Welcome back to The Voices of War.

This is episode two of our series that focuses on the recently released award-winning documentary, Bravery and Betrayal.

In the first episode, I spoke with Vando and Brett, one an SAS combat leader and the other a special operations legal officer. In that episode, some of the things we explored include why special forces became the force of choice in a war of choice. We also discussed the impact of relentless rotations, constant readiness, no real rest, and the cumulative cost to our troops.

We landed on betrayal. We talked about how necessary investigations, but flawed processes, absolved senior leaders of any responsibility, fractured trust, and ensured wide reaching moral injury.

If you haven’t watched that episode yet, I highly recommend that you do.

Today, as a continuation of that discussion, I’m joined by Brigadier Dan Fortune, DSC and Bar. Dan is a highly decorated former officer of the Australian Army Special Air Service Regiment and is one of the very few Australian soldiers to be twice awarded the Distinguished Service Cross for command on the ground in combat. Dan served extensively within SASR’s Sabre Squadrons as both an enlisted operator and later as a commissioned officer.

Dan, thank you for joining me on The Voices of War.

Well, thanks, Maz. A huge thrill to be here and thank you for the invitation.

I also have to make a disclaimer for anyone watching that Dan and I go a long way back. Well, Dan and my entire cohort go a long way back. Dan was our Commanding Officer at the Royal Military College, Duntroon.

Yeah, the Royal Military College as the Commanding Officer, huge career highlight and staff cadet Maslic and Nick, Nick Maslic, there’s a backstory there about me misnaming you forever, AKA Nick.

Yeah, yeah, Nick, that’s right!

Yeah, so it’s great to be here, mate, and upfront also acknowledge Vando and Brett for a great episode. And thank you for bringing this issue to the forefront and maintaining the intellectual discussion that’s really important mate. So, it’s great what you do it’s a thrill to be here with you and can’t wait to get into it.

Thanks lot. As we go through, undoubtedly, there will be a anecdotes that will come out. I think You challenged all of us, you know, and nowhere more than in the infamous Shaggy Ridge, which again, for those who are not aware, it’s a seven or eight days sleep and food deprivation exercise you’re sleeping an hour a night and you’re constantly doing some sort of where you’re tested as the commander or as the second in command or just as a member.

But I remember the brief from you again before we jumped in. the lines of if there’s no bone sticking out and no blood spurting out, it’s not an injury.

One of my best lines, think. One of my favourite lines.

It set tone for what the military is. I mean, those types of activities and exercises show you what you can do and push you beyond what you thought you could do and what was possible.

What’s a Professor of Arms, mate? You have obligations and responsibilities as a leader. And that’s what my job and the Cos of Duntroon to give the young officer candidates experience and exposure to what’s expected of them and beyond what they would have expected, understood. That’s how we got to where we are. I’m in Canberra pointing to the War Memorial. That’s how we built what we are and we can’t just magically move to that. To be part of that is a huge thrill and a huge responsibility. And looking back, a wonderful privilege.

Yeah. Yeah. Absolutely, no doubt. And I think that also takes me to, I just want to recap one of the points that Vando and Brett brought out, particularly Vando brought out from the kind of operators lived experience.

How good was he? Sensational!

Yeah, he did an amazing job. And both of them did. Vando’s real reflection of the kind of lived experience and kind of to put it into context. So that’s the kind of training that a general army officer will go through. And of course, SAS selection ⁓ is a whole new level. And then the training and everything else that goes through. So our troops are well prepared for the job that they do. But one of the things that Vando brought up loudly is the kind of gradual degradation that occurs over time as you constantly deployed and you don’t have any rest. You don’t get a chance to let the previous experiences land, settle, so you can reflect, learn from, desensitize from it all, and then get back into it with a fresh pair of eyes, so to speak. Given that you’ve done multitude of deployments How do you view that entire piece about the moral degradation or the shifting or the gradual neutering of one’s or senses?

Well, it’s very tricky and I’m not a therapist but I’ve pondered it carefully. Look, I think, and Vando articulated in his very refined way, the lived experience he had. And my sense is very much that where that line sits, what you would be acceptable in terms of your moral azimuth and what you can tolerate and what you understand is virtuous and worth defending and protecting can get very murky.

Let’s just talk about Afghanistan without my journey over the 40 years. Without question, from 05 to 14, my multiple trips, two, one years, I spent about three years in that Islamic country, in that weird alien place with all those negative cultural immersive damaging influences. And I say that because that’s what it was like from a cultural shocking, you know, I couldn’t tolerate some of the values I was being asked to manage. You do lose; you lose clarity. Things I wouldn’t have accepted early in my tour as CO when I was a brigadier doing targeting operations I found my tolerance of risk and acceptance of loss of life, utterly transformed.

How so? I don’t want to make it too abstract. Bring it to the lived experience in your day to day. What does that actually look like for you on the ground?

Okay well, 2008 I’m the commanding officer, men killed in a very traumatic experience, immersive, and we had civilian casualty incidents where sadly Afghan civilian children were wounded tragically with heavy calibre weapons. Horrible. I found it really damaging. Quite traumatized by it. I found it hard to work through and we had to ponder what the hell we doing there in that sense of, you know, justice is this right?

Fast forward six years, I’m a brigadier with having had two, a year in between that. More deaths, fear for my life experiences, traumatic and euphoric experiences in combat. I’m in an automotive mode. I’m hitting targets every night as a target engagement authority, as the one star. And I’m looking back now in very much battle, game-face on. And I’m in a martial context where I’m in a warrior mode. I’m still acting legally. I’m very much within the pillars of rules of engagement, pattern of life, collateral. But my considerations are…far less emotive, far more about the task and the mission than the people. That’s how I could read it back. And it took me a long time to unpack all that and work out what the hell that was all about. And you don’t understand that while you’re there. That would be, I’m like Vando. It’s an immersive experience, but the lived history of our society tells us what happens. We just somehow discounted all that and hand waved it. That’s what happens and Vando nailed it and I’m here to tell you that’s true. Well, it’s real, was it true? Well, you know, truth is real for the person who’s there.

