 Ladies and gentlemen, good afternoon and welcome to the beautiful headquarters of the Lowy Institute here at 31 Blyth Street. I'm Michael Fully Love, I'm the Executive Director of the Institute. Let me start by acknowledging the traditional custodians of the land on which the Institute stands, the Gadigal of the Eora Nation, and I pay my respects to their elders past and present. We're really delighted today to host the launch of this book, The Consul, an insider account from Australia's diplomatic front line by Ian Chemish, a non-resident fellow at the Institute. This is a really valuable and timely new book published by the University of Queensland Press. The issue of consular assistance for Australians is perennial and important. It's evocative, it's emotive. I know we have Kate Logan, the head of consular for DFAT with us and some of her team who do incredible work on behalf of Australians. And I've heard many diplomats from other countries from time to time compliment me on the work that DFAT does. I know that the service that DFAT provides to Australians, especially in difficulty, is really peerless. And there's a lot of stories of that in this book. It really gets into the human element of the issue as well as the thematic issues. Ian Chemish is one of our finest diplomats. In a career spanning 25 years he served as High Commissioner to P&G, Ambassador to Germany. He headed Australia's Consular Service and he was appointed a member of the Order of Australia for his leadership of Australia's response to the 2002 Bali bombings. So for that reason we're delighted to be hosting this book. It's an important book and it's by someone that we regard very highly. Now let me tell you how this evening will work. Currently I'll call on the Assistant Minister for Foreign Affairs, the Honourable Tim Watts MP, to formally launch the console. After Tim speaks Ian will respond briefly. And then my brilliant colleague Natasha Kasam, author of the 2022 Lowy Institute poll among many other excellent products will come up on stage to chair a discussion between Ian and Tim. So the only last remaining thing I have to do is to introduce Tim Watts. It's a great pleasure for me to do so because I've admired him from a distance for some time. Tim is the Assistant Minister for Foreign Affairs. Before entering Parliament as the Member for Jelly Brand in 2013 he worked in the tech sector and as a political staffer. He served in a number of roles in the Parliament including as the Shadow Assistant Minister for Cybersecurity and Communications. But apart from all that he's just a very thoughtful person and he's somebody who has published two books, the first Two Futures which was written by the now Home Affairs Minister Claire O'Neill looking at long-term options for Australia. The second book, Golden Country, as he just said to me, on Australia's immigration policy published just before Australia's immigration closed down for Fortress Australia. So maybe the timing for that book launch wasn't ideal but the timing for this one Assistant Minister is. So it's really great to see people, if I can say that of Tim's quality and thoughtfulness in public life and now occupying an executive position is something I'm very happy to see. So Tim, thank you for accepting our invitation and thank you. Let me call on you to formally launch the console by Ian Chemish. Tim Watts. Well thank you Michael for that very generous introduction. I really should bring you everywhere I go. And congratulations Ian as a fellow author. I have some sympathy for how much you pour into the process of writing a book. So congratulations on getting here to launch the book. You got the photo? Always be selling. This is your new job. So good evening everyone. Ian, Michael, Natasha. I'd like to start my remarks by acknowledging the traditional elements of the land in which you meet the Gadigal people of the Orinatian and pay my respects to elders past and present. And I'd also like to acknowledge any Aboriginal and Torres Strait Island people here with us this evening and commit myself as all members of the new Albanese government to the full implementation of the Uluru Statement from the Heart, Voice, Treaty and Truth. It really is a great pleasure to be here today at the Lowe Institute to launch Ian's wonderful new book, The Console, an insider account from Australia's diplomatic frontline. I mean it is appropriate that we have Kate Logan, a subsequent generation of Consular Service as the first assistant secretary of Consular and Crisis Management Division with us here today. Thanks for coming, Kate. Ian's book provides us with a wonderful personal perspective into the world of consular work and its evolution through the really significant trends that have shaped our the last decades, the rise of terrorism, the emergence of cheap air travel and the internet. It's a compelling read. It takes us to all the corners of the world and shows us leadership in times of crisis, empathy in the face of tragedy and celebrates the highest ideals of public service. Most of all, though, Ian's book left me feeling deeply proud to be Australian. It's a sentiment that I know many in Consular Service share. Ian, you wrote about your friend and colleague Roger who died in a light plane crash in Vanuatu when the kindness that consular officials showed to Roger, Roger's family and yourself. And you included a reflection Roger left you on a rainy Canberra morning outside the DFAT offices in your book. And has Roger turned to you and said with a hint of irony about your job, quote, isn't it a great feeling knowing we're doing this for Australia? I'm pleased that Roger's former wife Chrissie was here