Justice delayed is justice denied – and a seventeen-year pursuit that ends with a Victoria Cross recipient in jail is not the justice system working. It is the justice system being used for political gain.
Turning Point Australia stands with Ben Roberts-Smith. Unequivocally.
The arrest of Ben Roberts-Smith is not just an attack on one man. It is an attack on every Australian who has ever put on a uniform, picked up a rifle, and done what their country asked of them in the most dangerous places on earth.
That does not mean we pre-judge the courts. It means we refuse to stay silent while a decorated war hero is handcuffed so publicly in a domestic airport terminal in front of his twin daughters, denied bail, and taken to prison – with no hard evidence, just hearsay.
More than $300 million in taxpayer money has been spent pursuing this case. That figure is not the cost of justice. It is the cost of an obsession.
The alleged offences date back to 2009 and 2012. The AFP and the Office of the Special Investigator have been investigating since 2021. Five years. And now, with Australia’s relationship with the US, its most important strategic ally, under strain and a Labor Government under pressure, Ben Roberts-Smith is in Silverwater Prison.
Consider this. Ben Roberts-Smith is not just a soldier. He is a figure deeply associated with conservative Australia, with patriotism, with the kind of values that the current Government and its ideological allies have spent years trying to discredit. His public destruction does not only wound him. It wounds the Liberal-National Coalition. It puts Andrew Hastie – the Deputy Opposition Leader, a man whose own role in this saga raises serious questions – back in the spotlight. And it hands Labor a political weapon dressed up as a legal proceeding.
Is the Albanese Government using the machinery of federal law enforcement to conduct a political witch hunt? We are not asserting that as fact. But we are asking it. And we want to know how Coalition leader Angus Taylor intends to respond – because the silence from the Liberal Party on the treatment of one of Australia’s greatest soldiers is itself a statement.
Australians deserve to know the full picture of how this prosecution came to be.
Court records from the defamation proceedings reveal that Andrew Hastie – then a serving MP and member of Parliament’s powerful intelligence and security committee – admitted in Federal Court to speaking on and off the record to Nine newspaper journalists about his suspicions of Ben Roberts-Smith. By his own admission, he had no formal evidence. He acted on a “gut feeling” and “probably passed on” rumours.
At the same time, Nine newspapers – the outlets publishing allegations against Roberts-Smith – were covering Hastie’s legal fees in separate defamation proceedings. Proceedings that, without that support, could have left him bankrupt and out of Parliament.
We are not making accusations. But we are asking: when a politician feeds unverified rumours to journalists who are simultaneously funding his legal defence, and those rumours contribute to one of the most expensive criminal investigations in Australian history – does the public not have a right to question his motives?
Was this about truth? Or was this about politics? Was this about justice? Or was this about destroying a man whose patriotism, courage and public profile made him inconvenient to certain people in certain places?
And here is the darker question: is Ben Roberts-Smith being used as a pawn? A high-profile, politically loaded figure whose destruction simultaneously damages conservative Australia, puts the Coalition on the back foot, and keeps Hastie – and his murky role in this story – buried under the noise of a criminal prosecution? These are questions Andrew Hastie has not been asked loudly enough. They should be. And so should this one: how does Angus Taylor, as leader of the Opposition, intend to stand up for a man who served this country when his own party appears reluctant to do so?
What is happening to Ben Roberts-Smith is part of a broader pattern that Turning Point Australia has been watching with growing alarm.
In this country, it is becoming dangerous to be a patriot. It is becoming risky to stand for the flag, to defend Australia’s military history, to believe that the men and women who fought for this nation deserve our loyalty – not our prosecution.
Unelected agencies with enormous power and enormous budgets are pursuing Australian soldiers. Elected politicians are feeding rumours to friendly journalists. And the political class cheers it on while our defence recruitment collapses, our military morale hits historic lows, and our enemies watch with interest.\
This is not the Australia that Ben Roberts-Smith fought for. And it is not the Australia we intend to accept.
Ben Roberts-Smith is innocent until proven guilty. He will have his day in court and we respect that process.
But we will not pretend this arrest happened in a vacuum. We will not pretend the questions about motive, about money, about political interest, do not exist. And we will not abandon a man who ran toward danger while others ran away.
Australia sent Ben Roberts-Smith to war. Turning Point Australia will not leave him behind.
We stand with Ben. We stand with our veterans. We stand for Australia.
—
This is a statement by Turning Point Australia and does not constitute a legal finding in relation to any individual.
