 Mike Smith, thanks so much for your time. We might begin today by having you tell us a little bit about your background. Sure. Well, a long career in the Army, 34 years. And then when I retired, I decided I wanted to do something in this civil military space and something that was also connected with United Nations peacekeeping, which really reflected the lessons I had learned from a long time in the Army. And it was time to pay back. So, overseas postings in places like Papua New Guinea and Kashmir as a military observer. Then in Cambodia is the Defence Attache straight after the elections, the United Nations mission. And then finally as Deputy Force Commander in East Timor with the United Nations mission, it just made me realise how societies, communities, recovering particularly from conflict, how much assistance they required and how much harder we had to work to try and assist in what we could do for them. So that was how I got involved in it. And I was in Taiwan of all places on having a discussion on security dialogue. And the next thing I knew I was offered a position heading what is now Action Aid Australia, an NGO, which then was called OsteCare. So I headed that for about six years. This centre was finally established. I had been advocating for it for a while and I was asked to head it up, to kick it off. So that's what I've been doing. What made you advocate for the centre? I think being out in the field and seeing the results of conflict, seeing the tragedies of conflict and seeing that it is mainly innocent civilians who are the ones most affected these days. I mean to be in Cambodia and see people affected by landmines, you know, laid by militaries of different kinds over many years. And just to see that, those sorts of things. In East Timor, to see the absolute destruction that occurred in Timor, to see the poverty and to see a nation trying to establish itself out of the ashes. These were the sorts of things that made me want to stay in this space, so to speak. And then I saw that from a military perspective, of course, when I was serving in the military. But then when I took over the NGO, we had programs all around the world in some of those same places, Timor and Cambodia, but also in places like Palestine and in refugee camps in places like Kenya. And of course, I visited those and I started seeing things from a different angle, from a different viewpoint. And all of this just cemented my view that what we actually needed was much closer civil-military interaction between the various actors that can do something for these people. And do something which is also in our own national interests, which is really what it's all about because the more peace and security we have around the world, the less we'll be involved in conflicts overseas. So that was a passion that was driving me. To see results on the ground, to see that you can make a difference. But it requires a lot of hard work. We talked earlier to Sheila Stewart, one of the keynote speakers here, and she explained that often military tends to put national security before the importance of human security. What's your view on that? Yes, well I've actually written on human security and I'm a great proponent of human security. I think since the end of the Cold War, the days of just looking at national security in terms of deterrence and force on force and clear victories and that conflicts are fought on against rules that everybody plays to, those days are gone. And the conflicts that we're now involved in are very much interest-state conflicts, more so than state conflicts. We have to remain quite able to still be able to deter and defeat inter-state conflict, but the vast majority of conflicts now are interest-state conflicts. And it's in that environment that we find ourselves and that it's there where the civil and military actors are cheek by jowl. Whether they want to be or not, that's where they are. They have to understand each other. They don't always have to work with each other but they have to understand why they sometimes can't work with each other but more importantly where they can and how they can do things better. It was obviously a very big step for you to go out and say we need this. Was there an acceptance of that and an understanding? Well, I think when I first started advocating for it about 10 or 12 years ago now, there wasn't much buy-in to it in Australia, but then in about 2007 there was a joint parliamentary committee inquiry into Australia's role in peacekeeping and this provided a really good opportunity for people in Australia to talk about the need for a centre of this nature. And the parliamentary inquiry received many submissions saying we need something to try and bring these disparate elements together a little bit better. And of course the government then picked that up and ran with that and said well this is right and it's something that's also starting to happen overseas in other centres overseas. So there's been a real need and you only have to look now both in conflict and disaster management to see the military, the police and the various civilian entities all working together whether they would have wanted to or not they are, they have to. And so a centre like ours, the Asia Pacific Civil Military Centre of Excellence actually provides a place where these various issues can be considered and it's a great privilege I think to be able to contribute to that. Did you experience some of this yourself when you went from the military to an NGO? Yes I did. I think I experienced it in two ways. The first experience was with my NGO colleagues who, as soon as they