Editorial
The vanity of Ben Roberts-Smith

The thing about Ben Roberts-Smith is that he knows he did it. That’s what makes each appeal so brazen. He sits in court in the full knowledge that he is a murderer and a war criminal. He will appeal to the High Court for the same reasons he would kill an unarmed civilian: because he can, because there is still a slender chance he will get away with it.

On Tuesday, the Federal Court reaffirmed what had already been established: it found Ben Roberts-Smith was involved in the murder of at least four unarmed civilians while on deployment in Afghanistan.

He “broke the moral and legal rules of military engagement and is therefore a criminal”. He “disgraced his country, Australia, and the Australian Army by his conduct as a member of the SASR in Afghanistan”.

The details of his crimes are lurid and perverse.

One of his victims was handcuffed when Roberts-Smith kicked him off a cliff and then had him shot in a cornfield beside a dry creek bed. A radio was planted on the innocent man after they uncuffed him, and photographs were taken of his corpse.

Another, an old man, was made to kneel before Roberts-Smith directed he be shot in the head with a rifle. The solider Roberts-Smith directed was a junior recruit and this killing was to “blood the rookie”.

A third man was killed when Roberts-Smith directed an Afghan commander to shoot him in the room where he was being held. He was, to use the military term, a “person under control”.

A fourth man was frogmarched by Roberts-Smith to the outside of a compound where he was thrown to the ground and then shot to death by Roberts-Smith with a machine gun.

This man had a prosthetic leg, which Roberts-Smith took as a trophy. The court said Roberts-Smith was “so callous and inhumane that he took the prosthetic leg back to Australia and encouraged his soldiers to use it as a novelty beer-drinking vessel”.

The man who did these things has spent several years and many millions of dollars pretending he didn’t. His approach in court was the same as in Darwan, calculated and opportunistic. He has the special narcissism of the privileged, a character flaw uniquely catered to by Australia’s defamation laws.

There were many who believed Roberts-Smith might win in court, not because he is innocent but because the law is so stacked in favour of the vain and rich. The burden for establishing truth is obscenely high. The cost of doing so is higher still.

This is a country in which journalists are often afraid to do their jobs. One of the reporters involved has been sued so often he suffers post-traumatic stress disorder. He gets nervous going to his letterbox, where in the past the writs would arrive.

That a story is true is no real protection. Settlements are often paid because they are cheaper than the cost of defending a vexatious claim. Stories are left unpublished because the risk to the newspaper is too great.

Hopefully Roberts-Smith’s staggering loss, after Bruce Lehrmann’s staggering loss, slows the current string of major cases. Hopefully it is a reminder to the rich that their reputations can’t be bought, even if our defamation laws are set up more or less for that very purpose.

This article was first published in the print edition of The Saturday Paper on May 24, 2025 as "Murderer and a war criminal".

For almost a decade, The Saturday Paper has published Australia’s leading writers and thinkers. We have pursued stories that are ignored elsewhere, covering them with sensitivity and depth. We have done this on refugee policy, on government integrity, on robo-debt, on aged care, on climate change, on the pandemic.

All our journalism is fiercely independent. It relies on the support of readers. By subscribing to The Saturday Paper, you are ensuring that we can continue to produce essential, issue-defining coverage, to dig out stories that take time, to doggedly hold to account politicians and the political class.

There are very few titles that have the freedom and the space to produce journalism like this. In a country with a concentration of media ownership unlike anything else in the world, it is vitally important. Your subscription helps make it possible.

Send this article to a friend for free.