Yeah. And I don’t mean to bring that up in any way to shame, denigrate or just like I said to Vando I’ve tried to talk about this so often on this podcast. And it’s only now since people like you and Vando are putting their hand up to speak post ‘Bravery and Betrayal’. that we’re really kind of able to really hone in on this because this is, this is not discussed a lot.

Well, there’s some foundational issues here, You know, there’s some foundational philosophical issues. Who are you? What are we doing here? And why are we here? You know, I’m the Aristotle ethicist, the Kantian, you know, action through experience. And that’s why I don’t buy the consequentialist. I don’t buy the utilitarians. We’ll get to the ethics. I’m rejecting it and many have.

As a martial war fighter, it doesn’t work and there’s theology and scholarship around it and we in the current context hand waved it with the unregenerate postmodern bureaucrats reading back to warriors and war fighters how we’re meant to deal with these foundational issues. So, we’ve got to keep going up and looking up and asking curious questions and being told by benevolent experts, well aren’t benevolent and aren’t experts.

So, the discussion has to be had.

We’re talking about consequentialism and I think it’s, it’s timely. We’ll pick it up as well. Cause Vando also brought it up and it’s part of our doctrine, right? We don’t do consequentialism. In other words, the ends don’t justify the means, which for me, coming back to the ‘war of choice’ piece is also a huge issue because that is pure consequentialist logic.

The reason I bring it up is because it matters in how it cascades down on the operational design, on the operational tempo, right? Because it’s a war of choice.

Absolutely.

When you’re going into a war that is not existential, you then therefore don’t provide the troops with everything they need, or you do the bare minimum to wave the flag, so to speak, and its fire and forget. And that has a cascading downwards impact on the troops actually fighting the war.

Oh without question, if we talk about Afghanistan and our national strategy, it was mismanaged. I think the useful reflections that have been coming out of the report to the Deputy Prime Minister by the Oversight Committee, while I have much criticism of Brereton let’s look at what happened and the Oversight Committee report by Dr Vivienne Thom, AM, that sledged Brereton and discounted his accountability.

They made some useful points about the mismanagement, the command and control, the way the government approached the mission, the alliance management versus nation building, and the partnering with the corrupt Afghan force that was, well, we know what happened. So yeah, we got it wrong on every level at many levels, but the tactical operators were the consequences. They’re the ones who carried the burden, have been blamed for the outcomes.

And have been denigrated and demonised and damaged in generations of soldiers, you know, betrayed. Where the focus of the upstream mismanagement is only really slowly coming about. I mean, so I’d like to unpack that in some detail. It’s hard to get your arms around it when you lift it, but I’m with you mate, it’s time to pull this apart. What the hell? Because the important lessons haven’t been learned. The institutional takeaways remain unresolved. I’m with Vando. That hand waved in terms of inside the ADF. And if you want to pull that apart we can.

Yeah, I do. And we’ll get to it. I just want to stay on that kind of moral compass piece, because when we first talked about this episode last week, you brought up a really interesting point. And that’s the fact that we’re doing this at the back end of the Bondi terrorist attack. And it was one incident that you rightly pointed out that speaks to how quickly the moral compass adjusts to the environment that you’re in. And I’d like to invite you maybe mention that anecdote because I think it’s really, really relevant.

Yeah, well it’s a really tricky one and I’m very cautious of not making any judgments here but it reflects important issues. We saw the head stomping on the dead terrorist and the outrage and that in the moment by that civilian and the subsequent interviews how he felt and it was reflective of the horror and the outrage of what had occurred and in many ways there was a degree of empathy and a sense of, well…there hasn’t been any cause for him to be charged or to have been you know subsequently vilified for his actions. Albeit they were inappropriate and you know reprehensible in a certain context, but we all know what happened and we can see it. Now fast forward that to a soldier who’s exposed to that and is there with your flag of your country on your behalf that is the same feeling. The human behind; that humanistic aspect.

And how come society has reacted the way it has? Well, there’s a story there to be told. Society’s going, yeah, we get it. We don’t understand it, we get it. We’re not going to go after that individual because we would’ve probably have done the same thing.

That’s the rupturing and the misalignment and the deception and the damage that happens to the human in the middle of it. We have to talk about Bondi, but bang, saw it in the coppers and the bravery and what happened there, oh my goodness. Go back to Afghanistan after eight years of combat, that was our day job, every day.

Yeah. And that was the point I wanted to make. I don’t want to draw a correlation between that individual and our soldiers, right? As we just talked about, our soldiers are well-trained. Yeah.

No. No, I got so triggered, I saw that guy along the bridge, I just went straight into Kabul, high-profile, looking for, yeah, so, yeah, that’s the sort, and to be then cast, retrospectively, and demonised by that? Well, yeah, let’s just pull that apart and go, how did that happen? And why would our leadership do that to us?

Yeah. So, my question to you then as a one star and I’ve said it on the podcast kind of half-jokingly many times that, know, 06 and below is values and One Star and above is interests. Right. I think you’re a standout in that because you constantly and everywhere I’ve heard you speak and from knowing you personally, it’s always about the martial values. It’s about values, about staying true to yourself.

How is it possible that our senior leaders didn’t understand that this gradual degradation, or as Vando put it, the frog in boiling water, was happening? And it wasn’t happening only to our special forces; it was happening to others. I mean, I know our own HUMINTers who felt kind of the similar detachment from their moral compass, because it was about going and getting jackpots basically, but ultimately getting insurgents removed from the battle space. How did they not and should they have known?

