Ben Roberts-Smith, the rule of law, and the Australia we are becoming

What “My Two Cents” Means

“My two cents” is a simple Australian vernacular expression: here is my considered view, offered humbly, for what it may be worth.

In this case, my two cents are these: from a national-interest perspective, I stand with Ben Roberts-Smith and believe Australia now needs an immediate off-ramp from this damaging, inordinate and self-destructive process. Whatever he may or may not have done, the process itself has now become nationally corrosive. Declare a mistrial, provide appropriate compensation to those adversely affected, and move on.

Context

I do not write as a lawyer, journalist, judge, politician, or partisan commentator. I write as a retired Australian Army officer, a former combat commander, and a citizen who believes some matters are too important to be left entirely to lawyers, politicians, generals, bureaucrats, committees, procedures and the noise of the daily news cycle.

I am not competing with journalists reporting the latest development. Nor am I trying to predict the outcome of a criminal trial. My purpose is to encourage us all to breathe in and out, widen the aperture, and ask what this matter reveals about Australia: our institutions, media culture, strategic seriousness, treatment of veterans, and relationship with those we send into war.

The Image That Prompted This Article

There are moments in national life when a single image carries more moral force than a thousand official statements.

For me, one such image was of Ben Roberts-Smith VC MG, Australia’s most decorated living soldier, arrested at Sydney Airport on 7 April 2026.
The Commonwealth Director of Public Prosecutions has recorded that he has been charged with five offences of the war crime of murder under the Commonwealth Criminal Code. The charges relate to alleged events in Afghanistan in 2009 and 2012. Each charge carries a maximum penalty of life imprisonment.

Those charges are among the gravest that can be brought against a former Australian soldier. They are also, at this stage, allegations. Roberts-Smith denies wrongdoing. He is entitled to the presumption of innocence. That is not a courtesy. It is not a favour. It is one of the central pillars of the civilisation Australian soldiers are asked to defend.

This is precisely why the image matters: not because a decorated soldier can never be charged; not because the law should avert its gaze from a battlefield; and not because gallantry gives any person immunity. It does not. But a nation must be very careful when the machinery of the state moves against one of those it once held up as the embodiment of courage, service and sacrifice.

Gallantry Still Matters

Ben Roberts-Smith’s Victoria Cross citation records extraordinary battlefield gallantry. He was awarded the Victoria Cross for conspicuous gallantry and daring in the face of the enemy while in circumstances of extreme peril as a patrol second-in-command with the Special Operations Task Group on Operation Slipper.

That citation matters. It does not answer every later question. It does not confer immunity. It does not mean any allegation against him must be false. But nor should it be erased by later proceedings. A serious country should be capable of holding two thoughts at once: that gallantry in battle can be real, and that allegations of unlawful killing must still be tested according to law.

There was also a time when Ben Roberts-Smith was celebrated. He was named Australian Father of the Year in 2013. Before that, in 2012, Network Ten’s The Circle faced fierce public backlash after its hosts mocked him during a segment that discussed a television profile and showed him shirtless in a pool. That episode was minor compared with what followed, but it revealed a tendency in parts of Australian media culture to confuse scrutiny with contempt.

War Is Hell

Then came the Brereton Report.

The Inspector-General of the Australian Defence Force Afghanistan Inquiry, led by Major General Justice Paul Brereton, examined allegations concerning Australian special forces operations in Afghanistan between 2005 and 2016. Public summaries record that the report found credible information concerning 23 incidents involving the alleged unlawful killing of 39 people, and the alleged cruel treatment of two others. The report led to the creation of the Office of the Special Investigator, which was tasked with working with the Australian Federal Police to investigate potential criminal offences arising from the inquiry.

Nothing in this article should be read as dismissing the seriousness of those findings. War crimes, if proven, are not public relations problems. They are profound moral, legal and institutional failures. They damage victims. They damage units. They damage the honour of the uniform. They damage the nation.

But war is hell. Those words are often said too easily by people who have never lived near it. War is not a policy seminar with rifles. It is violent, chaotic, morally compressive and psychologically corrosive. It is also governed by law, as it must be. Professional soldiers know that discipline, distinction and restraint are not optional extras. They are part of military effectiveness. But we should be careful before assuming war can be reconstructed years later as though it were civilian life with weapons added. It cannot.

Lawful Force, Misconduct, and Standards

I say this with direct comparative experience. In my dealings with the Israel Defense Forces and Israelis involved in the prosecution of lawful force against enemy combatants, I have found them to hold themselves to an exceptional standard: serious about law, proportionality, distinction, command judgment, and the strategic consequences of tactical decisions.

