maybe distracted by what's going out on going

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Speaker 2: on out in society. So I give that. But to

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Speaker 2: feel and have a strong standing Australian Army, we need

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Speaker 2: about one hundred thousand people and I think there's well

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Speaker 2: inside that many to service our military. And we'll always

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Speaker 2: remember we're a small nation. Our GDP and defense is tiny.

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Speaker 2: It's probably the budget of the first Marine Division and

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Speaker 2: we're now one of Americas if not biggest aircraft carrier

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Speaker 2: and the Marines increasing in numbers. So I think again

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Speaker 2: there are challenges, there's no doubt mark from a broader

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Speaker 2: society perspective, but I think I would like to see

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Speaker 2: the kind of margins and the fringes. Discussions that I

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Speaker 2: see in the veteran community go on just kind of

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Speaker 2: keep our power to dry. I think we should take

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Speaker 2: comfort that we will still be able to raise a

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Speaker 2: strong army that's that will do its job.

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Speaker 3: So do we need I mean, there's probably more war

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Speaker 3: strategy question.

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Speaker 1: And you know, I don't know if I'm oversetting the

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Speaker 1: marqu here, but because you're you're on the ground guy.

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Speaker 3: You're the guy who.

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Speaker 1: Goes and does stuff like it's more tactical than you

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Speaker 1: undertake a strategy outcome, but you're going to have to

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Speaker 1: make changes.

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Speaker 2: This is a strategic tool, a strategy.

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Speaker 3: Go in there, but you've got to make changes.

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Speaker 1: This didn't more get the way we wanted to work,

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Speaker 1: and we've got to do this tactically and then make

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Speaker 1: some quick change, a quick thinking.

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Speaker 3: And as a group, do you think that we need

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Speaker 3: as many.

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Speaker 1: Regular soldiers, regular military people as we have done in

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Speaker 1: the past, Given I'm not too sa I'm not talking

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Speaker 1: about specialized people. I'm talking about regular guys and girls.

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Speaker 1: Do you think we need as many these days? Given

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Speaker 1: what's going on, giving the giving, given what we see

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Speaker 1: in Ukraine, what we're seeing in various other places what's

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Speaker 1: going on in the world at the moment as we

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Speaker 1: have needed in the past, in other words, drones and

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Speaker 1: all those other things.

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Speaker 3: Is the World War potentially more technological?

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Speaker 2: Well, definitely got technological very quickly back in the US

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Speaker 2: Civil War, you know, So that doesn't change. I think

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Speaker 2: that's expected strategically no matter what conflict we're going to.

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Speaker 2: There's probably a good point to make here around the

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Speaker 2: type of war that we might be engaged in. The

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Speaker 2: wars that we've had recently and arguably since the end

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Speaker 2: of World War Two have been wars of choice. Really,

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Speaker 2: they haven't been wars that we've been invaded or we've

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Speaker 2: chosen to a company America or a coalition or UK

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Speaker 2: and they've been choice. They've been largely wars of choice.

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Speaker 2: So they have a different a different context and a

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Speaker 2: different requirement, especially when we're being asked for certain capabilities

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Speaker 2: to travel overseas. And then there's wars like Ukraine, where

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Speaker 2: that's not a war of choice for Ukraine, that's a

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Speaker 2: war that arrives on one's doorstep and you need to

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Speaker 2: do whatever you've got to do. And I don't think

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Speaker 2: it's controversial to say that they find themselves in a

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Speaker 2: pretty conventional situation and they need warm bodies. It kind

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Speaker 2: of comes down to that, Yeah, the technology matters, and

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Speaker 2: it's been amazing to watch that, hasn't it That the

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Speaker 2: adaptation and the little drone shops underground and whatnot have

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Speaker 2: been fascinated by that. That's just human adaptability. But at

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Speaker 2: the end of the day, they need warm bodies defending

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Speaker 2: a line dug in and it takes you back to well,

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Speaker 2: the US Civil War, you know, where they started digging

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Speaker 2: in and and that's kind of that was the precursor.

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Speaker 1: So it takes me back to Breaking Rand. The first

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Speaker 1: thing I think of, remember the Australian movie Breaking Around,

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Speaker 1: I do, yeah, And I think that was like in

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Speaker 1: the Boer War or something it was, and which is

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Speaker 1: like eighteen ninety or somewhere in center anyway, and we're

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Speaker 1: very famous movie for those people who haven't watched a

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Speaker 1: great movie, one of the great films.

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Speaker 3: At Australia.

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Speaker 1: Government was actually able to well southtrat Gun was able

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Speaker 1: to help one, but they were they were sitting in

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Speaker 1: trenches and in those days communication was done by a runner.

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Speaker 2: That's right. Now communication might be slightly different, but well,

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Speaker 2: interestingly in the Ukraine k phones so it's landline.

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Speaker 3: Yeah, yeah, it's like a box with the that's what

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Speaker 3: I call it.

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Speaker 2: And they're targetable and they're being used because there's electronic

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Speaker 2: magnetic pulses and all this type of stuff being used

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Speaker 2: blanketing out communications conventional communicator. There's runners are being used still,

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Speaker 2: and notes and notes. So in the in the in

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Speaker 2: the short in the battle space, the forward edge of

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Speaker 2: the battle area, the fever as it was called, in

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Speaker 2: those trenches, there's notes and runners being used between pits

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Speaker 2: and those types of things. So comm's cord you might

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Speaker 2: never have heard of that, but three tugs means safe

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Speaker 2: to come and too. So all this these in a

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Speaker 2: conventional war that's not of our choosing, you don't get

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Speaker 2: to use the full remit of technology and capability because

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Speaker 2: there's an enemy that's just the equal of yours.

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Speaker 1: Certainly going to make that bing that yeah, you can't make,

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Speaker 1: you can't meet that, you can't make any other presumption

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Speaker 1: because more likely you could be wrong.

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Speaker 2: And the gravity of that is a big deal exactly.

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Speaker 2: And so those wars of choice that I've been involved in.

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Speaker 3: And so which was have you been where have you

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Speaker 3: gone to? So I served in the.

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Speaker 2: Big Three team or Afghanistan and Iraq over eleven over

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Speaker 2: a period about a dozen deployments and then other missions

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Speaker 2: and other activities around them.

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Speaker 3: And what was your role?

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Speaker 2: So I started off as a six ICEE and then

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Speaker 2: end up running what's that? A trooper? So I was

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Speaker 2: in a team and I was the shipkicker, the junior

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Speaker 2: guy in nineteen ninety one, and then I was in

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Speaker 2: the unit until pretty much until twenty seventeen. In twenty fifteen,

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Speaker 2: I finished up on the teams as a team commander

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Speaker 2: or our bravo, the senior sergeant role in the.

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Speaker 1: We're talking says correct? So what would your maybe the

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Speaker 1: role is probably not the right word. What would your

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Speaker 1: function be of your unit? Would be to go and

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Speaker 1: do something, catch someone as surveillance what would have been?

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Speaker 2: Yeah, all of those things and more so. We were

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Speaker 2: special missions unit, so we greet or we address missions

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Speaker 2: without precedent. So what's often means that problems and attacks

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Speaker 2: on or threats to the national capability and national interests

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Speaker 2: of Australia without precedents. You know, whether that's by terrorists,

438
00:24:20,720 --> 00:24:26,680
Speaker 2: whether it's technical humans, war fighting, all of those things.

439
00:24:26,760 --> 00:24:30,040
Speaker 2: So I've worked everything from one up by myself in

440
00:24:30,440 --> 00:24:35,600
Speaker 2: the streets of some shitty a city in the world,

441
00:24:36,600 --> 00:24:39,160
Speaker 2: to what would your mission be with the captive someone

442
00:24:39,240 --> 00:24:43,520
Speaker 2: or to watch them be surveillance or something along those lines,

443
00:24:44,760 --> 00:24:50,520
Speaker 2: to related to information and people, and then everything through

444
00:24:50,600 --> 00:24:53,600
Speaker 2: to working is a thirty man troupe on a more

445
00:24:53,960 --> 00:25:01,840
Speaker 2: conventional direct attack or direct a more direct active jumping

446
00:25:01,880 --> 00:25:05,240
Speaker 2: out of helicopters and blowing things in the essays gets

447
00:25:05,320 --> 00:25:08,000
Speaker 2: a bit confused at times by the imagery we see

448
00:25:08,320 --> 00:25:11,600
Speaker 2: movies and the movies, yeah, and it makes us look

449
00:25:11,840 --> 00:25:17,680
Speaker 2: very one dimensional, but we're not where, We're anywhere anything anytime,

450
00:25:18,080 --> 00:25:21,480
Speaker 2: force and everything that that encapsulates.

451
00:25:23,080 --> 00:25:25,840
Speaker 1: Do you have to in the course to become apart

452
00:25:25,840 --> 00:25:27,159
Speaker 1: from be able to prove that you know you can

453
00:25:28,000 --> 00:25:29,280
Speaker 1: you know you're not going to panic when you get

454
00:25:29,359 --> 00:25:31,520
Speaker 1: go under water or whatever those things you see in

455
00:25:31,560 --> 00:25:35,960
Speaker 1: the TV shows, apart from those things. In the learning process,

456
00:25:36,080 --> 00:25:38,280
Speaker 1: do they what skills do they teach you apart from

457
00:25:38,320 --> 00:25:39,800
Speaker 1: how to shoot and all those sort of things, but

458
00:25:40,440 --> 00:25:45,080
Speaker 1: obviously combat whatever, But what other skills they teach, like

459
00:25:45,280 --> 00:25:48,320
Speaker 1: engineering skills or you do a little bit of everything.

460
00:25:48,200 --> 00:25:52,040
Speaker 2: Yeah, a little bit of everything like computer skills, code writing,

461
00:25:52,760 --> 00:25:59,760
Speaker 2: language skills right up to paramedicine, surgery, all the weapons,

462
00:26:00,040 --> 00:26:02,760
Speaker 2: all the things that go bang. We do your high

463
00:26:02,760 --> 00:26:06,160
Speaker 2: altitude parachuting, which is everything. If you can imagine, as

464
00:26:06,600 --> 00:26:10,120
Speaker 2: at its extreme, jumping from an airplane at twenty five

465
00:26:10,160 --> 00:26:13,240
Speaker 2: thousand feet at night wearing five hundred kilos worth a

466
00:26:13,320 --> 00:26:16,320
Speaker 2: kit sounds like a lot. It's a lot, and you're

467
00:26:16,359 --> 00:26:20,840
Speaker 2: jumping on oxygen. So it's a highly technical, highly high

468
00:26:20,960 --> 00:26:28,879
Speaker 2: risk event. To rebreathing underwater, rebreathing diving underwater and submarine release.