to join us this evening. In this book, time and time again, the Australian spirit shines through. When people are at their lowest in loss and grief and terror, we see Australians standing in solidarity with their compatriots. Following the 2002 Bali bombing, Ian tells the story of expat Australians, unprompted, turning up to help, volunteering to phone hospitals and hotels to search for the missing and injured, demonstrating that Australian instinct to get stuck in and to help, an instinct that DFAT's consular division has professionalised through training and expertise. Ian also tells us about Lyle Crawford at the Australian Embassy in Kathmandu who was responsible for the rescue of an Australian climbing party in the Himalayas. The operation was part diplomacy, liaising with Chinese officials to allow a Nepalese military helicopter to enter Chinese airspace for a mountainside rescue in a full-business suit as well. But it was mostly about courage, having completed the dangerous rescue operation of the climbing party, Lyle agreed to go back into the mountain a second day in extraordinary circumstances to recover the body of a deceased Australian, all in the name of bringing an Australian home. This demonstration of the Australian spirit continues beyond the conclusion of Ian's book in the Consular Service today. Diana Shee was part of the crisis team dispatched to Poland to help Australians who are caught up in Russia's illegal and immoral invasion of Ukraine. And following the tragic death of Michael O'Neill and with large parts of the country under siege, Diana and her team went to extraordinary lengths, working with the Ukrainian military officials and local funeral directors to recover his remains from the front lines and to get them back from Poland to Poland. Diana then flew the remains back to Michael's family in the close-knit community of Geverston in Tasmania, less than 24 hours before his memorial services. Now, the actions taken by Lyle, Diana and those Australian volunteers in Bali in 2002 are not described in any DFAT policy document or procedure manual. There were people doing things because it was the right thing to do. And Ian quotes the former DFAT secretary, Francis Adamson, in the book. It was put to Adamson that DFAT officers were people who were willing to get things done. And Adamson replied, quote, that's not necessarily because we're diplomats. It probably has to do with the fact that we're Australians. And this is why the Albanese government will continue to resource and support our consular services and extend a helping hand to our nationals overseas because it's the Australian thing to do. It's the right thing to do, and it's what Australians expect us to do. But in 2022, the task of delivering high quality consular services is significantly more challenging than in previous years. The most pressing of these challenges has been COVID-19 and its impact on the way that we travel. And while I remain critical of decisions made by the former government that caused so many Australians to be left stranded in precarious circumstances in recent years, I would like to take a moment to recognise all of the DFAT staff who served overseas during the pandemic and during these border closures. That we sustained our overseas presence and that many of you went for extraordinary lengths of time without seeing your families or coming home is a testament to your resilience and commitment to service. In many parts of the world, with borders closed, consular officers once again took on a far larger role than what their policy and procedures indicated that they should be doing, what their day job was. Now, I have some sympathy for this, as all I think members of parliament do during this time, because our electorate officers became front desks for pastoral support in our communities, as was the case in many of these overseas missions, trying to help Australians to get home. Now, today, with borders open and travel resuming, Australians are finding themselves subject to changing testing and isolation requirements, as well as unexpected costs from additional hotel stays and delayed travel arrangements. Travelers are discovering that their insurance may not cover them for specific COVID-19 related expenses. And a travel industry, which is struggling to awaken from its COVID hibernation, is leading to delays, lost baggage and cancellations. As someone that travels quite a bit for their day job, it's not much fun travelling at the moment sometimes. Now, our advice to travellers travelling internationally is to research entry, exit and testing requirements and providers before you travel. Be prepared that if you test positive for COVID-19, you may be required to quarantine at your own expense, causing sometimes expensive delays and disruption to your plans. And read the fine print on your travel insurance. Check your covered for COVID-19 related expenses before you leave. Now, a second challenge for the growing number of... is the growing number of consular cases involving serious mental health episodes that we are currently seeing. The mental health epidemic that we're currently seeing in Australia, in part due to the stress and isolation and disruption of the pandemic, is also playing out for Australians beyond our borders. And that's why our consular officers are properly trained to understand and respond to these cases. But we do need to identify further supports for those overseas. And when people do return home, we need to ensure that those supports are in place for them when they return. In this respect, our advice to Australians travelling is to be aware of the potential triggers for mental health conditions, including