Not a perfect standard. No military at war is perfect. In April and May 2026, Israeli soldiers were involved in stupid and offensive desecrations of Christian religious symbols in southern Lebanon. Israeli leaders condemned the conduct, apologised, and punished those involved.

That is the point. Misconduct by individuals should be condemned and punished contemporaneously. It should not become a sweeping indictment of an entire military, any more than allegations against individual Australian soldiers should become an indictment of every Australian who served in Afghanistan.

Bravery, Betrayal, and the Human Terrain

This is why every Australian should watch Bravery & Betrayal: The True Story of the S.A.S. in Afghanistan.

Not because it answers every legal question or replaces courts. It does not. But because it widens the aperture.

Directed by Simon J. Heath and associated with Wandering Warriors, the documentary gives voice to SAS veterans, families, former political leaders and others connected to Australia’s long commitment in Afghanistan. It features former prime ministers John Howard, Kevin Rudd and Tony Abbott, along with SAS veterans and others who speak to the burden carried by those who served.

It is not the court of law, the Brereton Report, or the final historical judgment. But it is an important corrective to the idea that this history can be understood only through court reporting, media scandal and bureaucratic language. If the Australian people are going to sit in judgment, they should take time to understand the human terrain.

We will return shortly to leadership and command responsibility. But first, the legal process itself must be separated from the noise around it.
Law Matters. So Does Process.

The Office of the Special Investigator was established for a serious purpose. A democratic military must be accountable to law. If war crimes occurred, they must be investigated. If crimes can be proven, they must be prosecuted.
But process matters. Timing matters. Proportionality matters. The way the state treats those under investigation matters.

The Roberts-Smith legal saga is already long and complex. In 2018, he commenced defamation proceedings against media outlets over reports alleging war crimes and other misconduct. In June 2023, Justice Anthony Besanko dismissed his case. In civil proceedings, the media respondents successfully established substantial or contextual truth for several serious imputations. In May 2025, the Full Federal Court dismissed his appeal. In September 2025, the High Court refused special leave to appeal.

That civil litigation matters, but it is not a criminal conviction. The standard in a civil case is the balance of probabilities, not proof beyond reasonable doubt. The criminal case must still be proven according to the criminal standard. The presumption of innocence survives public commentary, media triumphalism, social media rage and even prior civil findings.
Justice Delayed is Justice Denied

Former prime minister Tony Abbott was right to raise delay. After Roberts-Smith’s arrest, Abbott made the point that “justice delayed is justice denied.” If evidence is clear and a case is strong, it should be brought and concluded without delay; otherwise, people should not be left indefinitely under suspicion.

That point should concern all Australians. It is not a defence of alleged war crimes to insist on timely justice. It is not anti-victim to insist on fair process. It is not anti-accountability to ask why men can remain under suspicion for years while institutions move at glacial pace.
Other allied democracies have dealt with grave battlefield killing allegations far more quickly.

In the United States, Staff Sergeant Robert Bales murdered 16 Afghan civilians in Kandahar Province in March 2012. He was charged within weeks, pleaded guilty in 2013, and was sentenced to life imprisonment without parole in August 2013. Bales admitted the killings and the evidence was clearer, but the case shows that grave battlefield murder cases can move with urgency when the system is focused.

Britain offers another comparison. Sergeant Alexander Blackman, known publicly as Marine A, shot a wounded Taliban insurgent in Helmand Province in September 2011. He was charged in October 2012, convicted of murder by court martial in November 2013, and sentenced the following month. His conviction was later reduced to manslaughter on appeal, but the allegation was tested within a timeframe the public could understand.

Canada offers a third example. Captain Robert Semrau was accused of shooting a wounded Afghan insurgent in October 2008. He was charged by the end of that year. His court martial began in January 2010. He was found not guilty of murder but guilty of disgraceful conduct. The law was tested. A verdict was reached. The accused was not left suspended for fifteen years in the court of public suspicion.

No two war-crimes cases are identical. But these examples make the Australian delay harder to defend. If allied democracies can bring grave battlefield killing allegations before courts martial within months or a small number of years, Australians are entitled to ask: what went wrong here?
That is not a lawyer’s question. It is a citizen’s question, a veteran’s question, and a national-interest question. When process drags on for fifteen years, the process itself begins to look like punishment.

