In 1981, 70.3 per cent of Australians described themselves as very proud of their nationality. By 2018, that figure had fallen to 60.8 per cent among the first Gen Z cohort to be surveyed.

Into that already fragile environment, the AFP and the Office of the Special Investigator have just dropped the image of Australia’s most decorated living soldier being walked across an airport tarmac in handcuffs, filmed, packaged, and distributed as state-produced content. Just weeks before Anzac Day.



Ben Roberts-Smith is innocent until proven otherwise. That is not a sentiment. It is the foundation of the legal system under which he will be tried, and it deserves to be stated plainly before anything else in this debate.

He is a recipient of the Victoria Cross; the highest military honour Australia bestows. He served in conditions that most Australians will never experience and cannot fully comprehend. The physical and psychological demands placed on SAS soldiers in Afghanistan were extreme. The moral environment in which they operated, fighting an enemy that used civilians as shields, that planted bombs in children’s toys, that executed prisoners without hesitation, was one of genuine ambiguity and constant danger.

The AFP and the Office of the Special Investigator did not merely arrest a man. They staged an event. They issued a media release directing journalists to a portal where ‘arrest vision’ was available for download. They issued a second release shortly afterwards, in case anyone had missed the first. The footage, featuring Roberts-Smith’s blurred face but universally recognisable figure, was distributed by the state itself, not captured by bystanders, not leaked from a source inside the investigation. Produced, packaged, and released.

You will be deployed into morally complex situations, with

rules of engagement that may shift under you, against enemies who play by no rules at all.

And if something goes wrong, or if the political winds change, the state will not protect you. It will film your arrest and put it on the internet.

BRS caused an Australian court to find that he probably committed murder of Afghan citizens in Afghanistan.

What else should Afghanistan do with this?

Let it pass? Or demand that the Australian government determine beyond a reasonable doubt whether or not BRS committed murder?

Frank wrote on Apr 20^th, 2026 at 8:56pm:

Hard to imagine an Australian PM referring to a recognised nation-state as a failed shitehole.

Frank wrote on Apr 20^th, 2026 at 9:28pm:

They're heads of Australian governments who'd be aware that insulting nation-states and dismissing the probable murders of their citizens by an Australian as not worthy of investigation could likely endanger the lives of Australians.

MeisterEckhart wrote on Apr 20^th, 2026 at 2:06pm:



So how to determine "beyond reasonable doubt" when the four "witnesses" have actually admitted to murder? No credibility, no forensics, no bodies.

Baronvonrort wrote on Apr 20^th, 2026 at 11:16pm:


So, your argument is that the ADF is as bad as the Taliban?

Interesting.

lee wrote on Apr 21^st, 2026 at 2:26pm:

Isn’t that the point of a trial?

The defence can raise objections where necessary,