separation from family and friends and changes to your normal routines. Get enough prescription medication to keep you in good health for the duration of your stay while you're away. And check those medications are legal in the country you're travelling to. And be aware that attitudes and beliefs about physical illness and mental health can vary greatly in other countries. And mental health conditions aren't, as always, accepted as in the way they are in Australia. Now, a third challenge that is ensuring that our consular service is ready to respond and to support the diversity that is modern Australia. In his book, Ian jokes that if a plane went down between Tashkent and Vladivostok, there would have almost certainly been an Australian on board. And he's right. And in decades past, that Australian might have been a wildly mining executive or an intrepid backpacker. Today, they're just as likely to be someone on a regular family reunion. The face of Australia has changed. We are more diverse and we're more likely to live complex cross-border lives. And our consular services need to understand and to reflect this. We should consider how to better support the families of Australian citizens, including permanent residents and other visa holders, as well as dual nationals, when they are in their country of other nationality. Our assistance to these groups, particularly in a crisis, reflects modern Australia and the values of modern Australia. Ian's book is in many ways a story of innovation. The invention of smart traveller and the pop-up airport kiosks to print off the smart traveller advice and responding to a change travel environment following September 11. He observes that it's not enough for travel advice to be accurate and timely, but it has to reach its intended audience. The challenges we face in delivering consular services today mean that we have to continue innovating in the context of these change circumstances. DFAT needs to think carefully about how they deliver services to new cohorts with new challenges with the same compassion and commitment that shines through in Ian's book. I'm looking forward to working with Foreign Minister Wong and with DFAT for getting this right because how we help people in their time of need is an expression of all of us as a nation. Before I conclude, I just have to tell one anecdote from the book that I think reflects the Australian spirit in a different way than the serious gravitas that we've been talking about today. This is an anecdote from the book from Ian's time as Ambassador to Germany. Ian made a point when he was Ambassador to travel to Munich to meet with a local police chief in the wake of Oktoberfest to express his appreciation for their support in looking after the growing Australian contingent that attended the event. Now, the police chief reassured him that Australians were not his biggest problem. But Ian does admit to visiting Munich each Oktober for the rest of his posting, just in case. In this regard, Ian shows a distinctly Australian approach to the provision of consular care and I salute your commitment. Thank you again for help of inviting me to launch this delightful book, Ian. I wish you all the best in its sales now that it's in the market. And I commend the book to all of you in the audience. Bye, bye, bye. Thanks so much, Tim. You don't want a job with UQP, do you? Honestly, that's a terrific introduction. Really appreciate it. Tim, thanks so much for the introduction. Congratulations on your appointment. It's a wonderful time and a challenging time to be inheriting this portfolio and you're in for a wild ride. But I think you'll have a great time. Michael, Tash, Andrea and the rest of the team here at Lowy. Thanks so much for the opportunity. Let me recognise Sally Wilson from UQP. So many friends here. It's one of those moments when all my worlds have come together in a sense. All from different parts of my life, or many of you are. And among them, the current head of the Consular Service, Kate, who's been mentioned a couple of times, but also her crisis lead, Lynne Bell, a dynamic duo, I think, who have led the service through crisis upon crisis in recent times. Several of them are simultaneous and including several where government decisions, frankly, have made their work all the more difficult. I'm thinking particularly of the Afghanistan evacuation and the COVID era, with its heavy impact on Australians overseas. Of course, in recent times, Kate, Lynne and their colleagues have also led and coordinated the deployments to Ukraine's borders of consular staff to help Australia's impacted by the war. I set out to write a book about the men and women of the Australian Consular Service. The book's title, The Consul, stands for all of those consular officers who over the decades have stepped forward to assist their fellow Australians at moments of great crisis. It's also my own story because I was proud to lead this group of people for a period in the early thousands. I was concerned, I have to say, not to write a traditional diplomatic memoir. In fact, I've been heard to say in the past that there's a special place in hell for those who write them. But I was happy to put my voice and my own experience at the disposal of what I think is an important and largely untold story. My own career included roles as a prime ministerial adviser, as an ambassador to Berlin, as you've heard. But I do actually look back on the consular role, along with another unexpected role, the role of High Commissioner to PowerPoint and Guinea in a way as twin peaks. Experiences where there was a fulfillment to be drawn from being able to draw a straight line between