Well, a great question and I don’t have a satisfactory answer. And upfront, just to make sure that the audience knows, I could have done better in Afghanistan, and I made mistakes that I regret in terms of my competence and performance. So just want to own that. I didn’t get it all right and I’m not in position to, know, sneeringly shit-can everyone. I just need to own my own accountability and then I can feel the prerogative to fire a few shots across the bow which I’ve done in other forums, as you’ve said. And my journey I think I was gifted by coming up through a system where I was shown the values and the sort of leadership in practice that I sought to emulate so I was simply a product of the institution, of great leaders. So yeah, there’s no credit to the number seven rifleman at Singleton. I became the martial product I was because of the Army and the special forces, and I tried hard and did some work.

But how did that get so wrong in Afghanistan? Internally and down in, we could have done better, and we were on a hell of a ride ourselves. But there was a failure of strategic oversight, there’s a failure of honest, threshold conversations and then it boils down to what I would regard, without playing the man or the individual, key positions in key appointments, negligent, failed.

Where, you know, they defaulted to the bureaucratic blame down, kiss up. They were elegant and what had got them where they were was, you know, this ability to be clever with their lexicon and say what the minister wanted to hear and craft the bureaucratic position to manage the risk versus this is what the CDF and the Chief of Army need you to hear and you need to make some decisions, minister. We didn’t present those difficult decisions.

We hand waved things, and we never stepped into and owned our operational level accountabilities as an ADF contributor, in my view, and I have some views. So, I can unpack it, but there’s a couple of headlines. But upfront, I didn’t get it right either, and I just need to get that on the record. But then I’m going to go hard, mate, because there were failures, negligence, lack of competence and it boils down to individuals.

Yeah. I appreciate that.

We can get into that, if you want.

We can and we will. I think it’s worthwhile. mean, I guess my question is, my perception is that this was a war to be managed, not led, right? Managed from afar through, you know, Excel spreadsheets, through weekly sit reps, etc. And therefore, as long as it looked neat and clean and fine, you know, and it was outside of the media, everyone’s happy.

That’s what it ended up with, yeah. Sadly, that’s what happened. 2010, 11, 12 when it really the cultural deviation and the wheels fell off. But absolutely, in 01/02, when we started the war, we were carefully managing the messaging to the strategic political, in my view, and I was well positioned to understand that. I worked for General Cosgrove in the Office of the Vice-Chief and saw the levels of briefings going in, and there was a principal staff officer. So, it wasn’t a spreadsheets manage the theatre, national, TK.

That’s not how we got into Afghanistan. That’s not how the war was executed in its early stages. Alliance management, 9-11, countering a global terrorist threat. But as we got into this nation building, NATO management, oh my goodness, others have said it better. We lost alignment. The alliance management became the priority and we…we accepted risks we shouldn’t have. Senior leadership were completely divorced from the operational realities and they were comfortable like that. And the senior leadership and the SOCOMD were fixated down and in and not able to or competent enough to say, we’re really struggling here, we need some help. And yeah, we should have done better. But when we did ask for help, talk to the hand. And I was in Army headquarters as a one star. Again, I get too close to be objective, but my lived experience tells me these things.

Yeah. I mean, that’s an issue when you’re managing a war, right? When it’s a war for optics as opposed to, you know, a for the troops on the ground and ultimately for the mission at hand.

It changed shape. It went so long. It iterated between administrations and governments. We started with Bush and Howard, and we ended up with Rudd and Abbott.

Yeah, yeah. And it went from counter-terrorism. Yeah, yeah. And think it was the loudest unsaid thing for me in Bravery and Betrayal was the admission by two prime ministers that they drank at the ‘Fat Lady’s Arms’. Right.

Well, there we go. Now, what the hell? Yes. I mean, how did we get to a national command posture, risk averse, worried about consequences, covering their ass, as opposed to what do the soldiers need for their wellness?

What does the tradition of our military culture tell us? I mean, they were handing out rum at Gallipoli. We got these bureaucrats telling guys like you and me, what the hell? So how come the prime ministers could see it, but our generals are covering their ass? But that’s what happened. That’s what happened.

They insulted our soldiers. This nanny state arrogance by these bureaucrats. Treated like children.

And that’s issue here then, because what, for me…I just want to make the disclaimer. I’m not arguing against the ‘Fat Ladies Arms’, right? The fact that guys had somewhere to, you know, ventilate and have a break. Absolutely not. What I, what I’m saying is, is if that’s a culture that applies in one end, then that should apply elsewhere. Right. And, and again, to the point that you’re saying treating like children. And of course, yes, these are 17, 18-year-old diggers. You don’t want them to get in on the piss on ops, you know, something will happen.

They’re putting a flag on their shoulder for this country mate.

Exactly. So, there are risk there, serious risks to manage right? But you’re managing the war from above by limiting uh and making it a barracks environment on operations

We had failures of leadership. Failures of leadership mate. Cultural capacity for trust. Truth. Integrity. You know, loyalty, responsibility, obligation. These were handwaved by a bureaucrat who wanted to manage risk. Manage the exposure to the national reputation. Align with other countries’ requirements. Hang on. Sovereign Commander.

That’s why they have statutory appointments because they’re not bound by the political whims or the personalities of the minister. Parliament has to remove these key appointments. That’s why they’re given those privileges so they can stand up and say what the institution needs. We didn’t see that much. I had a brilliant national commander. I rang him and got approval to drink. Because I’m an officer, I’ve got responsibilities. Do the shit that I’m allowed to do. That’s how I got to where I was. But later…

That didn’t occur, they were shut down because someone got on the gas and fucked up. So, they shut the whole thing down because the general didn’t want the risk. That’s what happens, they want to deal with it and they’re gutless because they were grown up and that’s the big meta issue, I’ve talked about this. They mimic this snivelling ass covering because they don’t have the courage to say, no, we’re not going to do that, we’ll take a bit of risk here. Yeah, boss going to me a kick in the ass, but it’s worth it because the right thing was done.

