Thank you very much to Peter and Lynne Cosgrove and Philip and David and Stephen, to Air Chief Marshal Angus Houston the Chief of the Australian Defence Force, Rick Smith, the Secretary of the Defence Department, ladies and gentlemen. It is an enormous pleasure and a special moment for me to be asked to officially launch the autobiography of a man for whom I developed, over a period of years, an immense respect and great personal regard. There is no doubt in the world as we've just been told, that Peter Cosgrove wrote every word of this book. The man comes through in all of it in that lucid, informative, direct fashion of this quintessential Australian character.
I said when Peter Cosgrove retired as Chief of the Defence Force, in a speech in Parliament, that he had become the best known military figure in Australia since Field Marshal Blamey and he came on the scene in circumstances that had been unexpected at the time, but he came on the scene when there was growing respect for and regard for Australia's Defence Forces. And I found it interesting in December of 2005 that the Brisbane-based political scientist Clive Bean published a survey of 4000 people nationwide and showed that 82 per cent of Australians had confidence in the Defence Forces and of the 12 institutions surveyed, the Defence Forces had come out on top. Now there are a number of reasons for that and I know that Peter Cosgrove would be the first to say that it was overwhelmingly due to the collective effort of the men and women of the Australian Defence Force and I would agree with him. But it's also fair to say that one of the reasons that public esteem for the Defence Forces rose between that last survey and the one previously conducted in 1995, when the figure was 68 per cent, and you know we are always interested in these comparative figures as you know, was the great contribution that Peter Cosgrove made in communicating in a very personable and a very effective way with the Australian public of his duties and his obligations, first as the Commander of the INTERFET Force in East Timor, then as Chief of the Army and then as Chief of the Defence Force.
As I say, it is written in the style of the man and when I read the chapters on Vietnam for example, I was struck by three things. I was struck by his very direct descriptions on the basics of Army life. I was impressed by his vigorous defence of those men who served in Vietnam against the charge that they were not really taking part in a real war, a charge that was unfortunately made against them by some. And you can virtually, through reading these pages, live through the sense of relief and growth that he felt in having at long last been able to put into practice what he'd been taught in his training and his first real experience in combat of leading a platoon in Vietnam and you could feel with him that sense of relief and change and achievement that became so very apparent.
There is no doubt, of course, that Peter Cosgrove's finest hour was the successful INTERFET intervention in East Timor. This was, after all, Australia's largest military involvement by far since Vietnam. And it is easy now with the distance of time to feel as though there was never any real challenge and that it was all inevitably going to happen as it ultimately did. Of course that was never the case and the fact that it proved to be a superbly successful intervention was greatly to the credit of General Cosgrove and, of course, greatly to the credit again of the superb training that our young officers received. And I drew something of a comparison between Peter Cosgrove writing of his experiences as a young Platoon Commander in Vietnam and the description he gave of an incident on the 21st of September 1999 when the cool conduct of a young officer prevented an incident that could easily have deteriorated into disaster involving some 500 of the militia that were, under the arrangement that General Cosgrove had negotiated with General Syahnakri of the Indonesian armed forces, were to leave East Timor. That particular incident is an illustration, is really a metaphor, for the sort of Army that did Australia with such pride in East Timor in 1999.
But the wonderful leadership he gave and also the great leadership of General Mark Kelly who is here today, and who became also a very familiar face on Australian television in interpreting the behaviour and the deeds in a very positive way to the Australian people during those times. It was a superbly successful operation, it was an operation that had the overwhelming support of the Australian people and it's an operation which reflected the best qualities in the modern Australian Defence Force, a mixture of military skill and commonsense and compassion and an understanding that winning the hearts and minds of people in those situations is just as important as maintaining the peace and winning the military conflict.
I have two particular reminiscences of my interaction with Peter Cosgrove that say a great deal about the man and a great deal about his place in Australian history and the bonds between him and the Australian military forces. One, a very sombre recollection and one a more humorous, light-hearted one. The sombre one first. On the eve of Australia's military action in Iraq I well remember, in fact I will never forget, an hour I spent with General Cosgrove and the then Head of the Defence Intelligence Organisation Frank Lewincamp. And the purpose of the meeting was for them to spell out to me, in no uncertain terms, in as complete detail as possible, of what would be involved in our miliary operation. And armed with satellite imaging and graphs and other material they sat in my office, the two of them, and just explained to me in great detail as best they could based on their experience and the intelligence available what might confront our forces. And quite literally after I had completed that discussion I took a deep breath and felt to myself; well I am in no doubt and I have been left in no doubt as to the nature of the challenge and the task and the danger to which a decision, that for which I was, more than anybody else, personally responsible; the danger to which these young men and women were to be exposed. And to me that was the Commander in all of our forces doing the right thing by me and just as importantly doing the right thing by the troops that he commanded. And he could go away from that meeting satisfied that he had laid out in stark detail to the person who'd made the decision to put the lives of the men and women in danger, exactly what was involved and that was his duty, that was his job and he did it with great skill, he did it very directly, he did it unconditionally and I greatly respected him for it.
The other incident, rather more light-heartedly, occurred when General Cosgrove and I participated as onlookers in the Governor General presenting the American Unit Citation to the SAS at a special gathering at Campbell Barracks in Western Australia. And after the ceremony was over and I was, we were at the reception, a very exuberant reception, and I was mixing with a number of the members of the SAS who were making it very, very plain to me that they were not the least bit concerned about any jobs that I had in mind for them and were in fact making it very clear that they were getting rather tired of sitting around doing nothing and when was the next operation going to be brought before them. And General Cosgrove came over and said to me and to all of them, I hope these chicken stranglers aren't trying to inveigle you into sending them somewhere into the future Prime Minister and it was a reminder of two things. It was a reminder of the wonderful enthusiasm of those men, but it was also a reminder of the casual and marvellous interaction that the General had with all of those who served under his command.
Can I just say in conclusion that I greatly enjoyed my interaction with General Cosgrove in the various positions he held. I liked him as a bloke, he was very direct, he was forthright, he was professional, he had a wonderful relationship with the men and women that he commanded and his interaction with the other senior members of the military was a token of both his style and also the quality of him as a person. We also shared a few sporting moments together. We have joint affection for, of course, our great national game cricket, and also for the game they play in heaven, and we've been to a few Wallaby dressing rooms, most of them, but not all of them, very enjoyable and very successful. And of course as a measure of his commitment to the Australia nation, Peter Cosgrove and I found our paths crossing again in the aftermath of Cyclone Larry. And how a person who has had the sort of busy military and public career he had would nonetheless summon the enthusiasm and the commitment to do that is once again a measure of the man and as Lynne quite rightly remarked to me one Sunday morning when I spoke to her about this appointment she said you can't keep a good man down and that was as good a description as a I can think of to describe his willingness to undertake that task.
I salute Peter Cosgrove's contribution to Australia. He has served us well, he has served us faithfully, he's been a wonderful soldier, he's been a great leader. He has endeared himself to the Australian community and, of course, as always, and most importantly, can I say as a tribute to Lynne and to the three boys that the affection that he evidently and clearly and openly has for his family and his close friends is there all the time. They have been an enormous area of sustenance for him through his long public life. I hope that the friendship and association that we have developed will continue into the future and in that vein I have very, very much pleasure in launching this book. I'm sure it will sell well, it's very, very readable and it is a mark of the man who wrote it. Thank you.