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Washington: Former Prime Minister Kevin Rudd says he is “shocked and dismayed” by the actions of Australia’s most decorated living soldier, Ben Roberts-Smith, who was last week proven to be a war criminal who unlawfully murdered unarmed Afghan prisoners.
The new ambassador to the US – who was prime minister when some of the incidents took place – also praised Australia’s democratic system for confronting what he described as “hard and ugly truths,” when many other countries would have “swept them under the rug”.
Ben Roberts-Smith in front of his portrait at the Australian War Memorial in 2014.Credit: Jay Cronan
But he added that, based on his own experience working with members of the Defence Force – as a prime minister, as a foreign minister, and now as the Albanese Government’s top diplomat in Washington – the kind of conduct revealed in this case is “not symptomatic of the Australian Defence Force more broadly”.
“Our men and women in uniform are highly professional, they are well-trained and they are well-disciplined – and what we’ve seen here is a regrettable exception to that,” he said.
Rudd’s comments came days after Justice Anthony Besanko handed down a landmark judgment last Thursday, finding that The Age, The Sydney Morning Herald and The Canberra Times had proven Roberts-Smith unlawfully killed and assaulted unarmed Afghan prisoners over four years between 2009 to 2012.
The judge also found that the Victoria Cross recipient and father of the year lied extensively during his defamation case against the newspapers, worked with friendly witnesses to come up with false stories, and threatened former comrades, his own wife and his lover to deter them from contradicting his false claims about what happened.
Rudd was Prime Minister of Australia between 2007 and 2010 and again in June 2013 to September 2013. Asked by The Age and Sydney Morning Herald what he thought of the decision, and what implications the findings could have on Australia in the US and more broadly, he replied: “I think the first thing to say is that any human being and any Australian, and certainly those of us who have come from Australian political process, are shocked and dismayed – shocked and dismayed – about what has been found to be matters of fact in this case.”
“In terms of the steps beyond, I’ll leave that entirely to the government in Canberra. The minister for defence ultimately is responsible for taking into account these findings,” he said.
“But the last thing I’d say is this: it speaks so much to the power of an independent judicial system. There are many, many countries in the world that would just as happily sweep all this stuff under the rug.”
“In our country, in our own democracy, where the separation of powers is real… and where the courts are independent, they make findings, unapologetically, based on the facts.”
Kevin Rudd with US President Joe Biden in the Oval Office.
Robert-Smiths’ defamation trial was launched in 2018 and concluded in July last year after 110 days, 41 witnesses and more than $25 million in legal costs. One of the central allegations made was that Roberts-Smith kicked an unarmed and handcuffed Afghan villager named Ali Jan off a small cliff in Darwan on September 11, 2012, before procuring soldiers under his command to shoot the villager.
Another allegation centred around Robert-Smith’s involvement in two murders during an earlier mission on Easter Sunday, 2009, after two Afghan men were discovered in a tunnel in a compound called Whiskey 108. They alleged Roberts-Smith killed one of the men himself and directed a “rookie” soldier to kill the second man as a form of initiation.
Rudd, who also used to run the Asia Society and is one of the nation’s foremost experts on China, was speaking on Tuesday (US time) at an event hosted by the Centre for Strategic Independent Studies, a Washington-based think tank.
During the hour-plus session, he also talked about the need to build up “guardrails” against China; the progress of the AUKUS submarine pact; and the broader alliance between the US and Australia.
Under the AUKUS deal announced in March, Australia will buy at least three Virginia-class submarines from the US while building capacity to develop its own locally made nuclear-powered subs, sometime in the 2040s, in a bid to safeguard the Indo-Pacific from the threat of Beijing.
However, questions remain about the lengthy time frame, the extraordinary cost to taxpayers, and the maze of US export control laws that must be reformed for America to share nuclear technology secrets with Australia.
In Congress, Democrats and Republicans have suggested giving Australia a special exemption to accelerate the delivery of its nuclear-powered fleet. Last month, legislation was also introduced by two Republicans – Senator James Risch and Senator Bill Hagerty, in the form of the TORPEDO Act, which would fast-track the implementation of the pact by reforming the regulatory system.
“Unfortunately, the Biden Administration’s implementation of AUKUS is not only failing to move at the speed of relevance given the China threat, but it is also evident both pillars of the agreement face major, structural challenges,” Senator James Risch said at the time.
Asked about the progress of AUKUS, Rudd told the audience: “I think we can find a landing point. I’ve now been around most of the Senate and House committees, and we’re working respectfully with Senators, Members and their staff and I see a great will on the part of the folks I’ve spoken to – including in the administration – to get this done.”
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