yourself and real people. And this is the bug, I think, that gets into people who do the consular work. I'm delighted that former foreign ministers, Julie Bishop and Stephen Smith, have also lent their voices to this tale, as have many former and serving consuls. People who are alongside me are not aware or near the point of impact for crises like the September 11 Bali bombings. And it became real repeat offenders, responding in the field or at headquarters to subsequent crises from the 2006 Lebanon evacuation to Fukushima to the Arab Spring, dreadful cases of arbitrary detention, the downing of MH17 and so on. The last chapter of the book is entitled It Never Ends, because it never does. Our consuls aren't looking for sympathy or reward. They know who really deserve that. They deal with literally thousands of personal crises every year. They're focused on the many Australians who encounter the service of what can be the worst moment in their lives. People like my sister-in-law Chrissy and Melissa Lysette, both of whom are here tonight and both of whom tragically lost their much-loved husbands in awful circumstances overseas. As we've heard, Chrissy's husband was killed at the age of 27 in an air crash in Vanuatu. The book's dedicated to him and recalls how he once, as a graduate trainee, uttered a line that I think speaks of the motivation that many Australian diplomats and consuls have. Melissa's husband, Scott, was killed in the 2002 Bali bombings. I met Melissa at her daughter, Madeline, at the first anniversary, and we became friends. It's the 20th anniversary, so... The backing track to this story is the sweep of global history since the fall of the Berlin Wall. The beginning of a loop in history that seems to be completing itself or reaching some kind of point of culmination is now the growing but muffled drumbeat of international terrorism through the 90s and the extraordinary turning point that was September 11, an event that ushered in the war on terror, the Afghanistan and Iraq conflicts that changed our collective minds set in ways that we're only still now coming to understand, I think, but changed the way we travel and that led to substantial changes for the consular service. Along the way, I've reflected on where things went wrong, where they went right, on the intersection between the world of politics and media in the consular service. I've talked a bit about the unwritten contract between the Australian travelling public and the Australian government as to what services we should be providing Australians abroad and how Australians' expectations have grown in keeping with the ever-increasing pace of communications and the advent of social media as an instant public form of feedback. I've discussed the risk that consular work may actually now be looming too large in the profile and understanding of the role of the Department of Foreign Affairs and Trade. I've also thought a bit about what the consular service tells us about Australia and its role in the immediate region. I think the Bali response was a seminal moment in that sense, a response that involved Australia establishing a full-scale Australian emergency response on the sovereign territory of another country. In the end, as you said, it's a story about Australians. And when I think of the best attributes of our often earthy, pragmatic and yet creative consular officers, they're Australian attributes. And I think we can be pretty proud of that. Thank you, everyone. Look forward to the discussion. Thank you so much, Ian, and thank you to the Assistant Minister for those insightful comments. For those of you that don't know me, I'm Natasha Kasan. I direct the public opinion and foreign policy program here at the Lowy Institute. Now, I'm going to ask Ian some questions and then I'll come to you in the audience. And my colleagues will bring mics around. Some of you will know that I started my career at DFAT. And when Ian writes about the way resources are pulled in for these crises, I was immediately pulled to my very first year and I was one of those graduate trainees that was reined into the 24-7 crisis centre to man the phones as we launched the evacuation of many, many Australians out of Egypt during the Arab Spring. I was always amazed from that moment at the kind of scale of the department's effort and the gratitude that we received, I think, from the people we spoke to on the phone. But also, of course, the very small minority of people who, you know, ask questions like, well, will I be getting frequent flyer points for this particular trip? It is a small minority, as you make clear in. So I want to start in this question about, you know, you touch on the book, how you assume joining the department you're going to be globetrotting, negotiating multilateral treaties, representing at the United Nations. At the other end, you write a book about consular services, you know, what many perceive to be the most boring or the most mundane. Of course, that's not the case in this book, but that's what stands out to you. It's one of the twin picks. How does that feel? Yeah, consular work took me by surprise. It was not at all what I was thinking about when I joined Foreign Affairs and Trade, as you say. You sort of taken up with all sorts of ideas about the role you might have. And actually, I did quite a bit of that stuff, you know. The being in the room at the White House and being involved in treaty making and all the rest of it. But consular work took me by surprise. I don't have any real memory of anyone talking to me about consular work in my graduate training year. Probably they did, and I didn't pay any attention. I certainly, I'm not even sure