 Well, it's my pleasure to welcome Michelle Lipner to our conversation who's a civil military advisor with the Centre. Welcome, what on earth is a civil military advisor and tell us a little bit about your work history including in Afghanistan. So we get a sense of what it means in practice. Well, I guess that for me a civil military advisor was simply because I've spent almost 20 years in the field dealing with civil military issues. So I've worked in Afghanistan. I worked with Unama. What's that? Unama is the United Nations Assistant Mission in Afghanistan. It was formed in 2002 after the NATO bombings and it still is in Afghanistan. And it's the UN mission that is supporting the government of Afghanistan moving forward in terms of democratization, security, peace building efforts and all of that. So I worked in Afghanistan with Unama for two years and also have worked in other conflict areas such as Kosovo. And the former Soviet Union republics of Georgia and Armenia and Azerbaijan. And in all of those places dealing with that whole civil military tension and how to exploring ways of how to move beyond those challenges of civilians working alongside military and others in those spaces. This whole conference is focused on learning lessons and your presentation on a panel that was about lessons for operational planners was to talk about same space different mandates and a very small publication and a huge amount of work to get it so small. What's the purpose of this document? I think it's the purpose is actually to create to help all of those key stakeholders that work in these very difficult environments. And when I say key stakeholders, I'm talking about military and police and aid workers and donors and others to essentially help all of these different stakeholders understand one another better. And the way you help understand one another better is to learn about one another and begin talking to one another. And through that you end up working better together or as I say better together or separately in the same space and with different mandates. What is a mandate? A mandate is what is your organizational mandate? Why do you do what you do? What is your mandate? Your mandate may be around a military mission or it may be around an organizational vision or what guides an organization forward. And so for example, an aid agency, a humanitarian aid agency follows humanitarian principles of providing assistance where humanitarian assistance wherever it may be. That is what guides that particular agency. But then you have as well military who have very different mandates when they go out into the field. They are not there ultimately or primarily to provide aid but to do war fighting. And so when you have all of these different characters and sectors in the same space, how do you interact or not with one another? And so this document seeks to essentially provide basic understanding of who are we all in this space. Now obviously we're going to promote this and allow people to get their own copy but you are passionate about effectively working together. And you've been brave enough to work in really scary places where people die if you don't get it right. Therefore you are to be respected. And one of the things you talked about on the panel was we have to accept differences without judgment. And we have to avoid mutual false stereotypes. What are you talking about? What's that all about? Well I think that it's easy for us to make assumptions about one another. We do this in our normal life but in the field it's even easier to do that I think that historically or at least in the last 20 years, if not more, that when we interact with one another we tend to see each other in very black and white silo fashion. So that as an aid worker they're from the perspective of the military. What are you? Describe the cliche. I'm a tree hugging bunny loving aid worker do-gooder. Probably go to too many meetings and you don't dress neatly. I not only to go to too many meetings and don't dress well enough but I seem to be all over the place. I don't really seem to plan anything and I'm just out there to do good. And I don't necessarily have any degrees or any real background. I just want to do good. And that may be how I may be perceived by the military or police. Now from an aid perspective it is possible that military are also seen very stereotypically in terms of the gun-toting high testosterone male who's out there to save the world through war fighting. Well those are stereotypes and in reality when you break through those stereotypes it is a far different picture. Aid workers are professionals, they're trained, they follow different operational styles but that doesn't make them any less competent or capable or professional in what they do. Same with the military. There is far much more nuance and professionalism in the military than that stereotype portrays but the problem is by maintaining those stereotypes you end up creating blockages to communication and dialogue which is critical in these spaces that are very very volatile. I want to ask you in a second how this book and the process of its creation is going to change that dilemma of mutual misapprehension but just first of all the other player there is police and if there's one thing I've learned at this conference it's about transitions is that in that transitional time when international agencies whether they be NGO or military or defence or whatever are leaving a good civilian police force, court system, humane prison, rule of law is critical to a successful transition out isn't it? So what are the stereotypes of the police and the challenges there in the building of mutual respect? I think in some respects the police are better off in that there is less stereotyping I think with police. I do think that if there is that stereotyping it might be over that very aggressive vision of the paramilitary form of policing which is not so much a transitioning police force but it is more of those earlier days that some countries may use as a model for policing when there is still higher conflict potential in a country but then you also have more of the Australian federal police which is far more, which is far different from a paramilitary model. So in a nutshell what's unique, you use the word unique about this book that's a big brave word about it both it's content and how you got it together. Well it's content I think it's unique because I haven't seen anything like that that is essentially what I call a civil military police handbook 101 that has relevance to all stakeholders. It is trying to diminish distinction or not distinction but it's trying to undermine that stereotyping and it's trying to essentially provide a very simple book easy to use to help people better understand or help stakeholders better understand one another. It's for practical use, practitioners whether you are military police or an aid agency in the field it's for field use. So if you want to know basic stuff about another stakeholder here it is. At the back of the book is this amazing set of, well appellates I suppose, tell us how to identify the rank of all the Australian defense force and the Australian federal police. Why have you included this? It's so thin everything must have been carefully selected, why that? Well actually every paragraph was carefully vetted but in terms of that at the end the reason we did that is that our colleagues from defence and from the federal police said would it be useful to provide this information so that others can understand who we are and what rank we are because we were also saying from the aid side we sometimes we don't understand who you are and it would be useful. So it was through that multi-agency negotiation and discussion process that we realized that to have this would actually help us all better understand who it is that we're dealing with and that is again that notion that the process of developing this is the message of the book which is that we were individuals representing agencies with different mandates operating in the same space in order to create a document that we could each equally find of value and of use in our work. And is it a problem that when you're dealing with a non-government organization you've got no idea of the level of seniority of people? When you're out in the field or in Afghanistan or in a sticky situation? Well I think that for many in the field if you are an aid worker you see a uniform and you don't distinguish between the uniforms and some may not even distinguish between countries it's why even though this is for the Australian stakeholders in fact it does have international applicability and it does then recognize at the back that the different ranks mean different things and so it just helps people better understand what that ranking is. Time is up but just very quickly two quick examples of how I might use this in the field. I've got the plastic copy I'm in Afghanistan we're involved in transition when might I grab this book? Any time if you want to know what might be a coordination mechanism that you need to go to to talk to different stakeholders if you're a military person and you're wanting to find out that you need to reach out to the aid community that gives guidance on what kind of coordination mechanisms there are in reach out or if you have a meeting with an agency that you've not heard of before that may guide you to who that agency is so that you may be having a meeting with the Red Cross. Well you open this book and there's a section there on what the Red Cross does and how it works. So it is a quick reference guide. It's the 101 it's the minimum you need to know to survive and be interoperable. That's correct. Thank you so much. It's a pleasure.