469
00:26:29,560 --> 00:26:32,320
Speaker 2: And one thing Australia is really well renowned for is

470
00:26:32,359 --> 00:26:38,120
Speaker 2: our long range vehicle patrols and capability and those three

471
00:26:38,200 --> 00:26:41,119
Speaker 2: things amongst others. There really only means to get to

472
00:26:41,200 --> 00:26:44,880
Speaker 2: the job. The majority of the SAS work is done

473
00:26:45,119 --> 00:26:50,440
Speaker 2: in infill and extraction. The job itself is a whole

474
00:26:50,480 --> 00:26:53,040
Speaker 2: other set of skills, and that's whether we take the

475
00:26:53,200 --> 00:26:58,119
Speaker 2: expert and get them there safely, or we bring the

476
00:26:58,200 --> 00:27:02,280
Speaker 2: skills and execute the mission on the ground as required.

477
00:27:02,400 --> 00:27:06,760
Speaker 1: Are you're talking about that that transport vehicle that we've

478
00:27:07,040 --> 00:27:08,800
Speaker 1: come from, the name of it. Now we've sent quite

479
00:27:08,800 --> 00:27:10,800
Speaker 1: a few of them to the Ukraine, I think, oh.

480
00:27:10,760 --> 00:27:15,159
Speaker 2: Yeah, yeah, the as labs I think itself either, but

481
00:27:15,480 --> 00:27:17,480
Speaker 2: so we but astraight as good at building those things.

482
00:27:17,600 --> 00:27:20,280
Speaker 3: Is it because of our train H yeah?

483
00:27:20,320 --> 00:27:22,879
Speaker 2: I think so. I think they we We were getting

484
00:27:23,320 --> 00:27:27,119
Speaker 2: I D strikes in Afghanistan regularly and surviving a lot

485
00:27:27,160 --> 00:27:28,800
Speaker 2: of them. So I think there was a I think

486
00:27:28,840 --> 00:27:31,840
Speaker 2: there was a technology that just evolved in a local

487
00:27:32,200 --> 00:27:35,480
Speaker 2: place and that's had a asymmetric kind of impact or

488
00:27:36,280 --> 00:27:38,920
Speaker 2: certainly interest from around the world, and that technology spread.

489
00:27:38,960 --> 00:27:43,040
Speaker 2: It's just v shaped holes, so I guess.

490
00:27:43,160 --> 00:27:46,520
Speaker 3: At the bottom of the Yeah, the transport machine.

491
00:27:46,200 --> 00:27:48,200
Speaker 2: It still goes bang inside. I don't know that. But

492
00:27:49,119 --> 00:27:51,440
Speaker 2: but the vehicles, it's it's survivable.

493
00:27:51,520 --> 00:27:56,840
Speaker 1: Morphs dispersus the vibration impact, the impact. So because you

494
00:27:57,000 --> 00:27:59,879
Speaker 1: experience it yourself, ID is that's right?

495
00:28:00,240 --> 00:28:04,679
Speaker 2: In two thousand I unfortunately it was in two thousand

496
00:28:04,680 --> 00:28:07,760
Speaker 2: and eight drove over an I D which turned out

497
00:28:08,000 --> 00:28:10,920
Speaker 2: what we think was an old Russian anti tank mine

498
00:28:10,960 --> 00:28:14,520
Speaker 2: that was remote detonated, and a colleague of mine was

499
00:28:14,600 --> 00:28:19,000
Speaker 2: killed beside me, and our interpreter lost effectively lost both

500
00:28:19,040 --> 00:28:22,080
Speaker 2: of his legs in the blast. I was very traumatic,

501
00:28:22,200 --> 00:28:26,000
Speaker 2: and you know, it's remarkable to think out of the

502
00:28:26,160 --> 00:28:29,560
Speaker 2: dozens of strikes that we had in Afghanistan on the

503
00:28:29,640 --> 00:28:34,639
Speaker 2: cars that we drove, very few deaths. I think we

504
00:28:34,960 --> 00:28:37,280
Speaker 2: really had. We had two or three, I think it

505
00:28:37,440 --> 00:28:40,880
Speaker 2: was over that time. A lot of injuries, et cetera,

506
00:28:41,000 --> 00:28:44,320
Speaker 2: but high survivability. They went to vehicles we had. We

507
00:28:44,440 --> 00:28:46,040
Speaker 2: had our own set of vehicles.

508
00:28:46,120 --> 00:28:47,720
Speaker 3: And what happened to you? Did any happen to you?

509
00:28:48,360 --> 00:28:50,880
Speaker 2: Yeah? I had fragged through the back of both legs

510
00:28:50,920 --> 00:28:53,520
Speaker 2: and burnt. Actually the force blew a boot off of

511
00:28:53,600 --> 00:28:56,160
Speaker 2: an army bootoff, just to give give you an idea

512
00:28:56,240 --> 00:28:58,960
Speaker 2: of the force, which I don't need much idea, really,

513
00:28:59,000 --> 00:29:04,200
Speaker 2: I guess. And I was actually okay. I had a

514
00:29:04,240 --> 00:29:06,880
Speaker 2: bit of surgery and came back to the troop. But

515
00:29:08,200 --> 00:29:11,880
Speaker 2: I contracted an infection. Most of Afghanistans covered in human

516
00:29:12,000 --> 00:29:13,960
Speaker 2: feces and animal feces.

517
00:29:13,840 --> 00:29:19,720
Speaker 3: Really and yeah, well you know, leveraging systems.

518
00:29:20,000 --> 00:29:24,440
Speaker 2: They haven't had a huge sanitary advance there. But and

519
00:29:24,520 --> 00:29:26,600
Speaker 2: they use a fertilizer actually, be fair to them, they

520
00:29:26,680 --> 00:29:30,240
Speaker 2: use they reuse it for fertilizer. These are pretty humble existences.

521
00:29:31,840 --> 00:29:34,120
Speaker 2: And so I got a staff infection, a goal and

522
00:29:34,200 --> 00:29:37,320
Speaker 2: staff infection that kind of got up into my Yeah,

523
00:29:37,680 --> 00:29:40,160
Speaker 2: it started there and I had to be repatriating in

524
00:29:40,200 --> 00:29:42,880
Speaker 2: the end because it just that my testicles were swollen

525
00:29:42,960 --> 00:29:45,840
Speaker 2: up to the size of a soccer ball and that

526
00:29:45,960 --> 00:29:50,040
Speaker 2: started to get into my thoracic cavity and they were

527
00:29:50,160 --> 00:29:52,920
Speaker 2: they were going to remove my leg, but they got

528
00:29:52,960 --> 00:29:55,800
Speaker 2: into some heavy drugs back in in Perth. I was

529
00:29:55,840 --> 00:29:59,640
Speaker 2: back just in time, thankfully, and over weeks it calm down.

530
00:30:00,160 --> 00:30:03,600
Speaker 1: And would that have been a signal to you maybe

531
00:30:03,640 --> 00:30:06,120
Speaker 1: it's time and how to hanging the boots up a bit?

532
00:30:06,880 --> 00:30:10,640
Speaker 2: Yeah, well I was. I was forty at that age.

533
00:30:10,840 --> 00:30:14,200
Speaker 3: Is there a retirement age do they forty?

534
00:30:14,240 --> 00:30:17,000
Speaker 2: Is it? There's two retirement ages. One is around fifty

535
00:30:17,080 --> 00:30:19,200
Speaker 2: five or so, yeah, and the other ones, the more

536
00:30:19,280 --> 00:30:22,960
Speaker 2: realistic one is when the young fellas say, Harry Off,

537
00:30:24,720 --> 00:30:26,680
Speaker 2: you were a bit slow, and a few times towards

538
00:30:26,800 --> 00:30:28,720
Speaker 2: end and my time, the guys did turn around say mate,

539
00:30:28,720 --> 00:30:29,520
Speaker 2: you're looking a bit slow.

540
00:30:30,120 --> 00:30:30,480
Speaker 3: Oh really?

541
00:30:30,560 --> 00:30:32,880
Speaker 2: Yeah, yeah, that's and you do straight up and your

542
00:30:32,920 --> 00:30:35,560
Speaker 2: ego wants not to hear that. But slow in terms

543
00:30:35,560 --> 00:30:37,480
Speaker 2: of keeping up, you mean, yeah, definitely keeping up. You

544
00:30:37,840 --> 00:30:41,200
Speaker 2: remember the backpack on absolutely, yeah, when you're getting gunshots,

545
00:30:41,240 --> 00:30:44,320
Speaker 2: fighter you need everybody up in the line. And I

546
00:30:44,480 --> 00:30:46,440
Speaker 2: never fell off or let anyone down, but there was

547
00:30:46,600 --> 00:30:48,560
Speaker 2: a sense that it was harder than it should have been.

548
00:30:48,640 --> 00:30:50,440
Speaker 3: And is that their job to tell you that.

549
00:30:50,960 --> 00:30:52,600
Speaker 2: I think it's all about jobs to tell each other

550
00:30:52,680 --> 00:30:55,960
Speaker 2: that it's you know the essays. Regiment's a prison yard

551
00:30:56,040 --> 00:30:59,080
Speaker 2: you get to go home from. It's it's brutal, but

552
00:30:59,240 --> 00:31:01,920
Speaker 2: there's a as am in respect. You don't have to

553
00:31:01,960 --> 00:31:05,040
Speaker 2: be everyone's best friend, but you need to respect the

554
00:31:05,160 --> 00:31:06,920
Speaker 2: fact that the bloke next to you has got what

555
00:31:07,040 --> 00:31:08,800
Speaker 2: it takes to look after you and you'll have your

556
00:31:08,840 --> 00:31:09,560
Speaker 2: back when it matters.