And I’ll get shit-canned but guess what, that’s your job as a junior leader. We had psychofans. And that becomes very hard to do when you’re surrounded by them. It’s easy to say, it’s not easy to do, you know. When your culture is like that, you just gotta fit in line. So, you’re in survival mode.

Yeah, yeah, yeah. And just to emphasize the point, I’m not arguing here for drinking on operations. That’s not what I’m saying. I’m just saying that there’s a huge disparity between the two forces and everybody knew. Everybody knew.

No! No! And I’m not talking about drinking on operations here, I’m talking about martial professional war fighters making decisions about capability and the wells of their men. And what we’re doing there to win the war and come home safe and well and while we’re there do our best work. That’s what I’m arguing about and sometimes you don’t drink to do that and sometimes when it’s right you need to be able to let the guys get some steam off and unpack this traumatic event and if you want to look at what goodness looks like talk about the singing with Moff singing that song. That transcendent sacred moment happens in that circumstance.

Hmm. Yeah. Yeah. That’s a powerful moment.

This is where you get to the canning of purpose through lived experience that synthesizes in what you do. It’s not consequentialism, it’s how you act through virtue. That’s what I did there as the CO. Made the decision. It wasn’t some sort of difficult decision that had to be aligned up. If all national commanders and officers did that, no issue mate. But we didn’t, we had failures of individuals covering their arse. So that’s my view, the system’s fine. It’s weak gutted snivellers who shouldn’t be in command put there and then they hand wave it and let’s get on with it. That’s the problem mate. Now that’s a meta story I don’t have again a satisfactory answer for, but I think that’s what we’re getting to now about the, well, Royal Commission recommendations on cultural reform in the ADF.

And that’s what confuses me. But that’s what I don’t understand. How does that happen? How do we get those people there.

So, we’re there mate. In some regards the new Commission talks about the doctrine and the preparations for the ADF senior leaders, 360 reporting, understanding of the humanistic aspects. So, to great credit the Royal Commissioners identified these catastrophic failures of leadership and have provided options to go forward through the recommendations and many of them in the detail and jumping on this from a great height because I’m in my ACT government role future advocacy, there’s work to be done on the ADF leadership. Development of senior officers, because there’s lots of brilliant officers and great people there, but systemically, we’ve got to get it right. And the Royal Commission said we should, and there’s an oversight body to make sure we do.

One of the things that I didn’t ask, and I just want to round that out with the ‘Fat Lady’s Arms’ and drinking and having two prime ministers declare publicly that they drank I don’t want that point to be missed. this is something that the SASR in particular copped so much blame over this whole kind of culture of drinking, drinking in operations. And that was the media narrative. But now you are completely absolved. In my eyes, you had two prime ministers who without a shadow of a doubt knew that, well, no, you’re not allowed to drink on operations. But because of this management of war, well, it’s okay. You know, as long as no one finds out. All right, we’ll appease and please and give the SAS boys a pat on the back by having a glass or two with them, which to me again, it’s admirable that they did. I’ll give them full credit for admitting that publicly, but in my eyes, it’s a little too late to be entirely honest. And I think again shows the absent-minded management of this war. And I think that to me that came through loud and clear through the doco.

Well, yeah, good insights. it’s interesting when you, there’s many things in the doco that I see as seminal in terms of changing the narrative. Families, the kids of the deceased, the way that the soldiers tell their story. But I think your insights around the top-down political, and you said absolved, it’s interesting you use that term, and I don’t mean to pick it up, but I will. An absolution of a sin or some sort of redemption. And that’s the, there is a language of that that has been crafted by this punitive looking back collective punishment, the demonizing, the scapegoating, the cherry picking, the sensationalized, around the ‘Fat Ladies’ and the alcohol and the toxic masculinity, all of that, the ‘me too’, woke…all that was demonised in the worst drinking out of prosthetic legs just went on a pile on. Yes, I’m with you mate. And that was indicative of a pile on. So it’s funny the doco brings those things up but let’s get down to the detail of drinking. Yeah, that shows to me the lack of courage and truth to power from our senior leadership to the political.

The political will accept, they understand that these people have lived  experience, the national primacy, of course, absolutely essential for morale. Why wouldn’t you at a wake when you’re about to be down range and you’re killing for your country, but you can’t have a couple of beers. Because the generals couldn’t work out how to explain that the martial requirements are like this, and we must protect those. We’re going to take a bit of risk with our reputation, could be a few incidents, but we’ll wear that. Is that okay, Prime Minister? Of course it is. But they didn’t have the guts to say that because they weren’t grown up in a culture of that. And then when they came to it, they didn’t have the moral courage to do their job and represent their men and their women’s interests and say this is really important and push the point. But we didn’t see that happen and we know why. Because senior leaders chose to hand wave it and give what the Minister wanted to hear. Cheerleading advice. So yeah, right. That’s my read back, mate. It shows just how poor the leadership was. And if they can’t do it about drinking, what else? Partner force, credibility in legal action? Yeah, so hopefully that just, you’re right, mate. And it just shows how gutless our senior leaders were in the ADF that they couldn’t own that shit and say, we’re doing this, not asking permission. They asked the minister, well when you send us to war, this is how we’re doing it. Take note, we’re going to crack on. You’ve got a problem with it. Dry your eyes. And the politicians wouldn’t have had it. They wouldn’t have had it. But you got from the Smith and the Scott and all this sneering, woke Canberra, risk model that the army officers have grown up in, they took back to Afghanistan. Because that’s their lived experience and they thought that’s how you run a war and the SAS is going, SOTG is going, no this is bullshit. So, you sort of circle right back that’s what happened mate. You have this clash of micro-cultures because you’ve got war fighters and you’ve got bureaucrats.

How many of our senior officers have combat experience? I know it’s hard to extrapolate, but just based on the patterns.