find you're from the military you know this culture how can we accept this person sort of thing. From my own experience I didn't have that problem because I think I'd been so much in the field and I had spoken to lots of NGOs and international organisations. I was very familiar with the United Nations and organisations like the International Committee of the Red Cross and had great admiration for what they were all trying to do and what they were doing. So I didn't have that same reservation, I knew what I wanted to do. The great thing I learnt was the way that NGOs go about preparing to do their business in the field and being able to see the two different ways, the military being pretty much top down what the military would call directive control, clear statement of the mission make sure all the commanders understand and then they get on and do it. Whereas the NGO community and those working in the humanitarian and development space start from very much a bottom up approach. What does the community want? What are your needs? How is it that we might be able to help you? And so it's trying to get those two approaches coming together. Remembering all the time that the reason that you're there of course if you're a military you're there because your government has sent you but your government wants you to be there to hopefully have a sustainable peace at the end of the day and so that's why these two ways of doing business are both required, both important but they both have to understand each other. Yeah you've got organisations that are just poles apart. How do you get them to have common aims and common beliefs? That does happen to some extent but you know in the field I've found that there's a common denominator between military people and NGOs and that common denominator is service when you think about it. You know if you're a soldier you're there to serve your country you're there for a greater good or you believe you're there for a greater good and you give your life to that particular service. And the NGOs are similar in that regard. So I think there is a strong commitment always to leave something better than what you have found it. Now the difference is that the military has a clear mission. It's there to do a military operation and whilst militaries may not want to have to kill people and impose authority they may have to do that and that's what they have to be trained to do. They've got a real role. That's why the taxpayer pays them their wages. Whereas the NGO and the humanitarian community and the development community is not interested in that at all. It's interested in the foundations of development and capacity building and local ownership and all of those sorts of things. But whilst they've got very different roles to play they can be mutually supportive and I've seen that on the ground. Can you give examples of this collaboration? Well sure I can give many examples but I always remember in Timor-Lest where I travelled relentlessly through the country one of the district administrators said summed it up to me beautifully one day when he said we need the peacekeeping force here and I said why do you need the peacekeeping force? And he said you protect the sandbox in which I can then operate. And I think that says a lot that if the military can provide security and enable these nation building activities to get underway and community based projects to get underway then that does lay the foundations for a sustainable peace and that's not an easy thing and it can't come overnight. It's a long commitment once you embark on it. And on top of having the organisations work together I suppose there's also the challenges of dealing with the host country? Well a host country is key and this is one of the big differences I would say about you know, Cold War conflict and traditional peacekeeping and all of those things where you had sovereign states sovereign states fighting each other and then the United Nations or military force would go in to keep the peace that had been decided by the two protagonists a peace agreement had been reached. Now what we find in intra-state conflict it's far more grey. There may be a peace agreement there may be a settlement but when you look at the actors in country not everybody is playing by those rules and so we get these very very grey areas where you still have conflict going on and at the same time we've got sort of development trying to start and bringing people out of poverty all these things are happening in the same space whether we like it or not. So the world's got a lot more complex and there's often spoilers. In peacekeeping parlance you will find some people who really want a United Nations presence just to give them time to re-gear and then contest for power again. So it's a very very complicated situation. As we've found very close to home I mean people now always look at Afghanistan and Iraq but I think they're more the abnormal situations rather than the normal. Let's look close at a home let's look at the situation in Timor-Leste which is still struggling to establish a sustainable peace and look at the Solomon Islands which is also experiencing difficulties so we have problems close to home and Africa has many of these problems which is why I'm very pleased Australia is re-engaging with Africa because we have a lot to learn from our engagement in Africa which is pretty much the epicentre of peace and conflict studies so we can't take ourselves out of Africa. For such a young organisation you've assembled a very impressive collection of speakers here for this meeting how have you managed to gain such traction