Australia’s Special Air Service regiment was riven by a “culture war” with one faction obsessed by a “pagan warrior ethos” where “killing was a sacrament in itself”, the assistant defence minister, Andrew Hastie, has told Ben Roberts-Smith’s defamation trial.
Hastie, a former SAS officer who resigned from the military when he was preselected to run for parliament, has been subpoenaed to give evidence by three newspapers defending a defamation action brought by his former comrade and Victoria Cross recipient Roberts-Smith.