557
00:31:09,640 --> 00:31:10,800
Speaker 3: Sounds like a footy team.

558
00:31:10,880 --> 00:31:13,000
Speaker 2: Yeah, it's a lot like a footy team. I work

559
00:31:13,040 --> 00:31:18,560
Speaker 2: in AFL and NRL teams and it is a familiar environment.

560
00:31:18,160 --> 00:31:19,640
Speaker 1: And you want confidence that the guy next to you

561
00:31:19,800 --> 00:31:20,920
Speaker 1: is not going to leave a gap, or if there

562
00:31:21,000 --> 00:31:22,160
Speaker 1: is a gap, that he's going to close the gap.

563
00:31:24,040 --> 00:31:25,360
Speaker 1: And then he's going to run up the line all

564
00:31:25,400 --> 00:31:27,760
Speaker 1: the time with you, and every time you're up, he's

565
00:31:27,760 --> 00:31:28,320
Speaker 1: going to run up.

566
00:31:28,480 --> 00:31:31,400
Speaker 2: And we want to know too that if you're bleeding

567
00:31:31,440 --> 00:31:33,160
Speaker 2: out in the AO that they're going to do their

568
00:31:33,240 --> 00:31:35,239
Speaker 2: best to get your home as well. You know, that's

569
00:31:35,280 --> 00:31:36,880
Speaker 2: a kind of a commitment that we make to all

570
00:31:36,920 --> 00:31:39,040
Speaker 2: the families when we deploy as well.

571
00:31:39,320 --> 00:31:43,360
Speaker 1: And when you did make this decision to leave, you

572
00:31:43,480 --> 00:31:48,240
Speaker 1: mentioned a couple of times you have psychology qualifications. Did

573
00:31:48,280 --> 00:31:50,840
Speaker 1: you do that during your army period or did you

574
00:31:51,040 --> 00:31:52,680
Speaker 1: decided to go in to psychology after that.

575
00:31:53,440 --> 00:31:58,680
Speaker 2: No. I took some advice of a man I call

576
00:31:58,760 --> 00:32:02,080
Speaker 2: my kind of second far the Gary Kingston. I've mentioned

577
00:32:02,160 --> 00:32:05,680
Speaker 2: him a lot, and in the book he once said

578
00:32:06,240 --> 00:32:09,680
Speaker 2: words the effect of, don't let this place be everything

579
00:32:09,800 --> 00:32:11,160
Speaker 2: you are. You know, it's not all you are.

580
00:32:11,440 --> 00:32:11,840
Speaker 1: You're more.

581
00:32:12,160 --> 00:32:16,920
Speaker 2: And he was a great proponent of educating yourself, whether

582
00:32:16,960 --> 00:32:20,080
Speaker 2: that was tertiary or build a carpentry or whatever it was.

583
00:32:20,200 --> 00:32:22,960
Speaker 2: Do something else, be something else. And I took that

584
00:32:23,080 --> 00:32:26,120
Speaker 2: to heart, so I started studying seriously in the last

585
00:32:26,160 --> 00:32:28,640
Speaker 2: ten years I was in the regiment. So often I

586
00:32:28,680 --> 00:32:33,840
Speaker 2: would joke that I'd have a book from a university

587
00:32:33,920 --> 00:32:36,840
Speaker 2: book out on patrol with us and be reading that

588
00:32:38,000 --> 00:32:39,800
Speaker 2: digging a trench while I was having a break. I'd

589
00:32:39,840 --> 00:32:42,480
Speaker 2: be finishing a Uni degree. And it didn't add any

590
00:32:42,520 --> 00:32:47,000
Speaker 2: way to any any effort overseas. It actually gave me

591
00:32:47,120 --> 00:32:51,160
Speaker 2: a distract, helpful, healthy distraction away from planning all the time.

592
00:32:51,880 --> 00:32:53,920
Speaker 2: And it just so happened in twenty nineteen when I

593
00:32:54,000 --> 00:32:57,840
Speaker 2: left the Defense Force full time the weekend or the

594
00:32:57,880 --> 00:33:00,760
Speaker 2: week after I started, I was qualified and registered as

595
00:33:00,760 --> 00:33:01,760
Speaker 2: a psych and I've been.

596
00:33:02,040 --> 00:33:02,440
Speaker 3: So you did that.

597
00:33:03,120 --> 00:33:05,040
Speaker 1: You do that that whilst you were in the military,

598
00:33:05,160 --> 00:33:09,000
Speaker 1: That's right. Last two is online type call I tended.

599
00:33:09,320 --> 00:33:11,600
Speaker 2: Psychology is a seven year degree, the last three of

600
00:33:11,640 --> 00:33:15,200
Speaker 2: which you need to do face to face supervisions and

601
00:33:15,240 --> 00:33:17,239
Speaker 2: all this type of stuff, so like as in an

602
00:33:17,320 --> 00:33:21,800
Speaker 2: intern type thing exactly. Yeah, And so the military gave

603
00:33:21,880 --> 00:33:24,360
Speaker 2: me a part time gig and helped me do that.

604
00:33:24,600 --> 00:33:26,800
Speaker 2: And the military is pretty forgiving like that.

605
00:33:26,960 --> 00:33:30,040
Speaker 3: But the military is great. I mean, the defense forces

606
00:33:30,120 --> 00:33:30,720
Speaker 3: generally are great.

607
00:33:30,720 --> 00:33:33,560
Speaker 2: That way it is now, Yeah, it is support people. Yeah,

608
00:33:33,560 --> 00:33:34,760
Speaker 2: it's much better these days.

609
00:33:34,760 --> 00:33:35,720
Speaker 3: Is my psychology?

610
00:33:36,680 --> 00:33:38,280
Speaker 2: Well it seemed to make a lot of sense to me.

611
00:33:38,280 --> 00:33:40,920
Speaker 2: It was something else I was interested in. I kind

612
00:33:40,960 --> 00:33:43,280
Speaker 2: of dropped out of UNI after year twelve. I didn't

613
00:33:43,840 --> 00:33:47,040
Speaker 2: I was going to UNI, and then I thought, I'll

614
00:33:47,400 --> 00:33:49,800
Speaker 2: join the army now, or do UNI and then join

615
00:33:49,840 --> 00:33:51,360
Speaker 2: the army. That was the kind of conundrum, and I

616
00:33:51,480 --> 00:33:56,320
Speaker 2: ended up doing the latter, doing the former. But yeah,

617
00:33:56,320 --> 00:33:59,120
Speaker 2: it was a little bit underfinished business. I read a

618
00:33:59,160 --> 00:34:02,520
Speaker 2: lot about psycholog Jean philosophy. They were kind of my staples.

619
00:34:02,560 --> 00:34:05,800
Speaker 2: I found them fascinating, love the stories that went behind them.

620
00:34:06,880 --> 00:34:09,800
Speaker 2: So yeah, it was kind of It's just natural for me.

621
00:34:09,920 --> 00:34:12,239
Speaker 2: It wasn't I felt like and it makes very good

622
00:34:12,400 --> 00:34:16,200
Speaker 2: use of my lived experience. Now when I work with

623
00:34:16,560 --> 00:34:19,759
Speaker 2: mission critical teams or sports teams or hedge funds. I

624
00:34:20,160 --> 00:34:22,040
Speaker 2: love working with hedge funds. I think they have a

625
00:34:22,400 --> 00:34:26,480
Speaker 2: semi very similar vibe to them when they're up and

626
00:34:26,800 --> 00:34:30,239
Speaker 2: running a private capital team or a deal team. You know,

627
00:34:30,280 --> 00:34:32,279
Speaker 2: you've got a dozen young men and women who just

628
00:34:32,320 --> 00:34:34,960
Speaker 2: want to shoot the lights out. It's the few that

629
00:34:35,040 --> 00:34:37,960
Speaker 2: I work with. Sometimes they feel like a footy team.

630
00:34:37,960 --> 00:34:41,680
Speaker 2: There's that kind of camaraderie in the trenches fighting. So

631
00:34:41,800 --> 00:34:45,399
Speaker 2: I think that my background psychology pulls it together, gives

632
00:34:45,440 --> 00:34:48,520
Speaker 2: it an evidence base, and allows me to tell stories

633
00:34:48,600 --> 00:34:54,000
Speaker 2: and share hopefully my small w wisdom with those people.

634
00:34:54,239 --> 00:34:56,840
Speaker 1: So when did you write Because your first book, I

635
00:34:56,880 --> 00:34:59,720
Speaker 1: think this is your first book, eleven bats.

636
00:35:00,320 --> 00:35:02,840
Speaker 2: My mates, Tommy, I should have called a bat's eleven

637
00:35:02,840 --> 00:35:03,920
Speaker 2: because I'm a ship bats.

638
00:35:04,480 --> 00:35:05,959
Speaker 3: But what is that about eleven bats?

639
00:35:05,960 --> 00:35:11,919
Speaker 2: What's it's just an autobiography mark of my journey from Williamstown,

640
00:35:12,200 --> 00:35:16,360
Speaker 2: Victoria to back to Victoria really where I ended up

641
00:35:16,440 --> 00:35:17,680
Speaker 2: end up at the end of that book at the

642
00:35:17,800 --> 00:35:23,080
Speaker 2: mcg doing an Anzac Days speech and the eleven bats.

643
00:35:23,360 --> 00:35:25,359
Speaker 2: It was my habit to take a cricket bat every

644
00:35:26,160 --> 00:35:27,960
Speaker 2: operation that we went on, every tour we went on,

645
00:35:28,280 --> 00:35:29,920
Speaker 2: and a ball, I presume, and a ball, yeah, a

646
00:35:29,920 --> 00:35:32,400
Speaker 2: few balls because they get a bit lost Sean balls.

647
00:35:33,600 --> 00:35:38,680
Speaker 2: And we'd play cricket, you know, and we recreate or

648
00:35:38,719 --> 00:35:41,640
Speaker 2: we'd even gather information. We use them to gather intelligence

649
00:35:41,760 --> 00:35:45,400
Speaker 2: and bricket Yeah, yeah, absolutely. So you build rapport with

650
00:35:45,480 --> 00:35:47,920
Speaker 2: the localists playing game of cricket and they become you

651
00:35:48,280 --> 00:35:51,000
Speaker 2: a layer of an extra layer of defense. Or you

652
00:35:51,080 --> 00:35:53,040
Speaker 2: go up to the street urchins who you know, you've

653
00:35:53,120 --> 00:35:56,120
Speaker 2: thrown them a ball or whatever, let them get you out,

654
00:35:56,960 --> 00:35:59,480
Speaker 2: and you might just say who's who's old mate over there?

