New Zealand’s next Governor General has been announced as Jerry Mateparae, he will succeed Sir Anand Satyanand at the end of his term in August this year. Mateparae is the current chief of New Zealand defence, and was announced by John Key last year to be the next head of the Government Communications Security Bureau – who are, basically, spooks. He appears to have never taken up that post (it sounds like he did take up that role, a month ago), but it doesn’t matter because one of his previous role was even more bad ass, you see something not many people have been talking about is that Jerry Mateparae is a former member of New Zealand’s most elite military unit, the NZ Special Air Service. It’s easy to tell, as you can see in the picture below he wears the Winged Parachute on his right shoulder, which is one of the crests of the unit.
Where have we seen that before? Well let’s just have a look at the right shoulder of Willie Apiata, VC.
I reckon it’s official, New Zealand is shortly to have the most badassed Governor General to be found anywhere in the Commonwealth. And I think we can all get behind that, don’t you?
— UPDATE 2:45pm —
It was suggested on twitter that this Winged Parachute merely denotes that the wearer is parachute qualified, I believe that this badge is the “ordinary” NZ Defence Force parachute badge:
While this one is a special pattern, for NZ SAS members only:
I do not wish to pretend to have a great deal of knowledge in this area, but I believe this to be correct.
Badass indeed! http://www.gg.govt.nz/node/3708
I love that we live in a country where no one really seems to give a shit that this guy was goddamn special forces! In the States the warhawks would be all aflutter about it.
On the ordinary parachute badge, the wings point downwards, symbolising the literal journey of the parachuter from the sky to the ground. On the SAS badge, the wings point upwards, symbolising the blessed and sacred journey up to the heavens where the good bad-ass bros of the SAS will be rewarded in the afterlife.