Generationally, very few. And this cohort, in my lived experience, they didn’t have any. But the good leaders didn’t need to have combat experience. You’ve got trust, you’ve got authenticity, and you’re professionally competent, and you learn through experience. It’s not easy. I think that’s a bit of a get out of jail for them. No, they didn’t grow up in a warrior martial war fighting culture that prioritized their men and their capability over their arse covering. They grew up in this bureaucratic Canberra culture, and they mimic what they saw. Go back to the Royal Commission, why you promote people, who gets to be in key appointments. We had a CDF and a chief army who didn’t serve as a one star. Went over to Prime Minister and Cabinet, came back, that’s just, how do you supplant martial war fighting experience with bureaucratic Barton buffoonery? You can’t but they think it’s the same. And we then had the minister of that CDF, you know, Linda Reynolds. So I’m not going to talk about any of her litigation with Brittany Higgins or anything to do with that. I’m just talking about Linda Reynolds as a minister. I was a brigadier with Linda Reynolds. So, you’ve got people who weren’t prepared, who didn’t do their job, and we suffered from that in my view.

We, being the soldiers, got betrayed because you had this endemic bureaucratic cowardice fracturing and infecting the martial war fighting leadership of the 80s.

But dare I say it, that was the culture. Again, to use that term.

Culture, absolutely. Royal Commission said it, Oversight Committee report said it, and Dan Fortune, DSC and Bar with three tours, and probably the most experienced Special Forces combat officer from Afghanistan. How the hell did I get that title, but I’ll own it to push back at the woke wankery that came out of Canberra. Yeah.

And I think it’s interesting you bring up Linda Reynolds because you, don’t know if, yeah…

Well, I bring up the minister in her appointment and my service with the minister. That’s why I’m bringing it up, Linda. Because you’re accountable for your responsibilities and your failure to be impartial. Yeah, so it’s not to do with your litigation with Brittany Higgins. Just be clear about that, Linda.

Yeah, but I want to I want to circle back to that as we as we get to the IGADF. But I just want to pick up one point that I thought was really, really interesting in the 7.30 report with her last week, where she and again, I don’t want to talk about that case at all. I have no interest in that case that she’s facing, you know, that she got scrutinized over.

Yeah, let’s do that, mate. We’ve got to do that. The irony, or let’s pick up the irony of her response.

Yes, yes, exactly. The fact that, you know, her life was ruined through false accusations and, her livelihood has been ruined and it’s nearly bankrupted her, et cetera, et cetera, et cetera.

To defend her reputation, she felt obliged and unfairly piled on by a political stitch-up. And you know, that’s a very difficult place to be, Linda, and I have great empathy, you should walk a mile in other shoes, because I hope you’re doing okay, But it’s difficult to not think of the Socratic irony of the circumstances that on the 730 report, this is the minister who publicly lectured me with the announcement of the outcomes of the Brereton report about warrior culture.

My failures as a leader. I hadn’t seen any report. And I was a brigadier in the room with Linda. So, we have our own marshal backstory where we can unpack one on one, any time you want Linda. But I know what you were doing in Army headquarters in 2012. And I know who the Deputy Chief of Army was. And impartiality in senior appointments is critical when you want to take medals off people and take executive action to unpack the letters patent to remove my meritorious unit citation. Now while we’re on Brereton, I’m cleared. My tour as CO. no incidents so they didn’t ask me how I just happened to crack that. This is the thing Maz, first up there by the grace of God, but they never asked me what’s the secret champ and my tour was clear.

The only tour ever clear, but I wasn’t asked. I wasn’t asked about culture, I wasn’t asked about SAS leadership, or SAS service. Now I might have some insights you would offer from my somewhat unique journey, but it wasn’t asked. So, these are the questions that I sort of refer back to about, you know, be curious, what are we doing here, where’s the truth, where’s the virtue. So, Linda, yeah, your story on 7.30 was compelling.

But not to me, not to my dead men and my dead men’s parents that you want to take their sons’ medals off them. And there’s no allegations in the Brereton Report, they’re assertions. They don’t meet the state of allegation; they wouldn’t get into court. There’s no rules of evidence in the Brereton Report. He said it, stated it in black and white, not bound by the laws and rules of evidence. But here we are, so.

Back to you mate, save me before I dive down into another one.

No, no, that’s great because I think it’s the irony that you’re picking up on, it shouldn’t be lost on us, right? So, there she was complaining about, you know, her life being destroyed by false accusations, et cetera. And I think we need to extrapolate from that, you know, how many lives have been destroyed and reputations were destroyed because of allegations.

I think it’s fair to ask. Well, when she was the minister, she had obligations of being impartial. She’s got questions to answer. How she managed that impartially? Why she endorsed the recommendations that were refuted by Dutton and never picked up by the government. Let’s talk to the Office of Special Investigation. $300 million. The AFP. But we must pick up Linda’s curious sort of claim for victimhood and there may be some legitimacy to that but the irony or the hypocrisy, the sneering hypocrisy as some view in the veteran’s community is hard to tolerate. I think and I’m trying to be as balanced as I can.

Absolutely. And I think you’re doing a great job. And I definitely want to come back to that because that’s a big piece that I want to talk about. It’s the IGADF separately, but I just want to finish up on the kind of previous lived experience, war fighter stuff, because we touched on the green on blue and what that even looked like in theatre, because you were there. You experienced it. You saw it. I want to touch on that. And then I want to talk about some of the partners that we partnered with who on any other day we would have dropped a bomb on.

So, I’ll leave the floor to you to start where you fit, particularly on the green and blue.