I understood what consular work was when I joined DFAT. But I learnt it over time as I recount in the book. And as I've said, and you just said, it was a formative period in my life, in our lives, because there is a rawness and a reality about it. I think it is when you're at DFAT and you're doing foreign policy, so much of it feels big picture. And then, as you say, consular becomes the thing where you're really in touch with the Australian people. Now, one of the things you write about, I think really beautifully, is how in different consular cases, particularly when it comes to arbitrary detention, there are different reactions to how people feel the government has done. Some people feel the government hasn't done enough. In other cases, they're very, very grateful. One of the points, or the themes that I really paid attention to was the level to which making these cases public have an impact on the outcome. And some feel that DFAT keeps it quiet for those private negotiations. Some feel that having a lot of public attention is helpful. How do you feel about weighing up those cases? I know it's really difficult, but where do you think you land? It is difficult. And my thinking about this has evolved a bit. I was involved in a case which has largely been forgotten back in the year 2001, involving an Australian couple who were imprisoned in Laos. It became quite a political bugbear, frankly, for the foreign minister at the time. I think you probably remember that, Brad. And it became a real cause celebrities publicly. My view then, and I think it remains my view about that particular case, was that the media that the family pushed and drummed up set us back caused the Laos authorities to become a bit more entrenched in their position and probably added several months to the very difficult experience for the couple concerned. I certainly thought that at the time. There have been more recent cases. Peter Grestner is a great example where a public campaign conducted in a clever way, in a very broad-based way, with a kind of strategic understanding, I think, between the government on one hand and the family on the other, was very effective in bringing off an outcome. The case that we're probably thinking about and others are thinking about is the case of someone who's also become a friend, like Peter Grestner, and that's Kylie Moore Gilbert, who, you know, got to speak for Kylie, but I've talked to her quite a bit about this and her view is basically that she's very grateful to the Australian government for the outcome that was achieved. She has developed great respect for some of the individuals who worked with her, including particularly Lyndall Sacks, who was the ambassador in Tehran for most of that time. But she takes issue quite strongly with the decision, with the push of the Australian government to go for quiet diplomacy, to convince her family to stay away from the media. She takes the view that every time her case bubbled up in the media, her treatment in jail improved, so she draws a straight line. I just think that... I suspect Kate agrees, but I'm not going to speak for her, but I think it's horses for courses, and I think that there needs to be an understanding and a cleverly designed public strategy where you're working as a team with family. That can work. I think, you know, that's an interesting case where Kylie says, you know, she thinks sunlight was the best disinfectant. As you say, there are other cases where maybe the outcome hasn't been. Well, it hasn't worked out, perhaps, in the way that people wanted it to. One of the other... Michael Corby is a great example of that. One of the issues, I think, in the past and that you write about quite a lot is that question of negotiating with kidnappers and paying rents and how the government was never willing to do that because of incentivising bad behaviour. I want to turn that on its head and ask you about hostage diplomacy and whether negotiating with states when they've taken hostages is kind of doing the same thing. And, of course, I ask this when we have several Australians held on trumped-up charges. Yang Heng Jun, Cheng Lei that you write about in China. Sean Tennell, who's a friend of the Institute in Myanmar. How do you feel about the need to kind of negotiate with states or perhaps bend to coercion on some level for those citizens? This is really tough stuff. And it's... And there are some fundamental issues to wrestle with here. Again, Kylie's case involved a prisoner swap. We've never done that before. That was quite an extraordinary thing to have done. The... I think in these cases, we really do need to call it out, describe it as what it is. What's happening, you know, in dealing with the situation in China, it's obviously complicated by the state of the bilateral relationship. Indeed, I strongly suspect that these cases exist in reflection of the state of the bilateral relationship to some considerable extent. So very, very hard to work with. I think we have to do what we do, which is to be insistent, including publicly on release. But our strategy needs to be guided by the particular circumstances of the case. And with these current cases, I don't know the details. I can't know the circumstances and what we're dealing with. There are people in the room who do. But I... So... And I have some sense of confidence that these issues are being worked on pretty well. Well, maybe a slightly less hard question for me. You know, you talk about that confidence. You also write about how, you know, in one sense, the service will always be comparing itself to other countries that we consider ourselves like-minded. You use that example after September 11 