MEET STEPHEN
REPRESENTING OUR VETERANS IN PARLIAMENT
Let me introduce myself. My name is Stephen Huxtable.
I joined the Royal Australian Navy just after I turned 17 (1981) and spent most of my time at H.M.A.S Albatross, the home of the fleet air arm. I was a sailor and my job was aircraft maintainer (instruments, armament, communication and electrical systems) avionics in modern terms. I joined 851 squadron and started on “Trackers”, they were anti-submarine aircraft. At around that time the fleet air arm suffered from a political decision by the Labor government which effectively disbanded all the fixed-wing elements of the fleet air arm and greatly downsized the force.
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This was my first serious introduction into Australian politics. To this day the Fleet Air Arm is still a shadow of its former self.
After I left the Navy in 1990, I spent a number of years owning a small business selling Snap-on tools. This lasted until I could afford to pay for my flight training. I sold the business and 8 months later I ended up with my private fixed-wing licence as well as my commercial helicopter licence. I was now a pilot.
Well as work was hard to find I moved to Oakey and got a job maintaining Army helicopters. That lasted for about 3 years. With a change in contractors, I used it as an opportunity to move to Oman and work for a British company upgrading the Sultan of Oman’s Jaguar jets. While there the towers in the U.S were hit and that motivated me to find work in Kuwait assisting the U.S army with its war on terror. I was a subcontractor doing logistic support in the form of truck contracts.
Anyway, after another 3 years I ended up back in Australia working for Boeing. That quickly changed from fixing Army choppers to flying Drones hunting bad guys in Iraq and Afghanistan. Over a 5-year period I ended up doing 6 tours, 4 into Afghanistan and 2 into Iraq.
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It’s about this time I took a very keen interest in Australian politics. I had now lived in a number of different countries and seen how they looked after their servicemen. I decided to get involved in Australian politics after seeing just what happened in the field in war zones. It’s not until you get to the pointy end of war that things start to become very clear. More than a few problems led me to believe that we as servicemen and women needed a voice in parliament.
So that’s it in a nutshell. I want the people of the Australian Defence Force, the past, present and future ADF personnel and their families to have a voice in parliament. We have earnt it and we deserve it.