Okay, well again, I’ll try and go big to little. There were many brave and heroic and virtuous Afghans that I work with in theatre that wanted a fair go for their people, equal under the law, women get a crack at the title. So up front, not demonising Afghanistan, but it’s hard for me to be generous to an Islamic state. A culture of misogyny that’s…really difficult for me to accept as something worthy of merit. And there’s elements of the Afghan culture medieval like that. There are partner forces, wow mate, we started back in the day with Afghan National Army. There’s a flag on your Conop, you had to have an Afghan flag on it, had two or three we used to call them Jundi handlers. Because we were going out to fight and the risk to force and the mission was to target the leadership. So, we weren’t into host nation legitimacy. We obviously had that at the high level, but tactically we were trying to get the job done. That morphed into this training assist and legitimately in counterinsurgency you would do that. But it was a dog’s breakfast of partners, and it didn’t align with values and mission priorities. We started the ANA, then we went into the special police, M.K., the provincial police which brought into all the Byzantine centurion long human terrain we have no idea about. So classic lessons of counterinsurgency. But at the strategic level yeah the Afghan National Army was with the US Special Forces the ISAF SOF took the special police, the US National Mission trained you know, the high end, they were just doing their own counter-terrorism with the National Director of Security, CIA, murky as, and their army was training the Afghan National Army. Yeah, was it four brigade 205, 215. Yeah, So from a counter-insurgency campaign, it was utter failure. Despite the great work of all the individuals in the training teams.

Force ratios. Later on I had to take significant risk to Australian force because we were mandated force ratios must be 30 % partner. So, we got ourselves all completely snookered around how we were going to try and train and build this Afghan capability and we failed dismally. And it’s a great tragedy of blood and treasure. But morally and from a values perspective, we abrogated our responsibility to ourselves, to our nation, our soldiers. There were very clear red flags that this was not going well. They were passed up the chain and they were not acted on by the ADF senior leaders. Paedophilia. Man-love Thursday. Boy-love Thursday. It was a common trope. And then when I moved into the senior leadership, the Afghan senior police, it’s in their culture. It’s sickening. I raised it.

And I sadly squared the circle. I regret that as professional soldier, did what I should have done, did what professional soldiers do when you square that circle and you get morally injured. So yeah, that’s the learning, but we got it wrong on so many levels. And then they turned on us and were murdering our men. And the force protection failures at the national level, no one’s ever looked at that. But that happened.

How many Australians were murdered by their partners under Angus Campbell’s tenure in his national command? The most ever. Of any tenure, and he was decorated as NATO ambassador. That’s his military record as a statement of fact. But no one’s talking about that. So, I magic moved a bit, but the partner force was and I lived there, partners, I worked with the Afghans, some individuals, I was on the ground with them all the time in my last trip. I’ve talked stories on other podcasts. I had a huge personal relationship with Afghans, but I sat and lived with them. I had a full PSD. Here’s my best story about the Afghan relationship. I had really good friends, really good, know, know them every day, spent hours with these Afghans. You know what my orders were to my four-man personal security detail of commandos? Every morning? Have a plan to kill everyone I meet including every general that look sideways, you slot them. That’s how we went into these meeting and then I went … so it made me really conflicted really I worried about getting killed by them but I’m trying to work with them and I and take that right down to poor diggers who did get murdered. I talked to, you know, the parents. It’s just…no one’s talking about that and how that happened. But we’ve got people pursuing Australian soldiers now, resources the AFP special operations task force under the OSI.

Yeah. No, but that’s the interesting piece for me is, and again, I’ve talked about it so many times on this podcast, you know, we never fought the war we thought we fought because of that cultural dynamic. And I’m a cross-cultural trainer. That’s what I do. And I always refer back to the words of a very good friend of mine, Arian Verdooren, who’s a cross-cultural trainer. Cultures don’t meet people do. Right?

Which is what you’re referring to right there. When you meet one on one, you build rapport, you recognize the humanity in each of those people. But, you know, social groups have their own dynamics. They do certain things because that is justified in some shape or form within that particular social group. And every social group will have its own cultural idiosyncrasies. And all of them have a reason why they exist. But when they clash, when you don’t understand what’s going on, that uncertainty reduces trust on both sides.

It creates tension, creates friction, especially when you are then betrayed internally, you know, through a green on blue and you have your own soldiers killed.

There’s a lot of wisdom there, mate, a lot of lived experience, there’s much goodness and tapestry of insight, it’s more than knowledge, it’s wisdom and lived experience, and how men and people based on competence and merit go forward to do things better next time. We haven’t done any of that discussion. I’ve re-read the IGADF report the last couple of days, just thinking through what I’d say to you.

It’s absent. It’s absent any of the, know, hand waves the heat of battle. It says three times in there, it says we won’t judge you on the heat of battle. So, the most difficult complex human experience, just hand wave that, pretend it didn’t happen. That didn’t happen, the heat of battle, according to Brereton. And then all those other cultural dynamics, the blue on greens, the moral dilemmas. It was just sort of given this legalistic, barren, antiseptic discounting because it clearly would have set up a whole different way of coming at the issue of what occurred around the rumours that led us to a very appropriate investigation. What the hell? So, I was trying to somehow bring it back, you’re right. All that meta story of human cultural, social, lived, the story of the human world, yeah, but we tried to just package that, it intersected up and got an admin wonk to come in and… the most seminal report of the Longest War and that’s what they did and inside the ADF they gave a two-star the job to do the lessons learned. The minister agreed to that. No systemic, no royal commission, no overarching, what the hell are we doing in Afghanistan? No. And the two-star report was a disgrace. You wouldn’t pass it at staff college. That’s Andrew Hocking’s report.

Yeah. Yeah.

No one’s read it mate, because Angus Campbell, the recommendations are about five lines. You couldn’t read a recommendation without three breaths. It’s weasel word nonsense.

Let’s talk about the IGADF now, because I think it’s the right time.

Yeah, let’s do that.

So, tell me from your lived experience, what was the IGADF and what impact did it have on you and your regiment and your troops and anybody that you’ve known that was affected by it?

