Peter Dutton attempted to shoot the messenger on Thursday, branding the Guardian a trashy publication and denying he had ever hung the chief of defence out to dry on the Brereton inquiry reforms.
Before we get into this attempt at misdirection at the National Press Club debate, we need to step back.
When the report into alleged war crimes by Australian special forces in Afghanistan was about to be released in late 2020, the Morrison government was at pains to say it would be taking it extremely seriously.
Apart from setting up an Office of the Special Investigator to look into potential criminal cases, the government promised to launch an oversight panel to give the Australian people confidence the Australian defence force was putting in place lasting cultural reforms to ensure such travesties could never be repeated.
Critical to the reform process was a pledge by the defence minister at the time, Linda Reynolds, to keep the public informed via parliament.
“In relation to the oversight panel, I will get an official report every quarter from them and I will be reporting regularly to the parliament on their reports to me,” she said. “Can I just stress [that] nothing will be out of bounds for this inquiry.”
How many times do you think Dutton – who took over as defence minister in March 2021 – has updated parliament on the work of this oversight panel?
The answer is zero. A search of Hansard shows Dutton has not once uttered the word Brereton in the chamber, nor has he said anything about what his own oversight panel has found.
Bear in mind that the chief of the ADF, Gen Angus Campbell, had said in a statement in November 2020: “Transparency is key to this process.”
And let’s not forget the handling of Defence’s own Afghanistan inquiry reform plan, which was quietly dumped on the internet on a Friday in late July 2021 without any announcement. Curiously, that happened more than two months after Dutton signed off on the document. That reform plan also stressed the importance of openness.
Despite all of the government’s pledges about transparency and lasting reforms, a lot of what we know about Defence’s actions comes through digging by journalists using freedom of information laws. And we can see that, in at least one significant case, Dutton did not take on board quite stark advice from the chief of the ADF.
A document obtained by Anthony Galloway of the Nine newspapers showed that Campbell and the secretary of the Department of Defence, Greg Moriarty, presented Dutton with several options about whether to strip the meritorious unit citation from more than 3,000 members of special operations task groups who served in Afghanistan between 2007 and 2013.
When announcing his response to the inquiry report back in November 2020, Campbell said units “live and fight as a team” and he accepted the recommendation to revoke the meritorious unit citation.
You can read the ministerial submission to Dutton for yourself here, but Campbell and Moriarty’s “preferred option” was to cancel the unit citation while allowing individuals to keep and wear the insignia.
Dutton went with a different option: retaining the citation except for those ultimately convicted in a court of law or the subject of administrative action.
What did Campbell and Moriarty say about this idea? This approach “risks causing significant further harm to the families of those affected by the alleged actions of Australian soldiers”, they said.
Perhaps most starkly, they warned: “The retention of the Meritorious Unit Citation poses unacceptable risk to the moral authority of the force and threatens the international and domestic reputation of the Australian Defence Force and its capacity to operate effectively. The action could be perceived by international counterparts as dismissive and a failure to accept accountability for the actions identified in the inquiry.”
In the absence of updates to parliament, we are left to gauge progress based on morsels here and there. We learned recently, thanks to an FOI by The Australian’s Ben Packham, that Dutton wrote to Campbell on 2 June 2021 to give his “very strong view that the OSI’s investigations must take precedence over other disciplinary actions you are considering”.
“Accordingly, I ask that you suspend administrative action that you might be considering in relation to personnel who held command positions relevant to the scope of the Afghanistan inquiry.”
Guardian Australia also recently reported that the government has not yet sorted out what it will do about compensating victims of alleged war crimes, despite the previous reform plan setting a deadline of “end-2021” for a decision.
The inquiry report by Maj Gen Paul Brereton had said Australia should not wait for a court to establish criminal liability; if there was credible information of an unlawful killing, compensation should be paid swiftly because that would help restore “Australia’s standing” and was “simply the morally right thing to do”. Campbell had originally told reporters he “very much” supported Brereton’s recommendation on compensation.
When confronted about his handling of these serious matters within his own portfolio during Thursday’s debate against his Labor counterpart Brendan O’Connor, Dutton began with a sledge at Guardian Australia. “One of my favourite publications,” he said, adding: “I’m being sarcastic, of course.” For full effect, Dutton went on to call it a “trashy publication”.
The minister took issue with the notion that he had hung the chief of the ADF “out to dry”. Dutton said he had “known Angus for many years” and “found him to be an incredibly effective leader, a person with great capability, an affable person … so don’t dare say that I have undermined him as the chief of the defence force. I never have and I never would”.
Dutton has, of course, not publicly bagged Campbell (the minister described the defence force chief as “pragmatic” when he overruled him last April, with Dutton maintaining “we shouldn’t be punishing the 99% for the sins of the 1%”). But the minister has very firmly put his own stamp on the response to the Brereton inquiry – and, as the FOI document shows, disregarded very stark advice from the chief of the ADF about an “unacceptable risk to the moral authority of the force”. There is now a lack of transparency surrounding it.
Dutton went on to say he had helped set up the Office of the Special Investigator in his previous position as home affairs minister, that the whole exercise was “not a plaything” and it would be wrong to comment “on whether a particular investigation is up to a certain stage” or “whether somebody is about to be arrested”.
This is classic misdirection. Nobody is asking for such updates about alleged criminal cases: the question was about Defence’s own efforts to entrench cultural reforms to ensure the many fine personnel of the ADF cannot have their reputations tarnished by the horrific actions of a few. There was no real answer to why he wasn’t giving parliament the updates that Reynolds had promised.
Dutton demanded that the Guardian “table” any supporting documentation. Minister, if you happen to find yourself reading this trashy publication, you are welcome to take the above as our response. But more importantly, you are welcome to provide the public with a more comprehensive update on what action you are taking to implement the Brereton report.
