THIS week’s column should be called “A View from Down Under”, as I am writing it while in Australia as a guest of its Ministry for Defence.

The purpose of the trip is to inspect various aspects of the Australian military forces and discuss how Britain and Australia might work together in the future.

So far, I have met defence ministers, industry representatives, and service personnel (including the Aussie SAS), toured shipyards, naval installations and submarines and visited the Australian Parliament where the rancorous exchanges make our PMQs look like a Sunday school picnic.

One highlight was my visit to the Australian War Memorial in Canberra, where a beautiful building commemorates each one of the 102,000 Australians who have lost their lives in armed conflict. It is also a national museum.

It is a wonderfully dignified and informative place, despite the screeching of hundreds of white cockatoos, and I rather wish we had something of a similar stature in the UK.

The loss of Aussie “diggers”

and other personnel in world conflicts resonates deeply in the psyche of this nation, and all children are encouraged to learn about the ANZAC sacrifices and visit the numerous war memorials and museums all over the country.

Plans for commemorating the 100th anniversary of the First World War are well advanced down here and I think we can learn from the work done so far.

Before flying, I had a series of meetings in London when I took local groups to meet skills minister John Hayes, to discuss apprenticeship contracts.

We were pleased to hear that the Government is committed to bringing back real, jobbased and practical apprenticeships, and that more than 400,000 people have started these programmes in the last 12 months.

I also met policing minister Nick Herbert with the senior team from our much-loved Wiltshire Air Ambulance to review local funding arrangements and was encouraged the minister recognised the invaluable service the WAA provides.