Mike Kelly (Eden-Monaro, Australian Labor Party, Parliamentary Secretary for Defence) Share this | Hansard source

I acknowledge the words of my colleague, the member for Flinders, who has acknowledged and detailed the concern and the feelings of the general community in Flinders for the loss of a proud son. Certainly, our hearts, our thoughts and our prayers go out to Daryl and Kathleen Penpraze, and of course to his younger brothers, the twins Dan and Jesse, aged 17, and sister Lily, aged 15, and to his girlfriend, the lady who he was in a relationship with, Jacinta Thomas. They will all be trying to come to grips with this loss of a dear and beloved member of their community and their family.

Certainly, they should take pride in the fact that this young man was a high achiever. He had already taken on a challenge that many Australian citizens would shirk at—would blink at, would not be up to or would simply not be interested in because it involves such a hard task, such physical challenges and such risks—just the process of being in a position to wear the proud uniform of the Australian Army and the proud lanyard of the engineers: the black lanyard.

Certainly there is a lot of focus on the casualties that occur in Afghanistan—as there rightly should be—but becoming a member of the Australian Defence Force and acquiring the competencies that are necessary to achieve your professional proficiency carries with it great risk at all times. You strive always to minimise those risks but there is a limit to how much you can do to achieve that. We must prepare our people for the harshest of conditions. We must enable them to survive in the harshest of conditions and to succeed in the nation's endeavours in uniform in combat operations and in some of the most challenging environments on the planet. It would be negligent if we were not trying to make their training and development as realistic as possible while at the same time trying to get the balance of safety right in delivering that professional competency.

Certainly Sapper Jordan Ronald Penpraze was a high achiever in getting through the difficult training at Kapooka and through his initial employment training as an engineer at the School of Military Engineering in Holdfast Troop—'Holdfast' being the call sign of the engineers. As has been outlined by the member for Flinders, not only was he a high achiever in the courses he conducted as an engineer and through Kapooka but obviously he was someone with a high sense of community commitment and community service, as was evidenced by his rescuing of the elderly citizen. He was able to maintain his skills in first aid. The CPR that was applied actually saved the life of that elderly citizen. We have seen lots of evidence of the capability and achievements of this young man who was community minded. At the service were broader members of the community and the nation at large.

Training is risky. We do lose people. People do suffer injuries. I think about 1,400 incidents and injuries occurred in the last financial year. I saw many of these circumstances through my own career. I have been involved in the aftermath of them and investigations of vehicles that have turned over and helicopters that have crashed—we lost many members in some of those occurrences. Live-firing ranges by their very nature are enormously risky. Over time we have had incidences at pistol ranges, rifle ranges, grenade ranges and the like. I think it is not well appreciated just how many risks there are and how dangerous the very act of being in uniform is for a member of the Defence Force.

I would like to take this opportunity to pay tribute to not only Sapper Jordan Ronald Penpraze but also his brothers and sisters of the engineers of the black lanyard fraternity. We should highlight their service at the present time. At probably no other time in history have we relied so much on the engineers to deliver national interests. The engineers have been very hard at work in the north of Australia delivering outcomes and betterment to Indigenous communities. They have been heavily engaged up there. They have also been hard at work in preparing facilities on Nauru and Manus islands in relation to our asylum seeker challenge. As we all well know and we reflected upon this morning in the chamber, they are heavily engaged in combat operations and in the delivery of national objectives in Afghanistan. The risks involved in delivering that outcome have been well canvassed.

They put themselves in harm's way above all others in delivering a safe operating environment for those who follow in their footsteps. It would have been highly likely that Sapper Penpraze would have ended up in the ongoing operations in Afghanistan in the not too distant future. Our engineers are also playing a very significant role in the planning for the draw down of our operations in Afghanistan and will be heavily involved in the execution of that draw down. We rely very heavily in this country on both our construction engineers and our combat engineers, who are second to none in this world in terms of their professionalism, proficiency and courage and what they deliver in terms of outcomes to this nation. I do not think the full story of what they have done, both domestically and in the broader range of national interests that they have been serving, has yet been told or acknowledged.

Today I salute Sapper Jordan Ronald Penpraze. My heart goes out to his family and we offer our condolences to all those members that I listed. I also acknowledge the wonderful men and women who serve us in the Royal Australian Engineers of the Australian Army.

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