655
00:35:59,520 --> 00:36:01,800
Speaker 2: Who's he you know? And they'll look after you. They'll

656
00:36:01,840 --> 00:36:03,640
Speaker 2: come to knocking and doing and saying this such and

657
00:36:03,760 --> 00:36:05,920
Speaker 2: such as bad man, he's back in town and that

658
00:36:06,080 --> 00:36:09,880
Speaker 2: type of stuff. When I was looking after Alfredo Ronaldo

659
00:36:10,040 --> 00:36:13,520
Speaker 2: up in the hills of Malbusi in Team or Less

660
00:36:13,600 --> 00:36:18,600
Speaker 2: Day he was the protagonist and the antagonist he had

661
00:36:18,760 --> 00:36:22,040
Speaker 2: the militia up there. He was the most interviewed person

662
00:36:22,120 --> 00:36:26,320
Speaker 2: on the planet at one stage, CNN, ABC, Fox, everybody

663
00:36:26,440 --> 00:36:28,719
Speaker 2: was coming to interview him, and there was a conga line.

664
00:36:29,560 --> 00:36:31,440
Speaker 2: So we set up this game of cricket and we

665
00:36:31,560 --> 00:36:34,279
Speaker 2: needed to note everybody who came into seem because there

666
00:36:34,280 --> 00:36:37,239
Speaker 2: were spies running everywhere from all corners, from Portugal to

667
00:36:37,480 --> 00:36:41,680
Speaker 2: the US, et cetera, Indonesia and Indonesia, lots of them,

668
00:36:41,880 --> 00:36:45,279
Speaker 2: and so we'd play a game of cricket and everyone

669
00:36:45,440 --> 00:36:48,799
Speaker 2: was forced to stop. We got photos, got a bit

670
00:36:48,840 --> 00:36:54,200
Speaker 2: of narrative from them, fingerprints where we thought there was

671
00:36:54,200 --> 00:36:56,080
Speaker 2: a high threat, would just throw throw them a ball

672
00:36:56,160 --> 00:36:58,080
Speaker 2: or give him a glass or something, just all in

673
00:36:58,160 --> 00:37:01,160
Speaker 2: this of the ball it was, yeah, there was, there

674
00:37:01,239 --> 00:37:02,239
Speaker 2: was all that kind of carry on.

675
00:37:02,320 --> 00:37:05,520
Speaker 1: So that was your sort of is your go to

676
00:37:05,960 --> 00:37:08,400
Speaker 1: eleven bats being a cricket side, that's right, eleven men

677
00:37:09,200 --> 00:37:13,600
Speaker 1: eleven bats. But you've played around with that because is

678
00:37:13,640 --> 00:37:16,680
Speaker 1: that something that was that you can that was your

679
00:37:16,719 --> 00:37:20,440
Speaker 1: common denominator. I guess from most of your deployments.

680
00:37:21,239 --> 00:37:23,479
Speaker 2: Yeah, I came home to cricket, to the apple Cross

681
00:37:23,520 --> 00:37:25,720
Speaker 2: Cricket Club. Who I'm still available for selection?

682
00:37:25,840 --> 00:37:27,640
Speaker 3: There he's calling out.

683
00:37:30,960 --> 00:37:32,800
Speaker 2: Yeah, that was a place to come home and be

684
00:37:33,400 --> 00:37:37,120
Speaker 2: moth not Harry, if that makes sense. And my cricket

685
00:37:37,200 --> 00:37:40,000
Speaker 2: mates grew to unders really deeply understand that, and they

686
00:37:40,040 --> 00:37:42,360
Speaker 2: didn't bug me about my military service. I could just

687
00:37:42,440 --> 00:37:44,520
Speaker 2: come home, be one of the blokes, a handy up

688
00:37:44,600 --> 00:37:48,160
Speaker 2: here into the breeze bowler, a normal human being. And

689
00:37:48,800 --> 00:37:53,320
Speaker 2: I speak emotively about it because it played such a

690
00:37:53,400 --> 00:37:56,440
Speaker 2: massive role in normalizing life for me.

691
00:37:56,600 --> 00:37:57,640
Speaker 3: You know, how does that work?

692
00:37:58,440 --> 00:38:01,279
Speaker 1: One minute, you're in Afghanistan and you're trying to work

693
00:38:01,320 --> 00:38:03,160
Speaker 1: out if someone's going to blow you up or do

694
00:38:03,280 --> 00:38:07,160
Speaker 1: something terrible, and you're seeing all sorts of crazy stuff

695
00:38:08,040 --> 00:38:10,959
Speaker 1: and living with individuals who are.

696
00:38:11,280 --> 00:38:12,479
Speaker 3: Same the same milk.

697
00:38:14,640 --> 00:38:18,640
Speaker 1: Then you come back to Victoria and where everybody is

698
00:38:18,800 --> 00:38:21,919
Speaker 1: just like running the local coffee shop and making baking

699
00:38:21,960 --> 00:38:24,919
Speaker 1: and eggs and digging ditches for as a plumb or whatever,

700
00:38:25,200 --> 00:38:27,879
Speaker 1: and your mates from school, I presume, and you create club.

701
00:38:29,040 --> 00:38:30,839
Speaker 3: How does that transition work?

702
00:38:32,000 --> 00:38:36,360
Speaker 2: It's bizarre, it really is. We talk about being away.

703
00:38:36,680 --> 00:38:39,520
Speaker 2: I ended up referring to being away like being at home,

704
00:38:39,600 --> 00:38:42,280
Speaker 2: and being at home like being away. That was really

705
00:38:42,360 --> 00:38:46,480
Speaker 2: how it felt. That makes so much sense to me. Yeah,

706
00:38:46,800 --> 00:38:50,280
Speaker 2: we go away to the unordered, extraordinary world where things

707
00:38:50,320 --> 00:38:52,879
Speaker 2: that happened shouldn't happen we wish or wish they didn't.

708
00:38:52,880 --> 00:38:54,680
Speaker 2: Then we come back to this ordinary world. You talk

709
00:38:54,719 --> 00:38:56,960
Speaker 2: about post office, milk bars, and.

710
00:38:57,040 --> 00:39:00,720
Speaker 3: It's all structured the morning, get a coffee.

711
00:39:00,960 --> 00:39:05,799
Speaker 2: Control, Yeah, less unless you feel under control. But yeah,

712
00:39:05,880 --> 00:39:11,160
Speaker 2: so I remember being walking the streets of Afar off country,

713
00:39:11,840 --> 00:39:14,960
Speaker 2: being one of the most dangerous jobs I'd been in

714
00:39:16,840 --> 00:39:21,880
Speaker 2: decades or in years, on a Friday night, and I

715
00:39:21,960 --> 00:39:24,319
Speaker 2: knew I was leaving in the morning. We'd finished up,

716
00:39:24,360 --> 00:39:27,000
Speaker 2: I did the handover, got on the plane and got home.

717
00:39:27,080 --> 00:39:30,520
Speaker 2: And on the Sunday, I was sitting at home the

718
00:39:30,600 --> 00:39:33,960
Speaker 2: family dinner in Australia with the kids and Daniel and

719
00:39:34,000 --> 00:39:36,600
Speaker 2: my wife, and we were having broccoli mash s buds

720
00:39:36,640 --> 00:39:39,280
Speaker 2: and lamb chops. That was my welcome home dinner, always

721
00:39:39,360 --> 00:39:43,480
Speaker 2: my favorite dinner. And the kids are arguing and I

722
00:39:43,640 --> 00:39:46,719
Speaker 2: just caught myself thinking, what the fuck, what's just going on?

723
00:39:47,280 --> 00:39:49,440
Speaker 2: My head's still there because I'm going I wonder if

724
00:39:49,480 --> 00:39:52,000
Speaker 2: John I got to mate in time, and I wonder

725
00:39:52,040 --> 00:39:54,200
Speaker 2: if anyone got hurt on the particular part of the

726
00:39:54,239 --> 00:39:56,839
Speaker 2: mission I knew. And it takes a week or two

727
00:39:57,040 --> 00:39:59,800
Speaker 2: just to stop wanting to is everything okay? Do you

728
00:39:59,840 --> 00:40:04,440
Speaker 2: need hand and dure walking the streets or jumping in out?

729
00:40:04,480 --> 00:40:08,160
Speaker 2: So it's a very very hard transition. But my wife

730
00:40:08,239 --> 00:40:11,600
Speaker 2: worked out very early on that I needed to get

731
00:40:11,680 --> 00:40:15,200
Speaker 2: down to the club pretty quick too. That was it

732
00:40:15,360 --> 00:40:19,600
Speaker 2: was a source of tension earlier now in that period,

733
00:40:19,719 --> 00:40:25,120
Speaker 2: but in my career, our marriage. But it's remarkable how

734
00:40:26,440 --> 00:40:29,239
Speaker 2: well that social setting would buffer those It would bring

735
00:40:29,320 --> 00:40:33,399
Speaker 2: me back to Earth's decompression. Absolutely, it's a perfect word

736
00:40:33,520 --> 00:40:36,520
Speaker 2: for it. Yeah, decompressing. So when I go back and

737
00:40:36,600 --> 00:40:39,080
Speaker 2: mentor young men, now, I talk about your third thing,

738
00:40:39,280 --> 00:40:42,080
Speaker 2: your first things, your family, your second things, your vocation,

739
00:40:42,239 --> 00:40:46,680
Speaker 2: and really they get just wound up together inextricably. But

740
00:40:46,800 --> 00:40:49,000
Speaker 2: you need a third, third thing and that is you.

741
00:40:49,000 --> 00:40:52,480
Speaker 2: You know, buger the family, bugger the vocation. Where can

742
00:40:52,560 --> 00:40:56,040
Speaker 2: I go just to be the real identity inside of me?