Well, again, thanks. It’s a really tricky one to get into, but the best way I’ll try this is top to bottom, and big to little. The Royal Commission, Nick Kaldas and his other commissioners did a brilliant job, and their recommendation was that the IGADF need to do a review because it was subject to perceptions of weaponized injustice.

But that’s the meta story from everybody that’s talked to the Royal Commission, detailed comprehensive advice from the spectrum, not just the disaffected families who have said, and the Royal Commission has synthesized this, distilled it and reflected it back to the government said, weaponized injustice. So, I’m just trying to make sure that’s not lost on the audience. This isn’t Dan Fortune’s, my grievance for others.

This is what the Royal Commission said towards the competence and the reputation of the Inspector General. No confidence it’s independent and that the leadership actually used it to weaponize injustice. So, that the words lexicon are what they mean. They mean what they say. Weaponization means to target a group to destroy them. The SAS collective punishment.

So, that’s sort of the meta takeaway. Discredited. The IGADF report, the Brereton report has been discredited by the Oversight Committee report in 2023 that was set up by the government. One thing, you know, I’ll give Reynolds a tap, a nod for. Dr Vivienne Thom, the chair, red back a comprehensive report and we’ve unpacked that and I’ve talked about this in evidence to the Senate.

So, Brereton, wrong, accountability wrong. You don’t level out accountability at CO and Corporal. It goes to the top. That’s so discredited. Weaponised injustice is discredited and incompetent. You had staff wonks. It’s an administrative inquiry.

But then you get into the recommendations, the arrogance. And the utter arrogance and the wrong-headed cowardice of going for a collective punishment to remove my MUC. It stands as a testimony to the betrayal, in of itself, with nothing else, disgraceful, incompetent, cowardly act. The removing of distinguished service, vandalising the honours and awards system. Before they did that, they had to get the letters put. There’s no mechanisms to withdraw MUC.

So executive action was taken upstream. The individuals who conducted it, I’ve had anecdotal evidence, soldiers I know, interviewed, hectored, can’t imagine a field grade officer shouting at you and you’re a corporal, shouting at you and showing you photos, traumatic photos of dead men.

And just shouting at you and threatening you with further punitive pejorative action. That’s what was the IGADF experience. That’s illegal. It’s an abuse of power. It’s a complete breach of procedural things. Stitched up in an admin inquiry that was wrong-headed.

Utterly rejected, I’ve said it on the doco. And I stand, and it’s a testimony to the incompetence and the disgrace of betrayal by the decision maker, which was Campbell and Reynolds. Brereton is just a lawyer. He might be a very great judge and judicial authority of some renounce. He’s a two-star muppet, who wouldn’t have a clue, and he doesn’t read me my future. No way, Brereton. And he interviewed me, mate, we can talk about his interview with me if you want.

Yeah, go on.

It was amateur hour, undergraduate, Barton woke wankery, mate. It’s as simple as that.

As in the context was all wrong or the questions were wrong or the approach was wrong or what was wrong?

Well, the outcomes, the way into it, where did we get to in the IGADF? I’ve got the book here, so I’m again going big to little. Rumours were raised and it was absolutely appropriate we do a formal inquiry into rumours to identify criminal action. First up, absolutely as Brett has said, no question. Then you’ve got to work out, well, they could have gone to the federal police. This is a complex, going to go, you know, there’s a lot of, well, the Brits did an independent judicial inquiry.

We didn’t, we did an internal administrative inquiry within the ADF. So yeah, wrong-headed, utterly the wrong way. And the findings haven’t stood up to due process. All these compelling, what was the word they used, ‘very credible evidence’? Well, there’s no evidence. It was supposition and the officer special investigator has turned up one charge. So anyway you look at this from a consequential outcome.

Show me the money, KPI, where’s the outcomes? This isn’t a cold case that they were handed, difficult cases. Everything was given to the Office of Special Investigator. Four years later, most of the charges have been dismissed, we understand. Let’s talk about how we got to Brereton through the redemption program and the then Chief of Army directing that, and the language in the report is that the Chief of Army invited, SOCAUST invited the officer, everyone in SOCOMD to write him a letter. That’s not true, it was coerced. It’s an abuse of power.

What’s the program just for those who don’t know.

Well, that redemption was a letter writing program. It’s so curious, it’s hard to get your head around it. My understanding is that the then SOCAUST, the Special Operations Commander, when Angus Campbell was the Chief Army, as these rumours were emerging, and Samantha Crompvoets, the civilian feminist sociologist, there’s a question why she was involved, but she was, these rumours were emerging in the media pile-on and things were occurring.

And Jeff Sengelman directed, or invited, everyone to write to him about what happened in Afghanistan. Tell me what went down. He walked into my office and asked me, that’s an utter abuse of power betrayal, totally illegal action. Write me a letter about what you did in Afghanistan. Can you imagine that? What leadership principle?

Any corporate director did that, they’d go to jail. That’s what happens.

What was the intent behind it? The stated intent?

I don’t know, come to declare, to get things off your chest, you know, to feel a redemption, to…

All right. Right. Yeah. So, the cleansing of the soul.

It’s hard for me to be not flippant, come to Jesus, come to confess a redemption. It sounds like a sociologist, half-assed, academic dumb idea that he’s heard from his bunch of advisors. Remember, we got a civilian female sociologist to come in and write the Crompvoets report that was based on rumours. She didn’t interview anyone in the regiment. That report’s been highly criticized for having no anecdotal, no corroborating, no one available. Anecdotal said that what they said led to rumours, IGADF…

Mismanaged mate, and the outcomes demonstrate that now.

How do we heal the force Dan, given what’s happened and given what Vando said about the exodus from SASR in particular, but look, without a shadow of a doubt, it’s had a much, much bigger impact on the force writ large, right? And I’ll put myself in this, not just because of Brereton, of course that’s one side, but from my own experiences and some of the things that I haven’t yet digested properly. If somebody asked me, would you want your kid to join the Army today? I’d be a little bit reluctant. I don’t know. I wouldn’t be as wanting to promote them to go and do that as I would have been, you know, 10, 15 years ago.

