My name is Colonel Bill Hanlon and I’m the Commandant of the Army Recruit Training Centre, here at Kapooka, just outside Wagga Wagga in New South Wales. My role here, is essentially to run all the functions of what Kapooka Army Base does. And that’s focused very much around two things. We are the recruit-training centre for Army, and that means all young soldiers who join the army as both a reserve or a regular soldier will come through here for their initial experience of life in the Army. The second thing we do at the Army Recruit Training Centre is we are also responsible for adventure training for Army. And what adventure training does, it is a series of activities, for example, back country skiing, white water rafting, sea kayaking, roping, canyoning, which builds on the qualities that soldiers need to live and operate in difficult conditions both at home and Australia but in operations around the world.
One of the things which we teach our soldiers right from the word go is the Army’s three core values of courage, initiative and teamwork. And I think those three core values are something which can be translated into any walk of life in making individuals a better citizen both in the local sense but also in a national and global sense. Let me talk about courage, we’re not necessarily talking about physical courage, we’re talking very much about moral courage and that includes a sense of self discipline, it includes a clear view of what is right and what is wrong and always encouraging our soldiers to do the right thing. And if you like, sometimes taking the hard right way rather than the easy wrong way. Initiative, of course, that’s valued throughout society, whether it’s in business or in your local community when you are trying to help your local community out or get something done at the local school or local community groups. So initiative is very important. And finally of course teamwork, teamwork is the core what we do, both in the army but also in the wider community. So if we can have our soldiers leave Kapooka understanding what courage, initiative and teamwork really means then I think we are producing good citizens.
For the regular recruits they spend 80 days with us here at Kapooka and the changes you can see in those young men and women, and even not so young men and women over that period of time, is quite immense. They certainly gain an understanding of what it is we do in the Army. And that’s very, very important. So for us it’s the socialisation of being a soldier, understanding the obligations and responsibilities of what it really does mean to be a soldier, the fact that you are here to protect your nation, and they do grow in that sense. The other part is they do move away from a sense of ‘I’ into a sense of teamwork. So that third core value of teamwork of the Army is really something we really push on here. It’s about the issue of; you can’t do anything in the army, or even in the wider life and community without being part of a team. So in some ways it’s about breaking down what’s arranged inside which is about ourselves and trying to teach our people that it’s all about actually the team and there is something bigger than yourself.