Category Archives: Defence and Security

Seventy years ago, in late 1950, a British Admiralty survey party was broiling in the summer heat of the Monte Bello Islands off the coast of Western Australia to report on their suitability as a test site for Britain’s first … Continue reading →

Recently the Chief of the Defence Force, General Angus Campbell, won the inaugural Khaki Shulztie. The award is named after Sergeant Shultz (“I know nuuuthing!”) from the TV show Hogan’s Heroes. The award recognised General Campbell’s ignorance about Afghanistan in … Continue reading →

Australia’s first special forces, fighting in the jungles of Borneo in WWII, fought in a war where neither side adhered to the international rules of armed conflict.

A recent spike in the statistics has seen the number of suicides by Australia’s Afghanistan veterans pass 500. This is an appalling toll which raises many deep questions for all of us.

For years, Australians have faced a steady stream of investigative media reports about atrocities allegedly committed by the country’s most elite soldiers in Afghanistan.

The commemoration of war must force us to remember the people – the victors and victims, men and women, patriots and pacifists, soldiers and civilians. It must connect, confront and complicate, rather than celebrate, petrify and simplify.” Dr Sam Edwards … Continue reading →

83.3% of Australians want Parliament to decide whether our troops are sent into armed conflict abroad, according to a nationwide Roy Morgan opinion poll released recently.

‘Defence’ for Australia has usually involved being shanghaied – often willingly – into other nations’ inappropriate, politically motivated wars. Our alliances are increasingly dysfunctional and inappropriate in our region.

The Brereton report sheds light on the tweet posted by a spokesperson for China’s Foreign Ministry of a digitally altered image depicting an Australian soldier holding a knife to a veiled Afghanistan child.But I have not seen any of  our … Continue reading →

On 20 November, the Chief of the Defence Force (CDF) General Angus Campbell finally presented the public with the redacted version of NSW Justice Major General Paul Brereton’s report into our alleged war crimes in Afghanistan.

Australia’s disastrous military campaign in Afghanistan has been based on the so-called strategy of ‘counter-insurgency warfare’ – COIN in the military vernacular. Yet for decades, COIN demonstrably has been an intellectually unsustainable theory.

Our Prime Ministers and other senior Ministers must bear the greatest responsibility for atrocious decisions to involve us in wars in Afghanistan, Iraq, and Vietnam. They have shown repeatedly that they are not up to the task.

The Inspector-General of the Australian Defence Force Afghanistan Inquiry was always going to make for a gruesome read – and that was just the redacted version.

The Australian Defence Force is one of the most secretive forces in the world. If our experience with Afghanistan is any guide, such secrecy produces moral failure. And while the much-despised media long ago blew the whistle on the behaviour … Continue reading →

Rather than embodying Charles Bean’s vision of a solemn temple of reflection honouring service and sacrifice – ‘Here is their spirit’- over time, the Australian War Memorial has morphed into a theme park of war souvenirs, half-truths and omissions.

There are plans to protect civilian populations in the case of a military attack on Australian soil, but they’re “classified” – not reassuring when you live in close proximity to the Pine Gap military base, widely regarded as a likely … Continue reading →

There is a widespread “asymmetry myth” about the perpetration war crimes that will affect the reception of the forthcoming Brereton report on alleged Australian military war crimes and what Scott Morrison predicts will be “the difficulties” it creates.