My name is Squadron Leader Joshua Liddy, I’m a legal officer with the Royal Australian Air Force. I decided to join the Air Force Undergraduate Scheme, I was a university student I wanted to practice in international and operations law and the Air Force was one of the few places that we get to do that sort of thing as a lawyer.
I’ve been in the Air Force for seven years. My typical day varies between the jobs that I’m posted to, at the moment I’m posted as a prosecutor to the office of the Director of Military Prosecutions, and my day-to-day job is preparing matters to go before the Australian Military Court, prosecution of matters… of members of the Defence Force under the Defence Force Discipline Act.
The most satisfying aspect of my working life has been my deployment o Afghanistan in 2007, 2008. I went there for five months with the Control and Reporting Centre, and they were responsible for controlling the air space in Afghanistan for the… predominately all the military aircraft movements in support of ground troops, and that was a very… it was very exciting, a very different deployment. I’d previously been deployed prior to that but it was very satisfying to get in there and help the operation and help the people of Afghanistan against the Taliban.
I think Australia is a very good international citizen, I think we participate globally to go out and help people when they need to be helped. Be it an operation like Afghanistan, or against extremists trying to persecute the local population, to peacekeeping, to disaster relief and things like tsunami assist in Pakistan. It’s the Australian way to get up and help people that are less fortunate than us, and some of those situations can be difficult and can be tricky to understand, especially a place like Afghanistan where the opposing side, the Taliban, will use means and methods that are one, illegal and two, morally wrong… try and get us to do the wrong thing so that they can use it against us. And that can be difficult for the guys on the ground trying to work out what’s the best way to deal with that, but I’m very proud to say that Australia always does meet our international obligations and does the right thing. It’s not just a case of doing the right thing by the law, it’s doing the right thing. We always do that.