4 Field Regiment (SVN) 'Old Boys' Newsletter - September 2021 Edition

We finished Selection on Friday 13 August 2010. When I called my wife to tell her, I wept. I was cold, shivering and spent. I’d lost 12 kilograms in three weeks and I had no emotional reserves. That day SASR Trooper Jason Brown died bravely—under fire—in Afghanistan serving with the Special Operations Task Group. It was a subdued mood back at Swanbourne. There were no high fives. Starved, physically exhausted and emotionally shattered, we sat around a radio cleaning our rifles the next morning. We quietly listened to the voices of our Prime Minister Julia Gillard, and Leader of the Opposition Tony Abbott express their condolences at the death of another digger in Australia’s longest war. That day set a course for me. I served in the SAS for the next five years, deploying to Afghanistan as a Troop Commander in 2013 as part of the Special Operations Task Group. I did not anticipate that ten years later I would be a Member of Parliament, explaining how we found ourselves in a dark place. Like all of us, I am grieved by the findings of the Brereton Report, handed down by the Chief of the Defence Force. There is much to be troubled by: the report details credible information regarding allegations of unlawful killings by Australian soldiers. Specifically, 23 incidents of alleged unlawful killings of 39 people, perpetrated by 25 Australian Special Forces soldiers, mainly from the Special Air Service Regiment. The report is hard reading. It is comprehensive, detailed and unsparing in its judgement on those alleged to have committed war crimes. As a former officer of the SASR and someone who believes in Regimental honour, I feel great shame in what has occurred. We were sent to Afghanistan in a double trust—to defend Australia’s values and interests by force, but also to uphold those values in our battlefield conduct. Many good soldiers honoured that trust; a small number of soldiers did not. Many people want to know: how did this happen? Here are some personal observations on the Brereton Inquiry that are shaped by five years of service in SASR and five years as a Member of the Federal Parliament. First, we have forgotten basic truths about human nature that previous generations of Australians better understood. We live in a bent world. We all carry man’s smudge: people do bad things. Christians, call it sin in a fallen world. Enlightenment thinkers like Immanuel Kant called it the ‘crooked timber’ of humanity. Whatever name we give our condition, we should always guard against the reality of people doing bad things when they are left unaccountable. The Australian constitution aligned our system of government to this realist view of human nature. The drafters understood the importance of the rule of law, the separation of powers and the need for accountability amongst those who serve in government. Our soldiers and officers are no different: they need accountability and firm leadership in the degrading cockpit of war. It appears this did not happen from the very top to the bottom of the command chain. Second, we ignored the true nature of war and sanitised it. We pretended it was no different to any other form of unilateral government policy. But the reality is that war is inherently violent, escalatory and degrading. It is a modern conceit to pretend that war can be managed with a set of safe technocratic hands. The brutal reality is that no plan ever survives the first shot. People lose their way and become hard of heart, especially after multiple deployments. During the Second World War, the Churchill government commissioned Laurence Olivier to make a Technicolor film version of Shakespeare’s Henry V to boost wartime morale. Olivier edited out one third of the play, excising Henry’s violent speech demanding surrender of the Governor of Harfleur. King Henry, understanding the nature of ‘impious war’ once unleashed, posed the question: What rein can hold licentious wickedness When down the hill he holds his fierce career? Shakespeare paints violent imagery of the ‘blind and bloody soldier with foul hand’ committing all sorts of atrocities. He saw that war has its own dark energy. He knew it consumes people in ways that modern society cannot comprehend, largely because we have packaged it up nicely for the evening news. The Australian Defence Force was very effective at sanitising our longest war with its legions of Public Affairs Officers. The United Kingdom and the USA took a liberal approach, allowing