None of us knows how this will end. Roberts-Smith may be found not guilty. Prosecutors may fail to establish guilt beyond reasonable doubt. Fair trial issues may become central because of delay, publicity or the difficulty of reconstructing events from Afghanistan more than a decade earlier. He may be convicted and appeal. Whatever happens, Australia will be forced to confront not only the conduct of one man, but the functioning of a system.
And that brings us to leadership.

Leadership, Decisions, and Consequences

Good leaders make decisions and live with the consequences. Sometimes good leaders reserve, delay or avoid deciding because the circumstances require patience, restraint or more information. But they still live with the consequences. That is leadership.

Bad leadership kicks decisions to committees. It sets in train processes, procedures, reviews, touch points and handovers. It creates an appearance of movement while avoiding the moral weight of decision. It lets time pass, ownership blur and consequence drift downwards. That is not leadership. That is management as evasion.

This distinction matters because the Roberts-Smith matter is not only about one soldier, one set of allegations, or one pending criminal process. It is also about the senior leadership culture that sat above Australia’s longest war, managed its consequences, shaped the response to allegations, and has now left a generation of soldiers wondering whether accountability in this country only runs downhill.

And that brings me carefully, but necessarily, to General Angus Campbell.
General Angus Campbell and the Burden of Senior Command
For what it is worth, I have respected General Angus Campbell for many years, and I continue to do so. He is intelligent, charismatic and politically astute. I write not to flatter or vilify him.

I know officers for whom I have equally high regard, perhaps higher regard, who have been scathing in their assessment of Campbell and the way the Afghanistan matter has unfolded and other matters. Both things can be true. Respect for a person does not require silence about outcomes.

Campbell’s senior leadership journey is extraordinary. From January 2011 to January 2012, he served as Commander Joint Task Force 633, responsible for Australia’s deployed operations in the Middle East Area of Operations, including Afghanistan. His Distinguished Service Cross recognised his distinguished command and leadership in action as Commander Joint Task Force 633 on Operation Slipper during that period.

Said plainly, General Campbell held senior operational command responsibility in the theatre during a period in which some of the conduct later examined through the Afghanistan inquiry allegedly occurred. That is not a personal attack. It is a command accountability point.

Campbell later served as Deputy Chief of Army, Commander Operation Sovereign Borders, Chief of Army, and Chief of the Defence Force from 2018 to 2024. Since March 2025, he has served as Australia’s Ambassador to Belgium, Luxembourg, the European Union and NATO.

Said another way, he has remained in senior public appointments from the period in which some relevant Afghanistan allegations arose, through the Brereton process, through the establishment of the Office of the Special Investigator, through the laying of criminal charges, and into the present day.

That continuity does not mean he knew of alleged wrongdoing or was personally or legally responsible for alleged criminal acts by others. It does not mean every failure beneath his command was personally his fault. But it does make the question of command accountability fair, relevant and unavoidable.

Many veterans are therefore entitled to ask: if command receives honour, promotion and high appointment for command success, where does responsibility sit when command failure is later alleged? That question is not personal. It is institutional.

The Question of Moral Accountability

It is my judgment that this matter has been monumentally mishandled at a time when Australia faces grave strategic considerations. That is not a legal finding. It is a leadership judgment, a command judgment, and I suspect, what many veterans feel in their bones.

If General Campbell were to look back introspectively on this period, he might reasonably ask himself: did I, and did the senior system I represented, get this right?

He might conclude that this has gone terribly wrong; that the unintended consequences are profound; and that, at some level, the buck must stop with those who held the most senior responsibilities. Bluntly, he might conclude that serious mistakes were made, that the buck stops with him, and that some form of atonement is required. For what it is worth, I believe much of this institutional mess is on him.

Having held so many senior public appointments, he might then ask whether it is right to continue in public office, or whether a more honourable path would be to step away, reflect, and make amends elsewhere. A man of Campbell’s intellect, network and experience could do enormous good in the not-for-profit space, particularly caring for veterans and their families.

That is not a call for vengeance or humiliation. It is a call for moral accountability: for senior leaders to live with consequences, just as junior leaders are expected to do every day.

The Black Hawk Standard

I recall the aftermath of the 1996 Black Hawk disaster near Townsville, when two Army Black Hawk helicopters collided during night counter-terrorism training, killing 18 soldiers: 15 from the Special Air Service Regiment and three from the 5th Aviation Regiment.

At the time, Lieutenant General John Sanderson AC was Chief of the General Staff, the appointment now known as Chief of Army. I cannot contemporaneously verify every word of the television interview I remember from that period, but I remember the principle. Senior Army leadership was expected to stand before the nation and answer for institutional failure. I recall Sanderson’s words being to the effect “the buck stops with me.”

