Roberts-Smith argues his unsuccessful defamation case against McKenzie and Nine newspapers should be retried because of a ‘miscarriage of justice’ while Nine has been caught out bribing a witness with $700,000
By Dr Dan Mealey
Last week, Corporal Ben Roberts-Smith VC, MG once again appeared before the Federal Court armed with a staggering amount of evidence against the credibility of his detractors. And once again that evidence was deemed inadmissible by the Court, for reasons that continue to perplex Australians who value truth and justice.
“Justice” — once considered to be a fundamental human right — is now a distant foggy memory in a country that now charges fifty million dollars to approximate it. Formerly in the toolkit of wise and upright adjudicators to enact it, the concept of “justice” has been bastardised into a commodity that seemingly only millionaires can afford.
It’s no secret that Ben Roberts-Smith is no millionaire, and that his legal costs are being funded, under loan, by the CEO of Seven Group Holdings Ltd, Kerry Stokes AC. It’s also no secret that despite being the Commonwealth’s most highly decorated soldier, Roberts-Smith held the lowly rank of ‘Corporal,’ now pitted against Goliath-like attacks upon him. Consequently, this is stirring the sympathetic rage of a growing population of disempowered Australians for whom “justice” has for decades, been inaccessible.
Putting aside the extraordinary injustices of tens of thousands of Australian veterans that led Roberts-Smith to influence a major Royal Commission to investigate them, civilian Australians have been equally brutalised in a country in which “justice” has simply become too expensive.
A note to our lofty Members of Parliament increasingly disconnected from their electorate: those Australians are now angry, and the case of Corporal Ben Roberts-Smith versus a billionaire empire of political, Defence and media giants is emblematic of the plight of a growing army of common-sense Australians calling “bull shit” on the insane proposition that Ben Roberts-Smith was ever a war criminal.
At this point, the battle lines in our country have been clearly drawn:
Nine reporter Nick McKenzie was caught on tape claiming he had engaged in unethical behaviour by obtaining information about Ben Roberts-Smith’s legal strategy during the Afghanistan veteran’s defamation case.
In bombshell revelations on Monday, Sky News investigative journalist Sharri Markson reported she had obtained a secret recording in which McKenzie says Roberts-Smith’s ex-wife, Emma Roberts, and her friend had been “actively briefing us on his legal strategy” in respect to a witness.
Those who believe the unethical, and unfounded accusations of disgraced journalist Nick McKenzie, hold onto their belief for no other reason than that they want those lies to be true. Those who want such lies to be true, are one and the same as those motivated by envy. Envy forms the nucleus of every case against Roberts-Smith, the lowly corporal who dared to stand tall in a country of small poppies enacting their toxic envy weaponising media and justice systems against him.
On the other side of the battle line can be found decent Australians who conclude that the attacks upon this noble soldier not only have their genesis in an unbridled societal envy, but also in an institutional retaliation toward a family that has consistently held a disinfectant light upon institutions causing harm.
Missing in action are wise and upright adjudicators upholding a forensic and psychiatric evaluation of the motivations of those laying claims against him.
Hastie said his ministry demands an epitomised accountability befitting someone foreseeably charged with sending countless Australian soldiers to their deaths (amidst unimaginable fog of war) in defence of what Hastie might foreseeably define as being in our national interests. “This ministry demands that its Members of Parliament avoid inappropriate, and opportunistic commentary in a media space regarding sensitive matters for which media silence is demanded.” Hastie reminded the media.
On the back of Andrew Hastie leaking hearsay and gossip about Roberts-Smith to unethical journalist Nick McKenzie, with the power of the media in his pocket, Hastie won the personally-lucrative 2015 Canning by-election that launched him into his present position of Shadow Minister for Defence.
The irony of McKenzie’s unwitting confession of unethical behaviour, is that he had the audacity to question the ethics of a combat soldier waging war against a Taliban enemy known for dressing up children in suicide vests and using them as an explosive device. Here we have an unethical journalist benefiting from the privilege of national safety, defecating on the very soldier who frequently approximated death in battle to protect it. And here we have an SASR officer, similarly defecating on his own soldier, an officer too far removed from the battle zone to comment upon it.
Hastie was by no means isolated in his opportunistic relationship with Nick McKenzie. Similar financially-lucrative motivations of key witnesses against Roberts-Smith became glaringly evident in recent weeks, with the apparent change of heart of “Person 17,” now seeking to testify against the illegality of Nine Network Australia, for paying her $700,000 hush money to stop her from making damning allegations that Nine had access to the private emails of Roberts-Smith.
This poses some serious questions:
How much money was paid to other individuals to testify against Roberts-Smith? Does this amount to bribing witnesses?
Has Nick McKenzie confused his role of “investigative journalist” with bribery of witnesses to validate an unfounded story, based upon the gossip and hearsay that Hastie and others brought before him ?
And it doesn’t stop there.
On December 17, 2020 Stephen Gibbs for the Daily Mail Australia revealed that the Command Sergeant Major of the Special Operations Command, WO1 John Letch, was the soldier in the photo leaked to the Guardian, depicting a soldier drinking beer from a prosthetic leg that belonged to a Taliban fighter killed by special forces in Afghanistan. Gibbs revealed that two other soldiers had also been similarly photographed:
Two more senior Special Air Service soldiers are facing the sack after being photographed partying with the prosthetic leg of a Taliban fighter killed in battle.
The soldiers, a warrant officer class 2 and a sergeant, have reportedly been issued with notices to ‘show cause’ why their employment should not be terminated.
Both non-commissioned officers have decades of service with the SAS and one of them is understood to be the soldier who took the prosthetic right leg from a slain Afghan insurgent’s body.
Australia’s most decorated soldier, Victoria Cross and Medal for Gallantry recipient Ben Roberts-Smith is said to have engaged the insurgent but had no involvement in taking the leg for a souvenir.
Another picture shows the warrant officer whose job is now under threat with the leg strapped to his backpack after the Kakarak operation.
That warrant officer is understood to have submitted a widely published complaint about Mr. Roberts-Smith’s receipt of a Commendation for Distinguished Service in 2014.
Who is the ‘Caped Bandit’ who shared those photographs with those newspapers, and why did he share them?
Who is this same unnamed warrant officer with the leg strapped to his backpack — the warrant officer “understood to have submitted a widely-published complaint about Mr. Roberts-Smith’s receipt of a Commendation for Distinguished Service?”
Why has his name been spared in the international witch-hunt for SASR soldiers?
Why is this Caped Bandit’s unreported “Rogue Platoon” afforded protective immunity from the ADF, and why do they remain unreported?
Most importantly, which of the Senior Officers of the ADF have permitted Corporal Ben Roberts-Smith to be the unwilling fall guy in the “war crimes” saga, covering up the actual war crimes committed by this “Rogue Platoon” seemingly afforded full legal immunity by them?
Needed here is a forensic analysis of the sociological motivations of every informant in this case.
Ironically, the former Chief of the ADF, General Angus Campbell, paid $7,207,669.36 to Sociologist Dr Samantha Crompvoets to do just that — “ironically” because “feminism was a huge enabler for my work,” revealing once again, the need for wise and upright adjudicators to uphold a forensic and psychiatric evaluation of all of the motivations of those laying claims against war hero Corporal Ben Roberts-Smith VC, MG.
Federal court judge Nye Perram reserved his decision on the interlocutory application.