Opinion
Ben Roberts-Smith is shaping the battlefield. Or as he sees it, he’s reshaping it. No one should be surprised. It’s what soldiers are trained to do.
First this week was the launch of his merchandise brand, Epic 1 Two. Now, today, the release of interviews with 2GB’s Ben Fordham and News Corp outlets – all of them vetted by the veteran’s legal team before release.
Fordham teased his interview as Roberts-Smith “breaking his silence, (telling) his side of the story (in) the fight to clear his name”.
It is far from the first time the Victoria Cross recipient and accused war criminal has told his side of the story. He told it under oath when he sued the Nine newspapers, unsuccessfully, for defamation. So what’s he up to now?
The answer lies in lectures delivered at military academies from Duntroon to West Point. ADF doctrine explicitly states that “if you control the opponent’s information environments through co-ordinated and integrated influence operations … then you control your opponent.”
Technically, as he faces five counts of the war crime of murder, Roberts-Smith’s opponent is the Crown. But that’s not his target. Ultimately, it is the 12 as-yet unselected members of the jury. There are skirmishes, there are battles, but that trial will decide the outcome of the war.
Conviction requires a unanimous verdict.
A dozen Australians. Roberts-Smith’s war is won if even one among them has formed a view that our most decorated living hero should not be sent to jail.
Acquittal is the goal, but a hung jury voids the trial. BRS retains the presumption of innocence. It would take heroic determination for the Commonwealth DPP to order up another trial.
Roberts-Smith has always denied the charges. “I didn’t bloody murder anyone,” he told Fordham. He says he is the victim of a hostile law enforcement PR campaign, pointing to his arrest at Sydney airport in front of his partner, his teenage daughters, 200 passengers and cameras.
“It was such a deliberate attempt to sensationalise the arrest,” said Roberts-Smith today. Being charged in NSW, rather than Queensland where he lives, he says was “100 per cent” designed to get a jurisdictional advantage when the trial begins. In Queensland, he said, he had offered to hand himself in.
Intriguingly, Roberts-Smith himself uses the verb “shape”. He says remaining silent throughout his defamation campaign was a mistake.
“It was to my detriment because I just spent four years being absolutely slaughtered in the press and that absolutely shaped public opinion in a very detrimental way.” Losing that case was “gut-wrenching.” He told Fordham, “I found out in the civil game (they) don’t have to prove it’s true, they just have to prove they believed it. Or it might have happened.”
That is not a true reflection of the law. An outlet simply “believing” it’s telling the truth has no defence in defamation. The judge found to the civil test of the balance of probabilities, Roberts-Smith did murder prisoners who were under control, or directed others to do so. A full bench appeal unanimously upheld that verdict and the High Court refused to hear an appeal on the basis that it had no prospect of success.
Roberts-Smith’s public “shaping” campaign this week is not limited to today’s splashy interviews.
His new merchandise outlet, Epic 1 Two (simplified to E12 on the “No Quit” tank-top and the $50 “Desert Vintage Camo Trucker” hat) states his brand is “for the underdog who refuses to stay down”.
Epic 1 Two was Roberts-Smith’s call-sign in the fight for Tizak in the wider Battle of Shah Wali Kot. Hugely outnumbered, grievously exposed, Roberts-Smith led a push against a well-protected Taliban position. As the official citation records it: “demonstrating extreme devotion to duty and the most conspicuous gallantry, Corporal Roberts-Smith, with a total disregard for his own safety, stormed the enemy position”.
It was for this that he was awarded the Victoria Cross.
His new brand presents Roberts-Smith not just as a war hero, but as a stand-in for every Australian battler. The marketing blurb says Epic 1 Two is “for the people who know what it means to be counted out. To have the odds stacked against them.” It is for those who have been “treated unfairly.”
Because everyone at some stage has been treated unfairly.
The marketing site does not mention that soldiers in that fight with him in Tizak have been witnesses against him. It makes no reference to the war crimes charges. It makes no mention of the allegation that he murdered prisoners.
You wouldn’t expect it to. It’s an exercise in shaping. When Roberts-Smith finally fronts court, expect to see his supporters wearing their E12 kit. Because the coming war crimes trial is not simply a matter of law. It is a question of what a nation chooses to value.
The defining battle of Ben Roberts-Smith’s life will not be the one he fought at Tizak. It will be in that courtroom. Everything in his life will come down to that jury.
You could call them the Epic-12. In his head – and certainly that of his team – is this question: in any randomly selected group of 12 Australians, would at least two or three would baulk at convicting a war hero? It only needs one.
The battle is huge. The shaping is under way. It is being shaped for that one.
Hugh Riminton recently retired after decades in broadcast journalism. Most recently he was TEN News national affairs editor.