Defence Force staff in this year's Auckland Pride Parade In the year it marched into history at the Auckland Pride Parade, the Defence Force will continue celebrating 20 years of openly-serving glbti personnel with a pride conference. With the support of Massey University, its support network Overwatch will hold a two-day Pride in Defence Conference this month, which will in part be about celebrating two decades since the ban on glbti people serving openly was lifted. OverWatch Communications Manager Matthew Boulton has told journalism student John McDonald it will be a forum for discussing ways to support glbti personnel at large and complex organisations. “We’re going to run the conference over two days. We’re going to have about eleven speakers coming to talk to us on a range of topics, so that hopefully participants will be able to take away some tips and some tools to create support networks within their own organisations.” Boulton says such conferences are happening more and more, as people are realising that in order to be good at your job, you need to be able to focus on the task at hand. “Outside influences like worries for our people around sexuality, identification and orientation, are worries that you don’t need on your mind. Ours is a dangerous specialised job sometimes and you need to be focused on the task at hand.” You can hear John McDonald’s full interview with Matthew Boulton on Hutt Radio’s website here
Credit: GayNZ.com Daily News staff
First published: Saturday, 9th November 2013 - 9:43am