Daniel Hurst political correspondent
theguardian.com, Tuesday 28 January 2014
A military man whose public profile was etched by East Timor is the choice for a term that will include the Gallipoli centenary
Cosgrove's five-year term coincides with the centenary of the first world war and the Anzac Gallipoli campaign. Photograph: Alan Porritt/AAP
Australia’s incoming governor general once described his life as a “rollercoaster”.
No stranger to high office, General Peter Cosgrove is a former military man who rose to the highest roles in the defence force. He now takes on the task of serving as the Queen’s representative in Australia – not an unfamiliar role given he was aide-de-camp to the one-time governor general Sir Paul Hasluck in 1972.
Cosgrove’s lengthy military career included a prominent role commanding the international forces that oversaw East Timor’s transition to independence, leading to his promotion to chief of the army in 2000 and chief of the defence force in 2002.
He was long rumoured to be Tony Abbott’s pick as the new governor general, with his military background cited as a worthwhile attribute given his five-year term coincides with the centenary of the first world war and the Anzac Gallipoli campaign.
Last month, the deputy prime minister, Warren Truss, praised Cosgrove as an “excellent candidate” and outlined the government’s thinking.
“We want somebody who can be a representative for our country that we will feel proud of as the head of state. We want someone who has obviously a proven record of personal achievement, that's admired and accepted by all Australians as a suitable person to do the job,” Truss said.
Cosgrove was born into a military family on 28 July 1947, in Sydney. He fondly remembers growing up in Sydney's Paddington, which he described in an ABC interview as “a neighbourhood of a thousand stand-in parents” where various shop owners and community members were called aunties and uncles despite being unrelated.
His grandfather, a staunch Labor man and trade unionist, reacted angrily to a Catholic priest linking the party to communism during a sermon in the mid-1950s. “My grandfather leapt to his feet in the midst of the startled congregation and said ‘you lying bastard’ and stormed out of the church, never to be seen again,” Cosgrove said.
Cosgrove attended the Royal Military College, Duntroon and graduated in 1968 as a lieutenant. He later told how he sometimes got into trouble because he was “chronically a little bit untidy, a little bit unpunctual, sometimes a little irreverent, a little bit rebellious”.
In his 2006 book, My Life, he recalled injuring a fellow officer, the future Victorian Liberal premier Jeff Kennett, during a squash game after his graduation from Duntroon. Cosgrove accidentally hit a ball into the eye of Kennett, who remained in hospital for several weeks.
Cosgrove was posted to the 1st Battalion, Royal Australian Regiment (1RAR) in December 1968 and served in Malaysia, according to an Australian War Memorial profile. He was posted to the 9RAR and commanded an infantry platoon in the Vietnam war, later receiving the Military Cross for an assault on enemy positions. Cosgrove recounted arriving in Vietnam around the time the US was looking for a way out of the war and public support was eroding. Some of the people he was commanding were more battle-experienced and he wondered how he would perform.
Cosgrove, who returned to Australia in 1970, later said he had “no hate whatsoever” for the Viet Cong. “People would think you must hate your enemy. No no, not at all. You respect them and you are opposed to them, because you know that they are a skilful, courageous enemy who seeks to kill you and will do so using any device, and in that respect you give them no quarter unless they are surrendering or helpless, but nonetheless, I never found hatred for them,” he told the ABC.
In 2006, Cosgrove told interviewer Peter Thompson that taking a life was “every individual's dilemma and challenge, when it must be done to save your own life or that of your comrades”.
“I think one of the great moments is when you look upon a fallen enemy, dead or badly wounded, and if your feeling is one of some level of regret, that is, if you like, a token of the respect in which you hold human life and what they were doing just a few moments before,” he said.
After a short stint as aide-de-camp to the governor general in 1972, Cosgrove spent the next few years as second in command at 5RAR and then an infantry instructor. He worked his way into more senior roles and became commander of the 6th Infantry Brigade in the early 1990s and later the commander of the Australian Defence Force Warfare Centre and commandant of the Royal Military College, Duntroon.
Promoted to major general, Cosgrove was named in 1999 as commander of International Forces East Timor, overseeing the move to independence. He gained a significant public profile providing updates on the effort in East Timor and said he was proud, at the end, to be cheered by the people.
Cosgrove returned to Australia in 2000, and was later named as Australian of the Year for being a role model who displayed “strength, determination, intelligence, compassion and humour”. He was also appointed as a Companion of the Order of Australia.
In the wake of the East Timor operation, Cosgrove became a lieutenant general and chief of army in 2000. He was promoted to general and chief of the defence force two years later before retiring in 2005. During these stints, Australia joined the US-led “coalition of the willing” after the 11 September 2001 terrorist attacks and then-prime minister John Howard sent forces into Afghanistan and Iraq.
In March 2013, 10 years on from the Iraq war, Cosgrove said he had “mixed feelings about the whole episode” because a “horrible dictator” was removed but he was not sure whether it had made the world a safer place. Cosgrove said he was not convinced that a “lie” about weapons of mass destruction in Iraq was used to justify going to war. “A lie presupposes [that] people deliberately contrived to invent a reason for war, and that’s certainly not the Australian experience,” he told the ABC.
Around the time of his retirement as chief of the defence force, Cosgrove went with his family and immediate staff to the Australian War Memorial in Canberra, laid a wreath at the tomb of the unknown soldier, gave a salute, and said: “I did my best, mate.”
In 2006, the Labor premier of Queensland, Peter Beattie, appointed Cosgrove to oversee the rebuilding of communities devastated by cyclone Larry. Beattie said Cosgrove had agreed to take on the role “because he's a great Australian” and the right man for the job. In 2008, then premier Anna Bligh revealed that a new suburb in Townsville would be called Cosgrove in his honour.
In recent times, Cosgrove has served on a number of boards, including Qantas, and as the chancellor of the Australian Catholic University. He was installed in the ACU role at a 2010 ceremony at St Mary’s Cathedral in Sydney, presided over by Cardinal George Pell and attended by Abbott, then opposition leader. Cosgrove stressed the value of education. “For our own citizens and for many of our overseas neighbours, our universities are the key which unlocks their future,” he said.
Peter Cosgrove: from general to governor general | World news | theguardian.com