743
00:40:56,120 --> 00:40:58,600
Speaker 2: Because in a lot of ways, the sas facade, if

744
00:40:58,600 --> 00:41:00,600
Speaker 2: you're not careful, takes over.

745
00:41:00,840 --> 00:41:02,600
Speaker 3: Yeah, you become that you become.

746
00:41:02,440 --> 00:41:07,919
Speaker 2: That and that's let me sound strange, let me say

747
00:41:08,160 --> 00:41:10,600
Speaker 2: that that's not an identity you want to carry around

748
00:41:10,640 --> 00:41:12,520
Speaker 2: with you forever. That's something you want to be able

749
00:41:12,520 --> 00:41:14,719
Speaker 2: to slip in and out of. And that's an agility

750
00:41:14,800 --> 00:41:16,840
Speaker 2: that we talk about now, which is a discussion that

751
00:41:16,920 --> 00:41:19,360
Speaker 2: we never had, and I think it's a really important discussion.

752
00:41:19,960 --> 00:41:25,120
Speaker 1: That's an interesting point in terms of particularly business people

753
00:41:25,440 --> 00:41:30,080
Speaker 1: or people just people generally when it comes to remaining

754
00:41:30,160 --> 00:41:34,640
Speaker 1: relevant to society. If you see that as an important thing,

755
00:41:35,640 --> 00:41:38,080
Speaker 1: that to some extent means that you can then follow

756
00:41:38,160 --> 00:41:41,000
Speaker 1: how society is changing as opposed to just sticking in

757
00:41:41,200 --> 00:41:43,960
Speaker 1: one spot and just being that person you think you are. Like,

758
00:41:44,080 --> 00:41:46,320
Speaker 1: our brain is interesting, and you're, being a psychologist know

759
00:41:46,360 --> 00:41:48,200
Speaker 1: more about this than me. But our brains a very

760
00:41:48,239 --> 00:41:51,560
Speaker 1: interesting in terms of how we build a story about

761
00:41:51,560 --> 00:41:54,200
Speaker 1: ourselves and everything we do and then ends up becoming

762
00:41:54,239 --> 00:41:56,520
Speaker 1: affirmation of the story you built about ourselves.

763
00:41:56,960 --> 00:41:57,480
Speaker 3: And then.

764
00:41:59,440 --> 00:42:03,040
Speaker 1: And then sometimes we end up just living that life

765
00:42:03,120 --> 00:42:07,400
Speaker 1: and get stuck as opposed to making use the plasticity

766
00:42:07,440 --> 00:42:09,480
Speaker 1: of our brain to think of our life.

767
00:42:09,520 --> 00:42:12,160
Speaker 2: I love the words stuck, by the way, it's the

768
00:42:12,239 --> 00:42:16,680
Speaker 2: perfect word stuck in time, stuck in characters, stuck in family,

769
00:42:16,800 --> 00:42:20,400
Speaker 2: stuck in event, or trauma, whatever, whatever.

770
00:42:20,200 --> 00:42:23,360
Speaker 3: It is, including trauma. It's perfect, including trauma, and a

771
00:42:23,400 --> 00:42:24,440
Speaker 3: lot of people suffer from this.

772
00:42:25,800 --> 00:42:28,279
Speaker 1: But you know, our brain does have plasticity, and which

773
00:42:28,400 --> 00:42:31,279
Speaker 1: basically means I can change things and change the story

774
00:42:31,320 --> 00:42:33,680
Speaker 1: about myself and start affirming the news story about myself.

775
00:42:34,120 --> 00:42:36,239
Speaker 1: And people often say to me, ask me about it.

776
00:42:36,320 --> 00:42:38,840
Speaker 1: How do you stay relevant given changes? Like you know,

777
00:42:38,960 --> 00:42:41,120
Speaker 1: one stage, I worked at a law firm and I

778
00:42:41,880 --> 00:42:45,319
Speaker 1: mortgage business and then I'm broadcasting this type of stuff.

779
00:42:45,920 --> 00:42:53,200
Speaker 1: And how important is the willingness for an individual to

780
00:42:53,440 --> 00:42:55,920
Speaker 1: be able to You've done it to be able to.

781
00:42:58,600 --> 00:43:01,960
Speaker 1: I might use it technical term, use our brain to

782
00:43:02,200 --> 00:43:05,439
Speaker 1: actually stay relevant. Not me being relevant to an audio,

783
00:43:05,440 --> 00:43:08,040
Speaker 1: it's just me being relevant to society. What can I

784
00:43:08,200 --> 00:43:12,120
Speaker 1: contribute to my society? Not everybody, but my society. How

785
00:43:12,160 --> 00:43:13,600
Speaker 1: important is that as a technique?

786
00:43:15,440 --> 00:43:18,040
Speaker 2: I think it's very important. And you've a couple of

787
00:43:18,120 --> 00:43:22,040
Speaker 2: things there. You know, the plasticity of the brain is

788
00:43:22,480 --> 00:43:26,040
Speaker 2: a thing these days. It's labile is another term that's

789
00:43:26,160 --> 00:43:31,120
Speaker 2: used that applies to all aspects of us as humans.

790
00:43:31,480 --> 00:43:38,560
Speaker 2: We're never ever static. We're allostatic. We're navigating the world changing.

791
00:43:39,040 --> 00:43:41,120
Speaker 2: You know, we're not a beat of strings or a

792
00:43:41,200 --> 00:43:44,400
Speaker 2: straight linear line. We're kind of Depending on which philosophy

793
00:43:44,440 --> 00:43:47,239
Speaker 2: you want to talk to process theory with Whitehead would

794
00:43:47,239 --> 00:43:50,680
Speaker 2: talk about we're spiraling through space, changing every second, and

795
00:43:50,800 --> 00:43:53,520
Speaker 2: that's true. You know, we're evolving or adapting as we go,

796
00:43:54,040 --> 00:43:57,360
Speaker 2: which is the other point you raise. You are an adaptable,

797
00:43:57,480 --> 00:44:01,960
Speaker 2: highly adaptable person. Not everybody is. There's a biology behind

798
00:44:02,000 --> 00:44:07,520
Speaker 2: our personality and our psychology, and some people are more

799
00:44:08,080 --> 00:44:11,640
Speaker 2: tolerant to ambiguity. You would be someone like that. Founders.

800
00:44:11,680 --> 00:44:14,880
Speaker 2: I find work a lot with founders and also with

801
00:44:15,760 --> 00:44:18,799
Speaker 2: individuals who started their own family offly high net wealth,

802
00:44:18,840 --> 00:44:21,560
Speaker 2: so who might be a bit stuck in their family

803
00:44:21,920 --> 00:44:27,080
Speaker 2: in the wealth and the intergenerational transfer, etc. But founders

804
00:44:27,200 --> 00:44:30,320
Speaker 2: have a high tolerance to ambiguity and they're under the

805
00:44:30,400 --> 00:44:34,400
Speaker 2: same I think, the same risk profile that they can

806
00:44:34,440 --> 00:44:38,280
Speaker 2: get stuck in this persona that they've created for themselves.

807
00:44:38,360 --> 00:44:40,120
Speaker 2: You know, the King of Collins Street or the King

808
00:44:40,160 --> 00:44:44,000
Speaker 2: of Macquarie and the suit and tie and I say, well,

809
00:44:44,200 --> 00:44:45,880
Speaker 2: when was the last time you went and had a

810
00:44:45,920 --> 00:44:48,200
Speaker 2: Friday night at the footy with your mates? Your schoolmates,

811
00:44:48,440 --> 00:44:52,960
Speaker 2: because most of our schoolmates are still good, close community,

812
00:44:53,719 --> 00:44:56,920
Speaker 2: and it's not surprising to hear them say, oh, months ago,

813
00:44:57,040 --> 00:44:58,920
Speaker 2: or I don't really catch up, or I'm too busy,

814
00:44:59,120 --> 00:45:02,640
Speaker 2: or and Mark, i've sat new again. This is your

815
00:45:02,920 --> 00:45:05,480
Speaker 2: area of expertise. But I've been surprised at how many

816
00:45:06,480 --> 00:45:09,680
Speaker 2: I don't know. I'll make a generalization at sixty sixty

817
00:45:09,719 --> 00:45:12,480
Speaker 2: five year old men who've sold their business for a

818
00:45:12,560 --> 00:45:15,080
Speaker 2: life changing amount of money. To some it's twenty million,

819
00:45:15,120 --> 00:45:18,640
Speaker 2: to some it's two hundred million, and their life around

820
00:45:18,719 --> 00:45:22,880
Speaker 2: them behind the facade is atrophied, their relationships of atrophied,

821
00:45:23,320 --> 00:45:27,080
Speaker 2: their health is atrophied, their social connectivity and all that.

822
00:45:27,280 --> 00:45:30,680
Speaker 2: I can go on. And it's and they feel it.

823
00:45:31,000 --> 00:45:34,760
Speaker 2: They feel there like a sense of loss almost or regrets,

824
00:45:34,920 --> 00:45:38,400
Speaker 2: or they it's not as a happy time as they

825
00:45:38,800 --> 00:45:41,160
Speaker 2: had been imagining. I shouldn't laugh, but it's so I

826
00:45:41,200 --> 00:45:43,560
Speaker 2: don't think it's just as real. It's very real, and

827
00:45:43,960 --> 00:45:45,880
Speaker 2: so I don't think it's necessarily just the remit of

828
00:45:47,280 --> 00:45:49,440
Speaker 2: veterans or sports athletes have the same thing.

829
00:45:49,920 --> 00:45:50,120
Speaker 3: Time.

830
00:45:50,400 --> 00:45:53,239
Speaker 2: For every one hundred athletes, one of them will make

831
00:45:53,480 --> 00:45:54,440
Speaker 2: life changing.

832
00:45:54,200 --> 00:45:57,120
Speaker 3: Money and means or become a TV presenter or a.

833
00:45:57,160 --> 00:45:59,600
Speaker 2: TV presenter exactly. But the other ninety nine who have

834
00:45:59,640 --> 00:46:03,719
Speaker 2: sacrife everything to on the on the journey won't have that.