how we flew families out to New York because the United Kingdom had decided to do that. But on balance, how do you think Australia stacks up when you look around the world at what others are doing for their citizens? I think we're the top of the Premier League right now. It's...we haven't always been. When I first inherited the Australian Consulate Service, I think the Canadians were the leaders of the pack in terms of their level of sophistication, the technology, their responsiveness. And we had a look at them and thought, yeah, that's where we want to go and we caught up and surpassed them, I think, for quite a while. I think right now we're at the top of the tree. It's an interesting place to be because it also means that you're meeting expectations at a high and consistent level and there's a question whether you really want to be there. This is an ever... It's a never-ending debate. But I think much better to be there than elsewhere. I think a lot of people would agree with you. I'm going to ask you one more question and then I'm going to come to the audience. If you want to put up your hand, one of my colleagues will bring a microphone around. You mentioned this as well and this is becoming increasingly something that Australia has to do better at as such a multicultural society. You know, I think more than 250 ancestries here, half the country was born overseas or has a parent born overseas. So how is that kind of posing a greater challenge when we think about the dual nationalities? We think about how interconnected people's lives are. I think when we talk about and think about consular clients, Australians in need overseas, I think even now for many Australians, that person that they imagine has a white face as an Anglo-Saxon Australian. That is not the case. It actually hasn't been the case for a long time. We had a particular moment, didn't we, during the COVID era where effectively a group of Australians, Indian Australians in India were told that they could not return to the country. It didn't last long and there was quite a public outcry about it and the former government sort of managed it away. That was quite a moment because there are very few rights in all of this. People are surprised Australians actually have absolutely no legal right to consular service. There's no right at all. It's simply a matter of policy, a matter of what we expect our government should do. But there is one right. It's an international right and it's the right of abode. And it looked to me like we breached that for a little while there for a group of Australians. I didn't put it in the book but I'll say it now. We had one former minister talk about how the people concerned were all Indians. They were all Australians. And this is a point that I think is progressively being understood. There was a lot of not very attractive discussion around the time of the 2006 evacuation of Australians from Lebanon because many of them were joint nationals, dual nationals. They were Australians and you're either Australian or you're not. And the face of this country is changing. I mean that particular decision, you know, as an Indian Australian I definitely felt that quite personally so I think it's good to recognise that those kinds of decisions I think are further away from what modern Australia looks like. If there are any questions please put up your hand and if you could identify yourself and my colleague will bring you a microphone if I'm down here. Thank you. Johanna Pittman. I'm the CEO of ADVANCE Global Australians so we represent overseas expatriates, Australians living overseas and the average length of time that our members are overseas is probably around 15 years so they're not your short-term traveller and I think the Assistant Minister captured it well by saying that the government policies may have been seen in one regard during the pandemic but the consular services were, you know, there was a lot of commitment from each of the overseas posts to assist Australians during that time. I think the sense though from our membership is that they've never been more disappointed in their treatment and they don't differentiate between government policy and the consular services. They're all wrapped up in one. When you talk about being at the top of the Premier League in consular services, how can we regain that perception amongst particularly those high-achieving Australians overseas who've been over there who are operating at the highest levels? How can we regain that sense of pride and also connection to Australia after the pandemic and how can we build that back again? Yeah, thanks for distinguishing so clearly between government policy and the work of the consular service because I really do think that the consular service was the meat and the sandwich in those circumstances. In the end, it was an extraordinary situation. It saw massive displacement of the Australian population overseas. In the end, I think it was about somewhere between 600,000 and a million Australians who returned to the country over that period. And many thousands of them were brought home by DFAT. It was a great reflection of global events and that the government made the decision. The government for once decided to distinguish between the interests of Australians at home and the interests of Australians abroad. How do we regain the trust? Gee, that's an interesting question. I think in the end that there probably does need to be a bit of a discussion about this abroad with our Australians overseas and that our embassies do need to be talking about it a bit and there needs to be a bit of a reflection on what happened and why and a bit of a reflection on what