That is command accountability. It is good for morale amongst the ranks.

Not because every senior leader is personally guilty of every failure beneath them. That would be absurd. But command carries moral weight. The buck must stop somewhere. A more civilised military culture understands that responsibility cannot be pushed endlessly downwards. Somewhere between then and now, we seem to have misplaced that instinct.

What Junior Leaders Are Taught

Junior leaders are taught that certain offences are too serious to be managed informally within the chain of command. They must be reported, referred, and placed into the hands of those with jurisdiction and investigative authority in a timely fashion.

I once had a rumour of an alleged rape involving one of my soldiers brought to my attention through a non-commissioned officer, then a warrant officer, and then to me. I was an Officer Commanding in a Townsville-based unit at the time. Before I dismounted duty that day, I had notified my brigade commander, my one-up in the chain of command. I had notified the Military Police and the Queensland Police Service. I also spoke to the alleged victim and reiterated that she had the full support of the chain of command to make a statement to police.

I did not regard that as heroic. I regarded it as the minimum acceptable standard. There was a rumour. There was a serious allegation. Therefore, there had to be action.

That is what junior leaders are taught. That is what soldiers expect. That is how trust is maintained.

Which is why the Afghanistan matter remains so difficult to stomach. My concern is that senior officers, shaped in an earlier and perhaps less accountable era, tried for too long to manage rumours, whispers and allegations internally until the matter became too large to manage.

Eventually, it blew up. It did not land on many of those who held the most senior responsibilities. Perhaps it ought to have.

Brigadier Dan Fortune and the Veteran Warning

Brigadier Dan Fortune, DSC and Bar, Retired is not some armchair critic. He is one of Australia’s most experienced and decorated Special Forces officers, having served in the Special Air Service Regiment both as an enlisted operator and later as a commissioned officer. He is also a friend and an officer I greatly admire.

When men such as Fortune speak publicly about betrayal, flawed process, fractured trust and moral injury, serious Australians should listen. In a public conversation, Fortune put the matter bluntly: “Mismanaged mate, and the outcomes demonstrate that now.”

That is not the language of a man trying to weaken the Army. It is the language of a man who understands the Army well enough to know when something has gone badly wrong. It is also a warning that this issue is no longer merely historical. It is strategic.

Why This Has Become a National-Interest Question

The Roberts-Smith matter is not only a legal matter. It is now a national-interest matter.

That does not mean courts should bend to public opinion. They should not. It does not mean serious allegations should be abandoned because they are inconvenient. They should not. It does not mean soldiers should be placed above the law. They must never be.

But the national interest is not served by a process so delayed, so public, and so institutionally corrosive that it damages confidence in the military, weakens veteran morale, deters recruitment, and feeds the belief that the nation will ask young Australians to fight its wars before abandoning them to years of legal, media and bureaucratic grinding.

A country cannot defend itself only with equipment. It cannot deter adversaries only with submarines, missiles and announcements. It also needs trust: between soldiers and commanders, veterans and institutions, citizens and the state. Trust that if Australia sends men and women into war, it will not later treat them as disposable instruments once the political class has moved on.

In April 2023, when the Defence Strategic Review was released, the Albanese Government described it as the most ambitious review of Defence’s posture and structure since the Second World War. Political leaders have repeatedly told Australians that we face the most challenging strategic circumstances since the Second World War. If that is true, then the bond between the nation and its military is central.

Yet at the very moment we need capable, motivated and morally serious Australians to serve, many veterans are openly warning young people against joining. Put directly, one veteran with considerable war service and a respected public voice recently communicated words to this effect on social media: if your children are thinking about joining the ADF, tell them not to, because the institution will not look after them.
That should chill every serious person in Canberra. It chills me.
It is against that national-interest backdrop that the broader pub test now matters.

The Pub Test

The pub test is a simple Australian expression for what ordinary, reasonable people would think when they look at a situation without legal jargon, bureaucratic spin or institutional self-protection.

On that measure, this matter fails.

In May 2026, Australians watched women and children linked to Islamic State return to this country from Syria. Children are not responsible for the sins of their parents. But adults who attached themselves, directly or indirectly, to one of the most barbaric death cults of the modern era raise serious questions about citizenship, allegiance, terrorism, national security and moral judgment.

If we are bringing ISIS-linked adults back into this country, speaking the language of support, reintegration and management, while simultaneously tearing down our most decorated living soldier, then we must have rocks in our head.

