By Dr Dan Mealey, Former Army doctor, Afghanistan veteran, veteran advocate
They were unarmed.
They were off duty.
They were murdered in 2012 by Hekmatullah, an Afghan National Army soldier and Taliban infiltrator who turned his weapon on Australian troops he was meant to stand beside. Hekmatullah was captured, convicted and sentenced to death, but he didn’t remain where justice placed him.
In betrayal of the families he killed, he was released as part of the US-Taliban process, returned to Afghanistan and, according to reports, housed comfortably as a hero under Taliban protection in Kabul’s former diplomatic quarter.
Hugh Poate’s son, Private Robert Poate, was murdered by Hekmatullah. Hugh relates:
“Some of the alleged breaches in the rules of armed conflict by BRS and other SASR soldiers occurred… during the hunt for Hekmatullah.
“Despite frequent requests by the three families to Australian Ministers for Defence and Ministers for Foreign Affairs to apply diplomatic pressure for Hekmatullah’s sentence to be carried out, they refused.”
That’s the moral backdrop against which Australians are now being asked to watch Ben Roberts-Smith face the full force of the state.
Hekmatullah, a confessed killer of unarmed Australians, charged and sentenced in legitimate courts of law, walks free, and lives like a national hero.
Ben Roberts-Smith, and actual national hero, risked his life in Australia’s uniform, and has been left to defend himself against a machinery of investigation, prosecution, media hostility and institutional abandonment, so vast that its cost is in the vicinity of $300 million.
Where is the balance here? Where is the decency? Where is the elusive Australian “fair go?”
The Ben Roberts-Smith VC MG Trust exists because good people have clearly seen something is profoundly wrong:
“I don’t understand how it can be justified to spend more than $300 million to try for years to bring SAS veterans, who have served our country, towards criminal proceedings, and most recently the arrest of Ben.” — Mrs Gina Rinehart AO
Clearly, the world was shocked by the arrest of this war hero. However the state has marshalled staggering resources. Media organisations have been backed by corporate money, insurance arrangements and the practical advantage of deep institutional pockets. Politicians have spent public money. Bureaucracies have spent public money. Journalists and publishers have litigated behind structures that ordinary people could never access.
But the man in the dock, and the family standing beside him, are expected to pass the hat around an already overtaxed public.
That should trouble every Australian.
Because if justice becomes a luxury item, it is no longer justice. If only politicians, billionaires, government agencies and media companies can afford the years-long fight required to preserve their name, liberty and future, then the courts cease to be a forum for truth and become a weapon wielded by those who can afford to outlast, outspend and exhaust the truth itself.
That is why supporting this Trust isn’t merely about one soldier. It’s about whether the presumption of innocence still has practical meaning. It is about whether an Australian can realistically defend himself when the resources arrayed against him are almost limitless. It is about whether due process belongs to citizens, or only to the powerful.
Cydonee Mardon — award-winning, veteran Australian journalist and Chief Reporter for news.com.au reported that the Ben Roberts-Smith VC MG Trust was established by Adam Veale, a long-time friend of Roberts-Smith, with the blessing of the family, as “the only legitimate platform” for public support. Veale told the publication: “There has been an overwhelming amount of support for Ben, with Australians from all walks of life reaching out and wanting to know how they can help.” He described the Trust as “a simple and safe way for Australians to rally behind Ben as he undertakes his monumental battle, and ensure his family is supported.”
Those words matter because they reveal what this moment has become. It is no longer simply a legal contest. It is a national test.
If the state can spend sums approximating $300 million pursuing Australian soldiers through the Afghanistan war-crimes machinery, then the generosity of ordinary Australians becomes more than charity, it becomes a statement of national conscience. Every contribution, large or small, helps answer an imbalance that should trouble us all. Not because any man is above the law. He isn’t. Not because courts should be bypassed. They must not be. But because when one side is backed by the vast resources of the state, and the other is left to carry the personal cost of defence, the contest is no longer equal and fair. It becomes less a search for truth than a test of who can endure the longest.
The same country that sent soldiers into Afghanistan cannot later abandon them to fight alone against the machinery of government, the media and their egregiously misinformed status quo
This point reaches beyond Ben Roberts-Smith. It reaches every Australian soldier now wearing the uniform, and every young Australian considering whether to put it on. What rational soldier will deploy for a country that may one day spend hundreds of millions pursuing him, while expecting him to beg fellow citizens to pass the hat around for the means to defend himself? What soldier will trust a nation that asks him to make life-and-death decisions in war, then years later judges those decisions through the cold safety of hindsight, political fashion and media theatre?
No military can survive that breach of trust.
Australia cannot ask its soldiers for courage overseas and treat them with cowardice when they come home. It cannot demand obedience in war and provide abandonment in peace. It cannot honour medals on Anzac Day, then allow the men who earned them to be consumed by a process so expensive, that only the state and the very rich can endure it.
The charges against Ben Roberts-Smith must be tested in court, under law, on evidence, and to the criminal standard. That’s the point. A charge isn’t a conviction. A headline isn’t proof. A civil finding isn’t a criminal verdict. The difference matters, and any country that forgets this, has already begun to lose the justice it claims to defend.
The Trust is therefore not an act of defiance against justice. It’s an act of faith in justice.
It says the court should decide, not the mob.
It says evidence should prevail, not reputational destruction.
It says the state’s power should be met by citizens who still believe in fairness.
It says no Australian family should be financially destroyed merely trying to survive a process the government can fund indefinitely.
And it says that truth, justice and decency cannot be reserved for those with bottomless pockets.
Ben Roberts-Smith now faces the fight of his life.
His family faces it with him.
Those who believe in fairness must not look away.
If Australia can’t get this right, it will not merely fail one soldier. It will send a message to every future soldier: your service may be honoured while it is useful, questioned when it is inconvenient, and abandoned when it becomes expensive.
That isn’t a country worthy of its soldiers.
Our soldiers have borne the cost of our national decisions. Soldiers like Ben Roberts-Smith VC MG obeyed our leaders into harm’s way, into war zones most Australians will never see and circumstances most Australians will never be asked to endure.
Some soldiers, like Private Robert Poate, Sapper James Martin and Lance Corporal Stjepan Milosevic never came home.
Now it is our turn to wear the cost of our national decisions, not with blind loyalty, but with fairness, gratitude and national conscience.
We can help level the field.
We can support the Ben Roberts-Smith VC MG Trust.
