Hello, I'm Mick Jansen.
I'm a Group Captain in the
Royal Australian Air Force.
I'm a pilot by trade and I've been
in the Air Force for 35 years.
I was born the day that Neil Armstrong
landed on the moon,
and as a child I wanted to be
an astronaut for long as I could live.
I was seven when I discovered
that I couldn't be an astronaut
and still be an Australian.
So I went for the next best thing,
which was, I decided I want to be a pilot.
For me,
it is about challenge and opportunity.
I have a core job as a pilot,
the Air Force found a new job.
to challenged me with,
and for me, that's
what kept that interesting
all that time, was that opportunity to
to be challenged
every time.
I've often found myself in a situation
where
I may well be the only openly
gay person in the room.
I've always found the best approach
is just to be open and honest about who
I am, and if that causes
uncomfortableness, that's not my intent.
But in some ways I hope it
creates an open mind on those
individuals that I'm meeting.
I joined the military in 1987,
five years
before the Keating changes happened
to actually make
open service possible within the military.
I then lived through the nineties
where it was a very new experience
for my Defence Force
and it was a very culturally
different Defence Force.
I look back at
the trailblazers who
came out at that time,
and they really are an inspiration to us,
because they came out at a time
when it was a - it was a very
different experience to mine
when I came out in 2003.
It was still a nerve-wracking time for me
individually.
I didn't know if it would have long
term impacts on my career.
I didn't know if this may cause
problems for me in my progression.
On reflection,
I had nothing to worry about.
I've had nothing but great support
from the vast, vast majority of people
I've worked with,
people who’ve worked for me.
And that's something I'm really proud of,
that my, that my organisation
was actually further advanced
than I thought it was.
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