835
00:46:03,960 --> 00:46:07,359
Speaker 2: So this is what do you say to them? Well,

836
00:46:07,440 --> 00:46:09,960
Speaker 2: you've got the very first thing any human needs to

837
00:46:10,000 --> 00:46:11,440
Speaker 2: do if they want to change is do and they

838
00:46:11,440 --> 00:46:14,560
Speaker 2: have check where you at right now? And let's be realistic,

839
00:46:14,640 --> 00:46:15,000
Speaker 2: But at.

840
00:46:14,880 --> 00:46:17,160
Speaker 3: What point before they get to the retirement point?

841
00:46:17,400 --> 00:46:21,120
Speaker 2: Or well, I can only go off when they first

842
00:46:21,200 --> 00:46:25,520
Speaker 2: come to me if I'm working to them, and I

843
00:46:25,719 --> 00:46:27,600
Speaker 2: do a bit more of that than I would have

844
00:46:27,640 --> 00:46:34,640
Speaker 2: expected these days. But yes, a reality check, a fish slabe,

845
00:46:34,680 --> 00:46:38,480
Speaker 2: wake up, you know, let's let's let's where are we at?

846
00:46:38,640 --> 00:46:41,239
Speaker 2: You know? And there's any any number of means. And

847
00:46:41,960 --> 00:46:45,600
Speaker 2: I'm from the Maslow kind of school of psychology where

848
00:46:46,040 --> 00:46:49,960
Speaker 2: I'm not there to provide solutions, and no psychologists should be.

849
00:46:50,560 --> 00:46:53,240
Speaker 2: We're here to get it out of you. As Plato says,

850
00:46:53,480 --> 00:46:56,880
Speaker 2: all information exists within us. It's just us up to

851
00:46:57,040 --> 00:46:59,880
Speaker 2: us to find it. And so I become the mid

852
00:47:00,080 --> 00:47:04,000
Speaker 2: wife to your birthing, your your understanding of yourself. And

853
00:47:04,880 --> 00:47:07,640
Speaker 2: I think with that facade to sometimes and as our

854
00:47:07,680 --> 00:47:12,040
Speaker 2: lives atrophying, behind it the distance with there's a distance

855
00:47:12,120 --> 00:47:14,200
Speaker 2: with ourselves that we create. And you alluded to that

856
00:47:14,320 --> 00:47:17,400
Speaker 2: earlier about how we look for reassurance that we're on

857
00:47:17,480 --> 00:47:20,680
Speaker 2: the right path. And I think when we the soldiers

858
00:47:20,719 --> 00:47:25,520
Speaker 2: that I see, particularly special forces soldiers, if this is

859
00:47:25,560 --> 00:47:28,919
Speaker 2: all they are, this, this, this character, if they don't

860
00:47:29,000 --> 00:47:32,080
Speaker 2: have this kind of deeper sense of connection to community

861
00:47:32,280 --> 00:47:36,960
Speaker 2: or to to citizenry, as the ancient Greeks might put it,

862
00:47:38,040 --> 00:47:41,919
Speaker 2: then it's it's very hard work to kind of pull

863
00:47:41,960 --> 00:47:42,319
Speaker 2: them back.

864
00:47:42,560 --> 00:47:47,000
Speaker 3: Is it a trade off though, between and I have

865
00:47:47,120 --> 00:47:48,840
Speaker 3: no idea, but is it I'm just wondering.

866
00:47:48,920 --> 00:47:51,040
Speaker 1: Is it a trade of between the effectiveness of a

867
00:47:51,719 --> 00:47:55,600
Speaker 1: particularly a specialized soldier like an s a says person

868
00:47:58,160 --> 00:48:04,400
Speaker 1: and there identification of themselves as being this person. Is

869
00:48:04,400 --> 00:48:08,440
Speaker 1: there a trade off between that being really effective at

870
00:48:08,480 --> 00:48:11,759
Speaker 1: their job but therefore as a result of being less

871
00:48:11,800 --> 00:48:15,200
Speaker 1: effective in terms of looking at the bigger picture for

872
00:48:15,280 --> 00:48:18,640
Speaker 1: when the day they retire, And is there a sort

873
00:48:18,680 --> 00:48:22,680
Speaker 1: of a process where it's when they're first starting, they're

874
00:48:22,719 --> 00:48:25,080
Speaker 1: really effective when they're twenty eight, twenty on, whatever the

875
00:48:25,120 --> 00:48:27,200
Speaker 1: age is when they first kick it off, and as

876
00:48:27,239 --> 00:48:30,440
Speaker 1: they start to reach forty, does the army or does

877
00:48:30,480 --> 00:48:33,080
Speaker 1: the defense forces try and do this for them so

878
00:48:33,200 --> 00:48:36,040
Speaker 1: that they just become more effective as a citizen.

879
00:48:36,760 --> 00:48:41,319
Speaker 2: The way I love it mostly, and we haven't done

880
00:48:41,360 --> 00:48:44,560
Speaker 2: a great job of that with my generation, so I

881
00:48:44,680 --> 00:48:48,920
Speaker 2: probably see more people stuck there. In fact, what you're

882
00:48:48,920 --> 00:48:51,560
Speaker 2: talking about is exactly what the book is about. Oh cool,

883
00:48:51,640 --> 00:48:56,040
Speaker 2: it's about the fourth pillar is the philosophical pillar. The

884
00:48:56,840 --> 00:48:59,239
Speaker 2: other three pillars in any high performance program on the

885
00:48:59,280 --> 00:49:04,840
Speaker 2: planet largely around the three pillars physical, psychological, and social pillars.

886
00:49:04,920 --> 00:49:08,200
Speaker 2: And that's whether they mean to or not. That's and

887
00:49:08,360 --> 00:49:10,320
Speaker 2: so the fourth pillar, I argue in the book is

888
00:49:10,600 --> 00:49:16,640
Speaker 2: a philosophical pillar. To your question, we can do both

889
00:49:16,880 --> 00:49:19,640
Speaker 2: at the same time, and we can learn from the Greeks.

890
00:49:19,680 --> 00:49:23,400
Speaker 2: Here the agogies of the ancient Greeks, whether they be

891
00:49:23,560 --> 00:49:29,200
Speaker 2: the Spartans or going back further pre Socratic Heraclitus times,

892
00:49:30,360 --> 00:49:35,520
Speaker 2: when they grew warriors or soldiers, they went off to

893
00:49:35,600 --> 00:49:38,520
Speaker 2: these agogies and they were schoolhouses to train not only

894
00:49:38,640 --> 00:49:45,759
Speaker 2: military martial skills, but they learned erudition, history, geography, They

895
00:49:45,880 --> 00:49:50,320
Speaker 2: learnt storytelling, dance, poetry and the reasons for dance and poetry,

896
00:49:50,440 --> 00:49:55,960
Speaker 2: and they learned about a respect for life, and how

897
00:49:56,040 --> 00:49:59,480
Speaker 2: to take a life, and the respect for that life,

898
00:49:59,520 --> 00:50:03,480
Speaker 2: and how they're not in competition, they're actually mutually inclusive,

899
00:50:04,680 --> 00:50:08,880
Speaker 2: and they learn about how to be a good citizen

900
00:50:08,960 --> 00:50:11,920
Speaker 2: and what that means. The advantage that they had is

901
00:50:12,040 --> 00:50:15,160
Speaker 2: that the warrior cultures were embedded in the society, because

902
00:50:15,160 --> 00:50:19,399
Speaker 2: these are societies on more footings permanently, aren't they if

903
00:50:19,440 --> 00:50:22,600
Speaker 2: you can imagine the Greek societies, and in some ways

904
00:50:22,640 --> 00:50:26,040
Speaker 2: we still are today. But I think that we can

905
00:50:26,160 --> 00:50:28,759
Speaker 2: learn some lessons, and I try to tease that out

906
00:50:28,800 --> 00:50:30,520
Speaker 2: in the book. What are the lessons that we can learn?

907
00:50:31,280 --> 00:50:34,520
Speaker 2: And as I said earlier, when I sit with young

908
00:50:34,640 --> 00:50:37,600
Speaker 2: soldiers now, I try my hardest to make that point

909
00:50:37,680 --> 00:50:39,800
Speaker 2: to them. You know, one of the first conversations I

910
00:50:39,880 --> 00:50:43,279
Speaker 2: have with a young sas soldier is what your plan

911
00:50:43,480 --> 00:50:47,680
Speaker 2: be That there's a twenty five percent chance you'll be

912
00:50:47,760 --> 00:50:51,239
Speaker 2: dead inside ten years. It's not that dramatic, but there's

913
00:50:51,239 --> 00:50:55,360
Speaker 2: a chance, a really high chance you'll be injured with

914
00:50:55,480 --> 00:50:58,359
Speaker 2: a career ending broken back, leg or whatever the case

915
00:50:58,440 --> 00:51:02,279
Speaker 2: may be, or lose a foot or and I and

916
00:51:02,520 --> 00:51:04,759
Speaker 2: so you've got about a fifty percent chance of being

917
00:51:04,800 --> 00:51:08,719
Speaker 2: here after ten years. So you know, what your plan be.

918
00:51:08,920 --> 00:51:11,759
Speaker 2: The reality is that in this room of twenty five

919
00:51:11,840 --> 00:51:14,480
Speaker 2: of you won't be here in three years time due

920
00:51:14,520 --> 00:51:18,440
Speaker 2: to matters outside of your control, because that the job's

921
00:51:18,520 --> 00:51:20,840
Speaker 2: tough like that, and so it's a bit of again

922
00:51:20,840 --> 00:51:22,839
Speaker 2: a fish slab. This is where you're at. You're back

923
00:51:22,880 --> 00:51:25,480
Speaker 2: to the bottom again. You're coming in and we expect

924
00:51:25,560 --> 00:51:30,120
Speaker 2: you to be elite with guns, languages, and technology. We

925
00:51:30,239 --> 00:51:35,040
Speaker 2: also expect you to be elite at personal administration personal life.

926
00:51:36,200 --> 00:51:38,960
Speaker 2: Being connected to the community doesn't mean you have to

927
00:51:39,040 --> 00:51:41,040
Speaker 2: go and serve on boards or anything like that, but

928
00:51:41,160 --> 00:51:41,759
Speaker 2: it just means you have.

929
00:51:41,800 --> 00:51:43,360
Speaker 3: To have a good sense to a member a cricket.