went right during that period because a lot more went right than the public narrative might suggest. I've got another one here. Thank you for your presentation. I'm Kiyama Saiko. I'm a constituent of Japan in Sydney. I've been here for two years and a half during COVID time. I understand the importance of our consular work here. My question is about the knowledge management or experience management of consular service because there are plenty of experiences which the consular officers and consulate generals have experienced plenty of events and incidents but the challenge is how to make more of such experiences to pass them on to the future generations or inside the organizations which are a big challenge despite the digitization, those individual experiences are very precious. Maybe training might do but it's quite limited. So from your experience and having written the book and that itself is a great contribution to passing the experience to the next generation. What are the... Do you have any suggestions? What is the experience of Oshie and Defat of somehow making full use of your experience and pass your experience to the inside organization or to the next generation? I understand the question. Thank you. Look, I think these things can be codified in guidelines and experience can be built up through training. I think Defat does this work well. I actually think the Japanese service does this rather well too. There's also a sharing of information among like-minded partners. In my time running the service, we focused our exchanges mostly with the Five Nations group. I used to call that group the Mutual Therapy Club because we'd come together from time to time and you'd say, God, you wouldn't know. You couldn't even believe what's just happened to me and the other'd say, oh, I know. But I understand increasingly the Australian services are reaching out and well beyond that group and engaging with a full range of other services. Kate? Kate, I'm going to get you to wait for a microphone. Sorry. Thank you. For the last few years, we've had annual consular discussions with Japan, formal talks which has been incredibly useful on a range of issues. But one point I was going to make in response to your question, it's a great question and it's one that we have been thinking a lot about because we're not consular officers from way back. We've also come to it late and had foreign policy careers like English. But when you start accumulating experience and knowledge about the consular work, it is, first of all, I think a little bit addictive because you have that direct line to actually helping people and, as Ian said, at the worst point of their lives sometimes. But one of the things we've just brought in is a commitment from our human resources area to give us 25% of every graduate intake. We get to keep 25% of them and train them up in consular issues, work with them. They're economists, they're lawyers, they're whatever they are but they come to us for a period and we have an internal rotation mechanism within the division where they get to work on consular cases, crisis management, they work in the crisis centre when something goes wrong overseas. So they, at the very beginning of their career and Natasha probably wishes she had this, she might not have left but they become, you know, instinctive consular officers for the rest of their career. That's our objective anyway, but it's a good question and it's something we think a lot about. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Now, it seems like everybody's ready to have drinks and buy a book. I'm going to ask one last question of Ian which is that you mentioned there's a special place in hell for the people who write their memoirs. This book is something of a rarity though. You think about in Australian life, politicians often write their memoirs but one of the reasons I was so fascinated by this is senior bureaucrats often do not and I always assumed it was something about the risk appetite of our public service but here you are, you've done it in great detail and it's such an excellent read. How did you pull this off and are you breaking the mold? Is this the start of a grand tradition for Australian public servants? I doubt that. Look, I had this ongoing conversation with UQP. I met the former head of UQP when I was ambassador in Berlin and then I was introduced to the publisher, Madonna Duffy and she'd say to me from time to time I think you've got a book in there Ian and I sort of thought about it and I thought, well, yeah, but I don't want to write about myself, I want to write about the consular service. The process, particularly the early part of writing this book had my publisher saying hang on a second, make sure you tell your own story. So I was pushed a bit into telling my own story because I had this aversion as I say to diplomatic memoirs but I came to understand that it was useful to use my voice and use my experience to tell that story. Consular field is one you can actually write about. You've got to be a little bit careful but the guidelines of official secrecy are probably easier to negotiate in the consular field. You have to be careful about the Privacy Act and not breach individuals' privacy but it's a bit easier in this sense. I don't think I'm starting some big trend, Tash. Well, we're very grateful for you doing this today. Congratulations. Thank you for joining us at the Lower Institute to launch it this evening. Thanks to the Assistant Minister and Michael as well. After this discussion, I'm sure you're all eager to buy a book up the room as well as stick around for a drink session. It's been wonderful. Please join me in thanking them.