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After
a full career, busy time ahead
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Air
Commodore Peter McDermott
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AIR
Commodore Peter McDermott has always been a man who knows what he
wants.
At the age of seven he knew he wanted to join the Air Force and
at 15 he knew who he was going to marry.
Now, with retirement from his role as the Commandant of the Australian
Command and Staff College before him, AIRCDRE McDermott once again
knows where he is going – and not surprisingly it involves
anything but the well-earned rest that most of us look forward to
after a full career.
AIRCDRE McDermott joined the Air Force in 1967 and graduated from
the Air Force Academy at Point Cook in Victoria in 1971.
“While I really wanted to fly aeroplanes, I really wanted to
go to university as well,” he said.
Since then he has also completed a navigators’ course, instructors’
course and a Masters Degree in Systems Management.
His career has taken him to America twice, once flying with the
US Navy around the Pacific and then to the American War College.
It was at the college that he learnt the importance of networks
– something he advocated at the Australian Command and Staff
College – with some of his fellow officers going on to be Ministers
for Defence and CDFs in their respective countries.
A visit to Japan developed a love of Japanese culture and when he
was offered the opportunity to become a Defence Attache for Japan
there was little hesitation in accepting.
“The commitment to go to Japan is pretty extreme because it
is two and a half years of preparation and three years in the job,”
AIRCDRE McDermott said. “[It was] the most exciting, challenging
time of my life.”
He took up his post as the inaugural Commandant of the Australian
Command and Staff College (ACSC) in June 2000, introducing the idea
of a joint college and turning that into a reality two-and-a-half
years on.
This was no mean feat, especially when the project was sped up by
a year.
“We had to make the new college work – we had to put all
the things in place that took a building and syllabus into an institution
and that was the challenging part,” he said
AIRCDRE McDermott officially retires in March and he intends to
be nearly as busy as he has been throughout his career.
He would like to be involved in something similar to what he is
currently doing. “Take an idea, or say a small organisation,
and build it up,” he said.
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