"I think the peace keeping role is seen more in a positive step of being able to contribute to area and even global peace activities where hopefully the threat to our own people isn't so great and I think that's being instilled into young children. I think they understand even more so through these small commitments we make the bigger sacrifice that was made in earlier times in the world wars, in Vietnam and to some extent even in Korea where the big sacrifices were made by so many, many thousands of Australians that in our capacity to work as peace keepers, peace monitors that we are keeping the Australian tradition of helping, helping out the mate or going in and doing the right thing and I think that's something that the children who are growing up now who are getting a really good exposure to are able to then go on and pass on to their children and I think the soldiers now with East Timor and the other missions that we've done over the years we are now getting a lot of soldiers who have been exposed to overseas which is good."

ARTIFICER SERGEANT MAJOR MICHAEL NEEDHAM, BOUGAINVILLE