RAAF Base Williamtown saw Flight Lieutenant Ross Bowman take to the skies in the F-35 A Lightning II for a majestic display at the Central Coast Airshow 2022 in Warnervale, NSW. Photo courtesy of Corporal Craig Barrett.

The RAAF School of Technical Training (RAAFSTT) played an instrumental role in shaping Flight Lieutenant Ross Bowman’s illustrious career, offering him a deep dive into the Air Force’s operational mechanics. “RAAFSTT was the launchpad for technicians, setting them up for success in their squadrons,” mentioned Lieutenant Bowman. “I gained a nuanced understanding of the Air Force’s junior ranks, which has undoubtedly enhanced my capabilities as an officer.”

Hailing from Dunedoo, NSW, Flight Lieutenant Bowman began his journey in 2005, undergoing Initial Military Training at RAAF Base Edinburgh. Later, he headed to RAAF Base Wagga, honing his craft as an aircraft technician at RAAFSTT. “In my role as an ATECH, often dubbed a ‘black hander’, I delved into everything that could stain our hands – be it hydraulics, fuel, or engines,” he recounted.

His dedication saw him spend half a decade at the 2 Operational Conversion Unit (2OCU), maintaining the Classic Hornet and concurrently chasing his aspiration to fly. Upon earning his ‘wings’, Lieutenant Bowman dedicated three years to the ‘Mighty Magpies’ (75 Squadron), followed by an 18-month stint in the US mastering the F-35A and training both Australian and US cadets. “Coming back home, I briefly joined the 3 Squadron. Now, I’ve circled back to 2OCU, but as a mentor,” he shared. He went on to say, “Watching a rookie fighter pilot don their squadron badges, the pride they feel is palpable.”

Lieutenant Bowman expressed his awe at piloting the F-35A. “Soaring over the waters on Australia Day 2022, cruising at staggering speeds near the Sydney Harbour Bridge, is a memory etched in my heart,” he remarked. Yet, what he cherishes most is his deployment on Operation Okra. “It wasn’t just the thrill of flying but the gleam in the technicians’ eyes, knowing our collective efforts culminated in mission success.”

Bowman’s journey had its share of hurdles. “I faced rejection the first time I applied as a pilot. Yet, it paved the way for a career I hadn’t envisioned,” he revealed. Gratitude runs deep for Bowman, who believes his milestones owe much to his family’s unwavering backing. “My wife has been my anchor. Her support has been pivotal to my achievements,” he said. His counsel to aspirants? “The Air Force journey is replete with golden chances. Seize them when they come your way.”

 

 

 

The Australian Government addressed cost of living pressures in the 2023-24 Budget by increasing support for those receiving certain payments and by easing pressure on renters.

As announced on 6 September 2023, joint Department of Social Services and Department of Veterans’ Affairs measures will increase the maximum rate of Commonwealth Rent Assistance by 15%. This is the largest increase to Rent Assistance in over three decades.

The Australian Government is also increasing the base rate of a range of support payments by
$40 per fortnight. The DVA payments being increased are the fortnightly education allowances under the Veterans Children Education Scheme (VCES) and the Military Rehabilitation and Compensation Act Education and Training Scheme (MRCAETS) for those aged 16 or older and for those receiving the double orphan, living away from home, and homeless rates of payment.

Both changes will apply from 20 September 2023. DVA will contact individuals who are affected by this change by mail in the coming weeks.

These changes will assist eligible veterans and families to ease the current cost of living pressures.

For more information visit the Financial Support page on the DVA website.

ED: Communism on the march! 

Australia faces the most radical change to the country’s social, economic and racial fabric since Federation.

We are being asked to vote Yes or No in a referendum to alter the Constitution.

But there is scant detail with which to make an informed decision.

According to polls, the lack of information is one of the primary contributing reasons the No vote has been on the rise since the announcement of the referendum.

In place of detail, the Yes vote is opting for a ‘vibe’ using emotive diversions through pop songs and concerts, celebrity and sport endorsements and feel-good ads.

The Prime Minister is choosing his words carefully, suggesting the referendum is asking for a ‘modest’ change, when the opposite is the case.

No change to our Constitution is ‘modest’. It’s a big deal, which is why so many proposed changes to our Constitution historically fail.

A modest change would not require subverting our Constitution.

A modest change to establish a voice could be legislated by the Parliament.