930
00:51:44,920 --> 00:51:49,160
Speaker 2: I think it's as flippant as it sounds crochet cricket

931
00:51:49,239 --> 00:51:52,120
Speaker 2: or Canasta club. As I say, three, get out and

932
00:51:52,280 --> 00:51:56,200
Speaker 2: get let civilians reflect back to you that this is

933
00:51:56,239 --> 00:51:59,000
Speaker 2: what you're coming you. Eventually we have to return to it.

934
00:52:00,280 --> 00:52:01,960
Speaker 1: And I guess what you've got to teach them as

935
00:52:01,960 --> 00:52:05,640
Speaker 1: an openness to be that person. Yeah, because a lot

936
00:52:05,640 --> 00:52:07,120
Speaker 1: of them probably think, no, I can't be that because

937
00:52:07,120 --> 00:52:10,399
Speaker 1: because that might create weakness in me. In my current job,

938
00:52:10,880 --> 00:52:13,840
Speaker 1: my current role is I cannot have any weakness in

939
00:52:13,920 --> 00:52:17,799
Speaker 1: me whatsoever, because I'm going out there against whoever.

940
00:52:17,520 --> 00:52:18,239
Speaker 3: It needed, the enemy.

941
00:52:19,880 --> 00:52:21,840
Speaker 1: But at the same time, I think you can be

942
00:52:22,560 --> 00:52:23,840
Speaker 1: I'd be interested here what you got to say. I

943
00:52:23,880 --> 00:52:26,719
Speaker 1: think you can be open but not be weak. I

944
00:52:26,840 --> 00:52:30,200
Speaker 1: think actually openness to me is a strength. It makes

945
00:52:30,200 --> 00:52:32,880
Speaker 1: you strongsolutely. Yeah, it makes you more of a whole.

946
00:52:32,760 --> 00:52:34,560
Speaker 3: Person, which means you're probably stronger.

947
00:52:34,680 --> 00:52:37,440
Speaker 2: Absolutely, And you want to combine the king and the philosopher.

948
00:52:37,920 --> 00:52:42,120
Speaker 2: You know that the wisdom is embodied in the courage,

949
00:52:42,280 --> 00:52:48,040
Speaker 2: in the ability to be able to switch from compassionate

950
00:52:48,360 --> 00:52:52,799
Speaker 2: father and lover at home to a warrior who can

951
00:52:52,840 --> 00:52:58,120
Speaker 2: be brutal and deliver violence when required. I hope I'm

952
00:52:59,040 --> 00:53:01,640
Speaker 2: a kind of living of that. And the majority of

953
00:53:01,800 --> 00:53:04,480
Speaker 2: sas soldiers that I've served with, I would say embody

954
00:53:04,960 --> 00:53:10,759
Speaker 2: that they're compassionate, good men who are also able to

955
00:53:11,120 --> 00:53:15,880
Speaker 2: do things that they're asked to do in the interests

956
00:53:15,920 --> 00:53:17,680
Speaker 2: of the national national security.

957
00:53:17,760 --> 00:53:21,520
Speaker 3: And so today the sorts of things you do, I

958
00:53:23,000 --> 00:53:25,920
Speaker 3: presume hopefully this is the case you are doing. You

959
00:53:26,000 --> 00:53:27,839
Speaker 3: go and do talks and this sort of stuff. People

960
00:53:27,880 --> 00:53:29,840
Speaker 3: can book you to do a lot of speech, but

961
00:53:29,960 --> 00:53:30,160
Speaker 3: like a.

962
00:53:30,200 --> 00:53:35,920
Speaker 2: Talk to a group, yeah, yeah, do yeah, lecturing. I

963
00:53:36,000 --> 00:53:38,239
Speaker 2: don't do a heap of keynote speaking, but I do

964
00:53:38,360 --> 00:53:41,520
Speaker 2: a bit here and there. For corporates are pretty happy

965
00:53:41,560 --> 00:53:44,320
Speaker 2: to hear or keen to hear the stories. But I

966
00:53:44,400 --> 00:53:46,960
Speaker 2: do spend a lot of time with young soldiers. One

967
00:53:47,000 --> 00:53:49,720
Speaker 2: thing I'd like to do is set up a program

968
00:53:49,840 --> 00:53:54,520
Speaker 2: and an institute where soldiers from all across the journey

969
00:53:54,600 --> 00:53:58,960
Speaker 2: from civilian to elder, without going into it too deeply,

970
00:54:00,080 --> 00:54:03,759
Speaker 2: can come and discuss and share stories. And I think

971
00:54:03,800 --> 00:54:06,480
Speaker 2: that's something that's missing. There's an old there's an old

972
00:54:06,560 --> 00:54:12,000
Speaker 2: kind of proverb. I'll be very quick with the soldiers.

973
00:54:12,120 --> 00:54:15,360
Speaker 2: Once would go away to war, they'd be away for

974
00:54:15,400 --> 00:54:18,120
Speaker 2: a long time. It's along the lines of Homers return

975
00:54:18,239 --> 00:54:21,240
Speaker 2: to Ithacus, you know, distances the Odyssey.

976
00:54:22,200 --> 00:54:23,000
Speaker 3: But the.

977
00:54:24,600 --> 00:54:28,160
Speaker 2: Warriors would you know, at sixteen, they'd be trained up,

978
00:54:28,480 --> 00:54:30,279
Speaker 2: they'd go off to war, and then I come home

979
00:54:30,320 --> 00:54:32,680
Speaker 2: and the young warriors wouldn't come straight home. They'd be

980
00:54:32,760 --> 00:54:35,160
Speaker 2: left on the edge of the village and they would

981
00:54:35,320 --> 00:54:39,520
Speaker 2: be left there to process the events, to celebrate the

982
00:54:39,600 --> 00:54:44,239
Speaker 2: successes and commemorate the losses, to share stories about what

983
00:54:44,360 --> 00:54:47,000
Speaker 2: they'd been through, and the village would come out to them,

984
00:54:47,680 --> 00:54:50,600
Speaker 2: share food, and say when you're ready, we're here for you,

985
00:54:51,120 --> 00:54:53,359
Speaker 2: and the elders and the spiritual leaders would come out

986
00:54:53,880 --> 00:54:57,080
Speaker 2: and help them process and sit and listen to them,

987
00:54:57,160 --> 00:54:59,520
Speaker 2: and then when they are ready they would come home

988
00:54:59,560 --> 00:55:03,080
Speaker 2: and kind of decompression. This sense of decompressing and processing

989
00:55:03,160 --> 00:55:06,080
Speaker 2: the experiences and I think in the modern world when

990
00:55:06,080 --> 00:55:08,680
Speaker 2: it's such a bloody rush and this is not only

991
00:55:08,760 --> 00:55:12,480
Speaker 2: for veterans, this is for our police, our emergency services.

992
00:55:13,920 --> 00:55:16,080
Speaker 2: They live in the extraordinary world and it's something that

993
00:55:16,160 --> 00:55:18,880
Speaker 2: we don't do well to bring transition them back to

994
00:55:19,400 --> 00:55:23,360
Speaker 2: the ordinary world, which for anyone listening in the in

995
00:55:23,400 --> 00:55:26,360
Speaker 2: the mission critical teams, it's a wonderful world. Back in

996
00:55:26,440 --> 00:55:29,400
Speaker 2: civilian world, there's a great place to be and I

997
00:55:29,440 --> 00:55:31,640
Speaker 2: think I'd like that's something I'll be looking at in

998
00:55:31,680 --> 00:55:33,319
Speaker 2: the future. Well, we're not in the future. We're doing

999
00:55:33,440 --> 00:55:38,000
Speaker 2: now to help to share those stories and I'm not

1000
00:55:38,040 --> 00:55:40,400
Speaker 2: sure what it looks like yet, but at the moment,

1001
00:55:40,440 --> 00:55:43,520
Speaker 2: it's a fireside chats and those discussions that you alluded to.

1002
00:55:43,880 --> 00:55:49,080
Speaker 1: And your two show says Stone, just explain what that is.

1003
00:55:49,160 --> 00:55:50,840
Speaker 1: That's obviously your business name, but what is it.

1004
00:55:51,000 --> 00:55:53,359
Speaker 2: Yeah, Percy Sritie, who's one of the themes or one

1005
00:55:53,400 --> 00:55:57,040
Speaker 2: of the characters in the book. The Greatest, I think

1006
00:55:57,080 --> 00:56:02,600
Speaker 2: the greatest coach of all time owned a dozen world

1007
00:56:02,719 --> 00:56:05,920
Speaker 2: champions and gold medals and world championships out of a

1008
00:56:06,000 --> 00:56:09,640
Speaker 2: tin shack in Portsy. He was a prolific writer and reader.

1009
00:56:10,640 --> 00:56:14,399
Speaker 2: And he had a philosophy called the Stoton philosophy, which

1010
00:56:14,520 --> 00:56:18,040
Speaker 2: is a portmanteau or a blended word from Stoic, sto

1011
00:56:18,600 --> 00:56:21,560
Speaker 2: and Spartan, and that's the st that the ta n

1012
00:56:22,239 --> 00:56:24,320
Speaker 2: and he put those words together. He believed the Stoic

1013
00:56:24,880 --> 00:56:29,000
Speaker 2: philosophy was good, but it was found wanton in terms

1014
00:56:29,080 --> 00:56:34,120
Speaker 2: of an embodied philosophy. So the physical training aspects, he

1015
00:56:35,120 --> 00:56:39,520
Speaker 2: thought Spartan, the Spartan a go Gey approaches was the

1016
00:56:39,640 --> 00:56:42,680
Speaker 2: missing piece to Stoicism to make it complete for an athlete,

1017
00:56:43,640 --> 00:56:47,160
Speaker 2: which he believed was the purest and the highest order

1018
00:56:47,239 --> 00:56:50,400
Speaker 2: of humanity. And that's what I borrow that from my

1019
00:56:50,480 --> 00:56:51,160
Speaker 2: business name.

1020
00:56:51,800 --> 00:56:53,080
Speaker 3: And that's something obviously believe.

