A federal court defamation case finding that Ben Roberts-Smith is, on the balance of probabilities, a cold-blooded battlefield murderer has done more than leave Australia’s most decorated living soldier in reputational tatters. It has, perhaps irrevocably, tarnished the carefully curated, revered legend of Anzac and its spurious myth of the white-hatted, egalitarian, hard-but-fair battlefield conduct of the celebrated Aussie digger.
The problem with myths, of course, is that they stand to be demythologised by unsavoury fact. It gets in the way.