so quickly? It's obviously my good looks. That was what I thought but I didn't like to say it. No, I think it's... I'm a great believer that if you can put a good program together you will attract people and I'm blessed with a great staff and they have lots of experience and within the centre we have a very collegiate approach we come together from different departments and we have an NGO advisor and so lots of discussions to put this program together and we've approached people and I think you'd find every speaker here would say I'd like to come and talk about this but I really want to come and talk about this because I know who else is coming and it's the networking that goes on and the mutual learning that goes on. Nobody's got a mortgage on knowledge in this space and I think the centre I often say why is it that we've done so much in our first two years and it's really performance punishment we've gone into a space and we're starting to provide something that everybody wants and my small team is saying hey boss we can't do any more we can't do any more so it's rather nice to know that we are servicing a need I think and in a way that's very collaborative in our approach. Mike, what has been your proudest achievement so far? Oh, that's a hard one. I would say if there was one thing that I thought the centre had really contributed to in its first two years it would be this very critical issue of protection of civilians. It was a bit of a gamble for us to go into that space but protection of civilians both in a conflict sense but also when disasters are on. It is a real and pressing issue particularly in these grey areas I was talking about and the United Nations has been mandating missions now since 1999 to do protection of civilians without the necessary guidelines and doctrine to be able to do it properly it's one thing to say go and do it it's another thing to say how do you do it and so the centre moved into that space very early in the piece and was able to establish I think a very credible international reputation very clearly not by saying we had the answers but by saying we'd like to contribute to finding the answers and so in the work we've done both with the United Nations and with the African Union I think we've all learnt a great deal so the centre has provided a little bit of a conduit I suppose and we're still doing that and it's very very pleasing to see it go from basically a set of people sitting around a table from Africa and the United Nations and civil society organisations only a year ago in a little motel in Queenby to say well let's develop some guidelines for protection of civilians to then take those to the African Union in Addis Ababa and let the African Union play with those and then they went to the African Union summit in July and the outcome was we want more of this so it's been quite that would be I think in our short time one of our most pleasing accomplishments but I think on the disaster management side in our own region in the Pacific and South East Asia has made a strong contribution to the development of guidelines civil military guidelines for military assistance in disaster relief operations and we all know since the tsunami that terrible tragedy that happened there that these mega disasters in the Asia Pacific region are going to occur more and they are going to take a lot of lives and so the centre I think is playing an important role in helping to bridge that civil military gap that currently exists in disaster management so it's a great great achievement for our little centre I think in two years. What would your advice be to personnel who are about to be deployed? In a word I'd say understanding understanding the nature of the situation you're going into understanding the people with whom you're going into support or protect understanding the role of all the actors that are going to be on the ground now for the military this is a really big ask because for the military we're saying to our soldiers hey we've taught you how to go and you know fire your weapons and look after each other in adversity and to close with the enemy now on top of all of that we want you to be able to go and do these sorts of functions to be supportive sometimes not to take the lead at all to show restraint to protect civilians to understand culture to be able to learn the language these are big issues you know and of course every soldier can't do everything it's impossible to be able to make all of our soldiers sailors and airmen understand the need for this and to provide within the force structure that they have the requisite resources that they can draw on to do that to be able to communicate with the other actors and particularly with the local community we need to for the police we need to be able to be sensitized to those situations and we need to make sure that they understand that the type of community policing they might be doing or the capacity building of local police forces that they might be undertaking is not the same as in Australia necessarily so they have to adapt as well and for our civilian colleagues both government and in those going to fill billets in the host government or the United Nations we need to make sure they have a good understanding of civil military relations because whether they like it or not, guess what they're going to come up against military forces and they have to understand how to work with them so it's all about understanding knowledge management, sharing information and realizing that you're a contributor and you don't have all the answers so you got to learn Mike Smith, thanks so much for your time