That does not place Ben Roberts-Smith above the law. It does not mean serious allegations should be ignored. But ordinary Australians are entitled to ask what has happened to the moral judgment of this country.

One group is linked to a death cult that enslaved, raped, tortured and murdered its way across the Middle East. The other man served under the Australian flag in a war authorised by the Australian Government. The law must apply to all. But the moral universe is not the same.

If our national instinct is to soften the language around ISIS-linked returnees while hardening the language around our own soldiers, something has gone badly wrong. At some point, ordinary Australians are entitled to say: this does not feel right. At some point, veterans are entitled to ask why anyone would recommend service if this were how the country treats those it sends to war.

A Comparison from Colorado

I saw another comparison in the United States.

In June 2025, my wife and I were in Colorado, on our way home to Australia after five wonderful months in New York while I completed my MBA. Israeli hostages were still being held in Gaza. The anguish was not abstract. It included people known to friends of mine in Israel.

On 1 June 2025, in nearby Boulder, a peaceful “Run For Their Lives” gathering was attacked. Mohamed Sabry Soliman used Molotov cocktails and a makeshift flamethrower against the crowd. The attack killed 82-year-old Karen Diamond and injured others.

Boulder is roughly 30 miles, or about 50 kilometres, from Denver. At the time of the attack, my wife and I were in Denver attending the commensurate “Run For Their Lives” gathering, standing with others who were trying to keep public attention on the hostages still held in Gaza. The proximity, and the shared purpose of the two events, made the attack feel anything but abstract.

On 7 May 2026, Soliman pleaded guilty to more than 100 state charges and was sentenced to life in prison without parole, plus an additional symbolic sentence of 2,128 years.

I am not suggesting the Boulder attack and the Roberts-Smith matter are legally comparable. They are not. One involved an attack in a public place with immediate victims, witnesses, evidence and arrest. The other involves alleged events in Afghanistan years ago, in the fog of war, with limited access to crime scenes and the difficulty of reconstructing battlefield events long after the fact.

But morally and institutionally, the comparison is instructive. Swift justice is possible when the state is focused, evidence is clear, and institutions move with urgency. In Roberts-Smith’s case, the process has been so long that many Australians now wonder whether punishment begins before verdict.

That is dangerous.

Where I Land

I should state plainly where I land.

I do not land here as a lawyer. I do not claim to know what a court should ultimately find. I land here as a former combat commander, a retired Australian Army officer, and a citizen trying to judge what is now in the national interest.

On that basis, I find myself on Ben Roberts-Smith’s side, and I say that publicly.

Not because the allegations are trivial. They are not. If non-combatants were unlawfully killed, that matters. If fellow veterans have been permanently harmed by what they saw, did, were ordered to do, or were pressured to conceal, that matters too. These are grave considerations and should never be dismissed.

But they are no longer the only considerations. They now sit within a wider national failure: a process so delayed, corrosive and institutionally destructive that it is damaging confidence in Defence, veterans, justice, recruitment, and the bond between the nation and those it sends to war.

At some point, a country must ask whether the pursuit of justice has itself become a form of punishment, and whether the national interest now requires this destructive process to end. If a fair trial is no longer realistically possible after so many years of delay, publicity, inquiry, civil litigation, institutional damage and personal destruction, then that should be confronted plainly. In that circumstance, the appropriate outcome may be to bring the matter to an end, recognise the harm caused, and provide proper compensation to those adversely affected.

Australia has shown itself capable of recognising harm in other public-sector scandals through the governments we elect and the decisions made in our name. It should be no less capable of recognising harm done to soldiers, veterans and families caught for years in an unresolved process they did not design, control or prolong.

And if it is true that this shemozzle — including the Office of the Special Investigator and the broader machinery surrounding it — has cost Australian taxpayers more than $300 million, then accountability cannot stop with compensation. Perhaps heads should roll: a new Defence Minister, a new Chief of the Defence Force, a new Australian Federal Police Commissioner and, yes, a new Australian Ambassador to Belgium, Luxembourg, the European Union and NATO.

At some point, public office must mean public responsibility. If hundreds of millions of dollars have been spent producing delay, institutional corrosion, veteran despair and collapsing trust, then Australians are entitled to ask who authorised it, who managed it, who failed to stop it, and who now carries the consequence.

Whether Australia remains the kind of country that can hold these truths together is now before the court of public judgment, just as the Roberts-Smith matter remains before the courts of law.

Colonel Michael Scott CSC Ret’d is a former Australian army officer and the founder of The 2023 Foundation, an initiative dedicated to combating antisemitism.