Australian War Memorial urged to remove Ben Roberts-Smith’s uniform from display
The Australian War Memorial is being urged to remove Ben Roberts-Smith’s uniform from its display after the federal court dismissed the defamation case initiated by Australia’s most decorated living soldier.
However, the Australian Special Air Association has argued it was “a very disappointing day” for veterans who had served in Afghanistan, noting the majority who had done the right thing were being “re-traumatised after having gone through a difficult war”.
In the defamation case ruling on June 1, Justice Anthony Besanko found that, on the balance of probabilities, Roberts-smith kicked a handcuffed prisoner off a cliff in Darwin in 2012 before ordering a subordinate Australian soldier to shoot the injured man dead.
Besanko also found that in 2009, Roberts-Smith had ordered the execution of an elderly man found hiding in a tunnel in a bombed-out compound codenamed “Whiskey 108”, including murdering a disabled man with a prosthetic leg during that same mission, with a machine gun.
The majority of politicians in Canberra were hesitant to weigh in on the implications of the ruling, but the Greens described the judgement as “an important win for fearless journalism in the public interest”.
David Shoebridge, the Greens’ defence and justice spokesperson said, “If this judgment stands, the first step in correcting the official record is for the Australian War Memorial to immediately remove Ben Roberts-Smith’s uniform from public display and to begin telling the entire truth of Australia’s involvement in that brutal war.
“This is not justice for the families who lost loved ones or for the communities that have been brutalised by war crimes, but it takes us a step closer.”
Shoebridge is also calling on the Albanese government to “urgently progress compensation for families of victims of alleged Afghanistan war crimes, one of the key outstanding recommendations of the Brereton report”.
He has urged the attorney general, Mark Dreyfus, to “step in and end the unjust prosecution of Afghanistan war crimes whistleblower David McBride”.
A spokesperson for the defence minister, Richard Marles, said, “This is a civil defamation matter to which the commonwealth is not a party and it would be inappropriate to provide comment.”
Speaking to ABC TV, the national chairman of the Australian Special Air Service Association, Martin Hamilton-Smith downplayed the broader significance of the ruling, saying it was not a criminal proceeding.
When speaking generally about investigations overseen by the Office of Special Investigator (OSI), he said one person had been charged to date over allegations of war crimes in Afghanistan — and raised concerns that “justice delayed is justice denied”.
Hamilton-Smith called on OSI to “get these matters into a criminal court where they can be dealt with properly and the truth can be established”.
In 2020, the Brereton report found “credible” information to implicate 25 current or former special forces personnel in the alleged unlawful killing of 39 individuals and the cruel treatment of two others.
When asked whether Roberts-Smith should hand over his Victoria Cross, Hamilton-Smith said, “I think the only way you will get the real truth of this is to get it into the criminal court where both sides of the story can be told and beyond reasonable doubt the facts established.”
A spokesperson for OSI said defamation proceedings were a “a civil matter between the parties”, adding, “It would not be appropriate to comment on specific allegations or whether they are the subject of investigation.”
The Coalition’s foreign affairs spokesperson, Simon Birmingham, described the defamation ruling as “certainly significant”, and stated it was a legal process “that deserves to be respected”.
However, he said it would be “a difficult day for many” of Australia’s current and former defence force personnel.
“Australia is a country that applies a standard, in terms of expectations of our serving personnel and the transparency and accountability, that few other nations in the world apply,” Birmingham told ABC TV.
“We should be proud of those standards but we should also be proud overwhelmingly of our personnel, of all who have served.”
Birmingham was reluctant to make broader comments about the judgement’s implication for press freedom, adding the outcome would “obviously weigh heavily in terms of what proceedings may be initiated by others in future”.
The shadow defence minister and former SAS captain Andrew Hastie was subpoenaed by the newspapers to give evidence during the defamation case but declined to comment.
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