The truth is, what is being asked for is an extremely radical change to the foundation of our nation.

There are several architects of the proposed Voice.

I will take a look at a few of them before the referendum date.

When Anthony Albanese is pressed for detail about this proposed amendment to the Australian Constitution, the Prime Minister’s only response has been to refer to the Calma-Langton Model as the basis for the Voice.

Ben Fordham interviewed Anthony Albanese on 2GB On 18 January 2023. Fordham asked, “will the Voice be a Voice to Parliament or a Voice to Parliament and to Government?”

Albanese replied:

“The work that was done under the former Government, by Tom Calma and Marcia Langton envisaged a parliamentary oversight committee that would have oversight over the activity of the Voice.”

When asked by Fordham whether members of the Voice would be paid, the Prime Minister answered: “I said there’s been no suggestion of that. Go and have a look at the Calma-Langton report.”

Who is ‘Langton’ of the Calma-Langton Report?

‘Langton’ is Marcia Langton, an historic radical Communist activist, a member of the National Committee of the Communist League (CL), a Trotskyist group that campaigned for the violent overthrow of the Australian government and the implementation of a totalitarian state.

Marcia Langton’s views are recognised to be extreme, and she has been the focus of an undercover ASIO operation. Langton has been described by the Trotskyist Newspaper Direct Action as ‘one of the best-known black communist activists in Australia’.

Langton then joined the Marxist Socialist Workers Party in 1977.

Her lifelong purpose has been to overthrow capitalism and to upend our Constitution.

Langton’s agenda is being aided and abetted by fellow lifelong socialist since student days, Anthony Albanese, who tells us he wants to “change the country” to “make us feel better about ourselves”. Never mind that Australians feel very good about the country as it is, without the Communist activists meddling .

Throughout her life, when her radical ideas are questioned, or outright rejected she invokes the ‘racist’ card. Her public comments are littered with accusations of racism.

Her school books were racist.

People in the shops were racist.

Her university lecturer was racist.

Her green and leftist critics are guilty of “arrogant racism”.

Social workers are “white and racist”.

Police are “racist”.

Referendum No voters engaged in “racism” and “stupidity”.

When she was young, “apartheid” Queensland was so racist that “no civil or HUMAN rights were accorded to my people” (untrue).

Schools in her youth were “horrible, racist hellholes” whose “teachers were the kind of people who still advocated killing Aboriginal people”, yet she was made house captain at Brisbane’s Aspley High by these “racists”.

Langton has accused Jacinta Nampijinpa Price of “legitimising racism” and Price and her mother, Bess, as “coloured help”.

She wished a “slow, painful death” on Mark Latham.

“You so deserve a slow, painful death and humiliating obituaries e.g. ‘Australia celebrates as white supremacist, homophobic, far right wing arsehole finally dies’,

Langton’s close associate Peter Rob from the Communist League wrote a piece about Marcia Langton in 2011:

“Langton has been thinking about the Constitutional status of Indigenous Australians for even longer than she has about the life crisis in remote communities. She wants the remaining vestiges of race power wiped from the Constitution. She has been talking for 40 years about racism in Australia. Her life pivots on this word. She grew up politically in the late ’60s and has matured but never abandoned the language and style of her youthful anger.’

Langton also hails the fraudulent Bruce Pascoe as an Aborigine (when the aborigines of the tribe from where he claims to have originated have no record of him) and has called Pascoe’s debunked, fictional Dark Emu “the most important book on Australia”.

At a keynote address to the Lowitja Institute’s third international indigenous health and wellbeing con­ference, Langton said:

“People who are opposing (the voice referendum) are saying we are destroying the fabric of their sacred Constitution. Yes, that’s right, that’s exactly what we’re doing,”

In 2019 Langton abused a young gay man who had defended Israel Folau after he was sacked by Rugby Australia for quoting the Bible.

Langton said, “he probably thinks he’s gay because he masturbates too much.”

When challenged on Twitter, Langton replied with more homophobic abuse,

“Gay? I don’t think so, more like Milo. Twisted.”

In October 2019, Langton said of those who have climbed Ayers Rock: “A curse will fall on all of them”, and wrote (as images showed hundreds lining up for a final Uluru clamber),

“They will remember how they defiled this sacred place until they die and history will record their contempt for Aboriginal culture.”