1021
00:56:53,080 --> 00:56:56,520
Speaker 1: It's funny you're just talking about a month ago about

1022
00:56:57,280 --> 00:57:00,920
Speaker 1: like a decompression process of putting pa outside the village

1023
00:57:01,360 --> 00:57:04,080
Speaker 1: and the village coming to them and letting people just

1024
00:57:04,120 --> 00:57:06,479
Speaker 1: sort of stay outside the village before until they're ready

1025
00:57:06,480 --> 00:57:11,000
Speaker 1: to come in. And you mentioned Odysseus or the Odyssey, Well,

1026
00:57:11,080 --> 00:57:14,080
Speaker 1: Homer's story allegedly it was Homer, who we don't know

1027
00:57:14,120 --> 00:57:16,160
Speaker 1: actually who wrote it. Let's say it was Homer. And

1028
00:57:17,280 --> 00:57:22,800
Speaker 1: it seems like that whole Odyssey was for Odysseus was

1029
00:57:22,880 --> 00:57:25,840
Speaker 1: a decompression process for him to get back into society

1030
00:57:26,200 --> 00:57:30,440
Speaker 1: back in Ithaca, because he just finished the Trojan more,

1031
00:57:30,520 --> 00:57:33,680
Speaker 1: he just came out of the Trojan War and and

1032
00:57:34,760 --> 00:57:39,560
Speaker 1: and between wherever Troy was and getting back to Ithaca,

1033
00:57:39,640 --> 00:57:42,440
Speaker 1: which is on the other side of Grease on the

1034
00:57:43,040 --> 00:57:43,560
Speaker 1: western side.

1035
00:57:43,560 --> 00:57:46,560
Speaker 3: Agrees, he had to go through a whole lot of adventures.

1036
00:57:46,880 --> 00:57:47,320
Speaker 2: That's right.

1037
00:57:47,520 --> 00:57:50,439
Speaker 3: And maybe do you do you have you ever thought

1038
00:57:50,480 --> 00:57:50,840
Speaker 3: about this?

1039
00:57:51,040 --> 00:57:53,880
Speaker 1: Maybe Homer was writing a story about decompression and getting

1040
00:57:53,920 --> 00:57:54,720
Speaker 1: back into society.

1041
00:57:55,000 --> 00:57:59,080
Speaker 2: I hope so, because that's that's the model. Yeah, well

1042
00:58:00,040 --> 00:58:03,840
Speaker 2: lutely do. And and you know the monsters, the cyclops

1043
00:58:03,960 --> 00:58:09,080
Speaker 2: and the sirens and all the temptations. The temptations are

1044
00:58:09,160 --> 00:58:13,080
Speaker 2: all the monsters of from within, you know, yeah, very

1045
00:58:13,160 --> 00:58:16,920
Speaker 2: Freudian kind of of So these are the monsters and

1046
00:58:17,000 --> 00:58:19,040
Speaker 2: the demons that he wrestles with to get home to

1047
00:58:19,160 --> 00:58:23,880
Speaker 2: his beloveds and back to being back to citizenry. And yes,

1048
00:58:23,960 --> 00:58:27,680
Speaker 2: I do, and I think that it's funny that it's

1049
00:58:27,760 --> 00:58:32,120
Speaker 2: not funny, it's it's it's curious that in other indigenous

1050
00:58:32,200 --> 00:58:35,360
Speaker 2: cultures they have similar stories about the warriors coming home

1051
00:58:35,440 --> 00:58:38,600
Speaker 2: and how they will depro There's a theory about World

1052
00:58:38,600 --> 00:58:43,920
Speaker 2: War One, which I think is very rubbery, that the

1053
00:58:44,120 --> 00:58:46,720
Speaker 2: ship trips home, that the trips home in the ships

1054
00:58:47,760 --> 00:58:52,120
Speaker 2: helped some veterans or some of the soldiers to prolong

1055
00:58:52,560 --> 00:58:56,320
Speaker 2: the long, long trips. I don't think the research backs

1056
00:58:56,360 --> 00:58:58,240
Speaker 2: that up, but it's again, I think it would have

1057
00:58:58,280 --> 00:59:01,320
Speaker 2: been helpful for some. And I'm not even sure that

1058
00:59:02,800 --> 00:59:07,680
Speaker 2: making room to process can can completely address anything. There's

1059
00:59:08,680 --> 00:59:12,640
Speaker 2: the bruised apples theory that you know, we you roll

1060
00:59:12,720 --> 00:59:15,480
Speaker 2: them down the stairs enough stairs and the bruises don't

1061
00:59:15,520 --> 00:59:21,560
Speaker 2: kind of heal. But I know another model I use

1062
00:59:21,680 --> 00:59:24,320
Speaker 2: is the oak table. You know, a veteran is like

1063
00:59:24,560 --> 00:59:27,440
Speaker 2: a beautiful, old, hundreds of years old oak table. You're

1064
00:59:27,440 --> 00:59:29,280
Speaker 2: going to take that over the ike every day of

1065
00:59:29,320 --> 00:59:32,120
Speaker 2: the week. It's battered and bruised and being burned on

1066
00:59:32,200 --> 00:59:34,920
Speaker 2: the corners and chipped. And Grandpa act I saw a

1067
00:59:35,000 --> 00:59:36,680
Speaker 2: bit off and add a new Bit's got lots of

1068
00:59:36,720 --> 00:59:40,240
Speaker 2: stories and lots of stories in Providence exactly exactly, and

1069
00:59:40,360 --> 00:59:43,360
Speaker 2: it's that patina that we all carry that we should

1070
00:59:43,360 --> 00:59:49,080
Speaker 2: be we should be really be embracing and the metaphor

1071
00:59:49,360 --> 00:59:52,480
Speaker 2: of the village or the metaphor of Homer for veterans,

1072
00:59:52,560 --> 00:59:54,920
Speaker 2: that that's kind of the staple to my stories. And

1073
00:59:55,400 --> 00:59:59,400
Speaker 2: as I said, it's not only I've realized now that

1074
00:59:59,520 --> 01:00:02,120
Speaker 2: it's not not only the mission critical teams, police, emergency

1075
01:00:02,200 --> 01:00:06,120
Speaker 2: services and first responders, but it's also athletes. I think

1076
01:00:06,160 --> 01:00:09,800
Speaker 2: it's a useful conversation and also think it's a useful

1077
01:00:09,840 --> 01:00:14,400
Speaker 2: conversation for burnt out private credit team. I got a

1078
01:00:14,600 --> 01:00:16,200
Speaker 2: number of forty year olds I'm working with at the

1079
01:00:16,240 --> 01:00:18,000
Speaker 2: moment that I'm saying, are you sure this is the

1080
01:00:18,080 --> 01:00:20,160
Speaker 2: right job for you? You know, you've you've shot the

1081
01:00:20,280 --> 01:00:23,720
Speaker 2: lights out, but it's taken a toll, you know, and

1082
01:00:23,800 --> 01:00:26,360
Speaker 2: you've got to stop and assess that at some stone.

1083
01:00:26,400 --> 01:00:28,040
Speaker 1: I know one forty plus year rold that you do

1084
01:00:28,160 --> 01:00:32,680
Speaker 1: look after and he's a mate. You need it say

1085
01:00:32,760 --> 01:00:33,880
Speaker 1: his name, but he has that name.

1086
01:00:34,000 --> 01:00:34,160
Speaker 3: Chair.

1087
01:00:34,880 --> 01:00:38,640
Speaker 1: Yeah, so you need more of Harry. And by the way,

1088
01:00:38,640 --> 01:00:40,440
Speaker 1: you're lucky you've got Harry. Harry, thanks very much. I

1089
01:00:40,520 --> 01:00:41,160
Speaker 1: really appreciate it.

1090
01:00:41,160 --> 01:00:43,840
Speaker 3: And this is the fourth pillar. This sort of reading

1091
01:00:44,640 --> 01:00:46,080
Speaker 3: is not what generally.

1092
01:00:45,800 --> 01:00:50,560
Speaker 1: I would expect to get from a veteran an XSAS person,

1093
01:00:51,560 --> 01:00:55,000
Speaker 1: but the wisdom and from what we're just discussing because

1094
01:00:55,000 --> 01:00:56,680
Speaker 1: I haven't read the book yet, but the wisdom and

1095
01:00:57,160 --> 01:01:01,480
Speaker 1: the whole discussion around how we look at our lives,

1096
01:01:02,080 --> 01:01:05,000
Speaker 1: not as a veteran but as anyone who's retiring from anything.

1097
01:01:06,120 --> 01:01:08,520
Speaker 1: That's really important because I've been through that process myself,

1098
01:01:09,720 --> 01:01:13,960
Speaker 1: wondering we'll hang on a minute. I used to identify

1099
01:01:14,000 --> 01:01:16,040
Speaker 1: myself with a certain as a certain type of person,

1100
01:01:16,680 --> 01:01:18,840
Speaker 1: and I actually got quite ill for about three months,

1101
01:01:19,360 --> 01:01:23,080
Speaker 1: very sick and because because it was a full stop

1102
01:01:23,160 --> 01:01:28,920
Speaker 1: put in my career voluntarily, but I didn't realize how

1103
01:01:29,040 --> 01:01:32,360
Speaker 1: much I was thought I was that person, and it

1104
01:01:32,440 --> 01:01:36,000
Speaker 1: took me years to work it out. I'm lucky I'm

1105
01:01:36,040 --> 01:01:37,920
Speaker 1: much older now, but it took me a long time

1106
01:01:37,920 --> 01:01:40,280
Speaker 1: to work that stuff out. And I was one of

1107
01:01:40,280 --> 01:01:42,040
Speaker 1: the lucky ones because I had good support around me,

1108
01:01:42,080 --> 01:01:45,640
Speaker 1: et cetera. But I recommend someone read these things, and

1109
01:01:45,760 --> 01:01:48,600
Speaker 1: if you're a partner of somebody who's in the same category.

1110
01:01:49,280 --> 01:01:50,840
Speaker 3: This is a great type of insight. This type of

1111
01:01:50,880 --> 01:01:52,720
Speaker 3: insight is what we need to read. So thanks very much.

1112
01:01:53,000 --> 01:01:54,520
Speaker 2: Appreciate you, Mark, I appreciate it. Thank you.

1113
01:01:54,600 --> 01:01:55,040
Speaker 3: You're welcome.