Ben Roberts-Smith loses Federal Court appeal despite massive witness bribe and weaponised media

The foreign-owned media attack on the military continues aided and abetted by the best judiciary money can buy

By Dr Dan Mealy

What has become of our country that protects the names, identities and rights of criminals, misappropriating their crimes upon the innocent like CPL Ben Roberts-Smith VC, MG?

https://cairnsnews.org/2025/05/13/reporter-nick-mckenzie-and-nine-caught-bribing-witness-in-ben-roberts-smith-defamation-case/

From start to finish this horrific saga has involved vengeful liars weaponising media and justice systems – in complete anonymity – against a lowly ranked soldier. This has been in a vacuum of any kind of Defence leadership that might have inserted critically missing military context about the ambiguity of a warfare against a fundamentalist Muslim enemy that uses children as an explosive device.

Shame on that Defence leadership that entered into the media space to condemn their soldiers without affording them due military legal process. In doing so, those Defence leaders have propelled soldiers like Roberts-Smith into a toxic arena judged by civilians with a loathing of soldiers, men and heroes.

Ben Roberts-Smith deserved (like his SASR accusers have received) SASR anonymity to protect him and his family from terrorist reprisal.

Instead, his name has being singled out internationally by journalists Chris Masters, ABC and Nick McKenzie, Nine, for the duration of a very long trial-by-media.

Not one ADF Officer – past or present – has demanded that anonymity be applied.

Not one of the Roberts-Smith family has been afforded a security detachment throughout the trial (let alone anonymity), exposing all of them to terrorist cell retaliation.

Shame on the Australian government and every twisted Australian who has allowed this to happen.

The word “terrorist” is now politically incorrect among Masters’ and MacKenzie’s sects – “innocent civilians” is what they call them now – “innocent civilians” financially compensated by former CDF Angus Campbell along with a shameful apology from him.

All of this is before any valid war crimes tribunal has ever taken place.

Good luck Australia, what you have done to our bravest soldiers has set you and your children up for a miserable future. Good luck, trying to recruit anyone into the Defence Force, to defend you and your undeserved entitlements.

You expect our soldiers to shovel sand into bags to protect you from floods. And to protect you from fires with no protective equipment.

Your expectations are unreasonable, and undeserved.

Prime Minister John Howard sent us all to that war, and his, and successive governments have since chosen to turn on us for our perceived failures to live up to the rules of warfare that were asymmetrical to the nature of that war, and with its “civilian”’enemy.

War is messy. Death happens there. Soldiers kill people. Being killed hurts. Governments send them to war to kill people. Australians vote for those governments. Yet Australians expect men like Ben Roberts-Smith VC, MG to carry the burden of every physical, psychological and moral injury and event that takes place in those wars, as though they acted without national sanction.

Those who attack Ben Roberts-Smith VC MG are cowards, and should be conscripted for a reality check.

The fight is not over.