Langton has never disavowed her extremist Communist beliefs. Her entire life demonstrates a determined commitment to her beliefs.

She was so extreme in her Marxism that she was once the focus of an undercover ASIO operation.

One of the core beliefs of Trotskyism is that Australia doesn’t deserve to exist as a country and should be destroyed.

Langton’s fellow Trotskyist and academic, Tom Bramble, has declared that even just the sight of an Australian flag makes him want to puke.

Is it appropriate the woman who is charged with “shaping a framework towards developing options for an Indigenous voice to all levels of government” may still believe the government she has been tasked with advising should be destroyed?

You need to know this, because the current Prime Minister does not want to disclose the detail of the Voice to the ill-informed general public.

It’s not that The Prime Minister and architects to the Voice are unable to give you the detail to the voice.

They simply don’t want you to know what’s behind this Communist takeover of the country through our Constitution.

 

This is an interesting article from Silodrome with many pictures.

CLICK LINK to read the article.

A Rare Bulletproof Minerva Series I 4×4 Special Forces Vehicle (silodrome.com)

This is an actual letter sent to the DFAT (Department of Foreign Affairs and Trade) Immigration Minister.  The Government tried desperately to censure the author, but got nowhere because every legal person who read it couldn’t stop laughing!

Dear Mr Minister,

I’m in the process of renewing my passport, and still cannot believe this.

How is it that K-Mart has my address and telephone number, and knows that I bought a television set and golf clubs and condoms from them back in 1997, and yet the Federal Government is still asking me where I was born and on what date?

For Christ sakes, do you guys do this by hand?

My birth date you have in my Medicare information, and it is on all the income tax forms I’ve filed for the past 40 years.

It is also on my driver’s licence, on the last eight passports I’ve ever had on all those stupid customs declaration forms I’ve had to fill out before being allowed off planes over the past 30 years.

It’s also on all those insufferable census forms that I’ve filled out every 5 years since 1966.

Also… would somebody please take note, once and for all, that my mother’s name is Audrey, my father’s name is Jack, and I’d be absolutely bloody astounded if that ever changed between now and when I drop dead!!!

SHIT! What do you people do with all this information we keep having to provide?

I apologize, Mr Minister. But I’m really pissed off this morning.

Between you and me, I’ve had enough of all this bullshit!

You send the application to my house, then you ask me for my bloody address!

What the hell is going on with your mob? Have you got a gang of mindless Neanderthal arseholes working there!

And another thing, look at my damn picture. Do I look like Bin Laden? I can’t even grow a beard for God’s sakes. I just want to go to New Zealand and see my new granddaughter.  (Yes, my son interbred with a Kiwi girl).  And would someone please tell me, why would you give a shit whether or not I plan on visiting a farm in the next 15 days? In the unlikely event I ever got the urge to do something weird to a sheep or a horse, believe you me, I’d sure as hell not want to tell anyone!

Well, I have to go now, ’cause I have to go to the other side of Sydney, and get another bloody copy of my birth certificate – and to part with another $80 for the privilege of accessing MY OWN INFORMATION!

Would it be so complicated to have all the services in the same spot, to assist in the issuance of a new passport on the same day?

Nooooo…that’d be too bloody easy and makes far too much sense.

You would much prefer to have us running all over the bloody place like chickens with our heads cut off, and then having to find some ‘high-society’ wanker to confirm that it’s really me in the goddamn photo! You know the photo… the one where we’re not allowed to smile?…you bloody morons.

Signed – An Irate Australian Citizen.

P.S. Remember what I said above about the picture, and getting someone in ‘high-society’ to confirm that it’s me?

Well, my family has been in this country since before 1820! In 1856, one of my forefathers took up arms with Peter Lalor.  (You do remember the Eureka Stockade!)

I have also served in both the CMF and regular Army for something over 30 years (I went to Vietnam in 1967), and still have high security clearances. I’m also a personal friend of the president of the RSL….Lt General Peter Cosgrove sends me a Christmas card each year.

However, your rules require that I have to get someone “important” to verify who I am; you know…someone like my doctor – WHO WAS BORN AND RAISED IN BLOODY PAKISTAN! a country where they either assassinate or hang their ex-Prime Ministers – and are suspended from the Commonwealth and United Nations for not having the “right sort of government”..

You are all pen-pushing paper-shuffling bloody idiots!