It’s a great question, and I guess to some extent we’ve been prosecuting the crime scene and re-litigating old issues. But I’m reinforcing to highlight the injustice and to answer your questions. Give you lived experience of betrayal. So, betrayal to me, redemption program. Write me a letter. What a disgraceful, cleared by Brereton, twice decorated, I’m going to keep saying that, and I’m treated like that. Then we can go to his interview with me. The disgraceful hand wave and the findings and the report stand alone.

And we need to do that.

The provost marshal’s report they didn’t talk about. The Pacoolar incident where the director of military prosecutions charged commandos. So, the leading that the path to Brereton shows the litany of the other the walk the race to the bottom in my view and that and that were the failures of the mismanagement versus the purposeful trustful leadership that’s authentic and based on virtue you had this…

It shows the management, the management of the war.

…bureaucratic mismanagement, race to the bottom, narcissistic, resentful, hedonistic, cowardly, man-child. And you get a few of those lined up and that’s the other side of story. And then they’re both valid, right? So how do we heal? And that’s the important thing. And I think we are healing and we’re going forward. And the doco is part of an artifact that showed that. And I think Vando’s brilliant articulation of the dearth of the exodus of the regiment.

They’re rebuilding, you never can get over that loss of combat capability, but the unit’s in great shape. There’s no concerns with the SAS’s health, in my humble opinion. I have the privilege to know the commanding officer, from an insight, albeit snapshot, they’re brilliant, better than we ever were and doing great work. But how do we heal? We’ve got to continue to reflect and learn the lessons, and that’s important so we can be better next time. I think in many ways the Royal Commission and the systemic now understanding that there was catastrophic leadership failures and what that means now intergenerationally and the impact on moral trauma and the veteran community reimagining itself to say no we’re not copping this. And there’s been a growth and a healing and many words have come out stronger and we get to tell a story that’s an uplifting story but it highlights the eternal sacrifice of the families.

We talked about enduring truth that we, know, truth worth believing is worth defending, recognition. I think it was a great place to explore maybe just if you’ve got time. Down the recognition path because there’s healing there. And that, you know, I’m on record in the Senate. And look at the mismanagement of recognition within the department. And there’s an opportunity now for veterans to own that and take it forward. So, I think the healing is in the work to be done. It’s the celebration of what we did was that we did our best and there’s much to be proud of. And somehow get out of that grievance retribution style which I’m very comfortable in shooting from the hip but there’s no goodness in that. You sort of somehow have to get into the resurrection and the redemption. So that’s the answer. How do you do it? Day at a time and focus on things like people like Vando and the doco story and this podcast and I think challenging, maybe widening the gaze of those who just aren’t interested. You said it before, it’s a pretty narrow group here, but I believe people have started to, know, the Bondi social issues, widened their gaze now. In some ways, we’re pivoting back to eternal truths.

I think that’s great. I mean, because I think the review, the Afghan review for me is still outstanding. To me, that is still an unfinished business, right? Just even in this podcast, we’ve covered a bunch of things that aren’t covered in it. Right. Our longest war. You know, we don’t talk about as we talked about culture, right. The ecosystems that you deploy into.

And we’ve got the Deputy Chief of Army trying to do it on his professional Cove podcast, but look what’s coming there. Maybe that’s a pivot into why are we there now and why haven’t we learned this and talking about what we should be doing. We’re do you want to pick that up?

Yeah, yeah. Well, well, but also that podcast to me, look, I appreciate the effort. I appreciate the effort, but it’s look, it’s just, it’s shallow and it, and it rounds it out as, you know, commanders were so far away, you know, should they be held accountable? That to me, when it lands there, to me, that misses the entire kind of important piece of how we fought that war. You know, that’s a lesson learned. We shouldn’t be that far apart.

Well, I’ll point at the man here.

You need to have commanders on the ground, owning the battle space, directing the battle space, feeling and living the battle space. You need to have, you know, yes, we’ve got gender advisors, but we should, we need to have people who understand culture, who understand the language, right? Gender falls under that. Sure. Under culture, right? I’ll go that far. No problem. There are genuine gender differences and issues that we should consider, but culture as an ecosystem, which is what is normal for this particular social group.

We had no idea. I was an intelligence officer there and I’ve broadly mentioned my background. I was in the best position to have some understanding of the cultural dynamics given my background, but I had no idea. How do I expect diggers on the ground to understand how to deal with this kind of intricate ecosystem that they’re swimming in where they can either be part of the solution or part of a problem. But if you don’t know what you’re swimming in, chances are you’re gonna be part of a problem, not part of the solution.

Well, a lot in that and you’re right. And I’ll come back to the start where you started with, and I pointed this there. And again, it’s a risk of playing the man. I with you, the Deputy Chief Army and the COVE, the professional development website, to have a threshold discussion around really important command accountability, really important. Me too, I get to have robust, but if you’re gonna do that, have robust discussions and don’t get senior officers in there.

And I’m all for that. I support the COVE, right? I really do. I think it’s a really useful platform. But the thing is, this is the pattern. You don’t have a captain, a young captain, question a two-star general. I mean, it’s not going to happen, right?

And then we saw what happened on the socials on that because it damages the Chief. Well, okay, it’s competence and it’s conduct and its character. And this is where the lessons haven’t been learned because it highlights a cohort of the senior leaders who believe, quote, there’s ‘some unrest’ in the veteran’s community. That sort of weasel word, DEI language when the oversight committee that I’ve referred to said words like ‘bitter resentment’. So, he’s repackaging the words. He doesn’t get that prerogative. He’s there as the deputy chief of army. He’s got an obligation to represent the institution, but he’s conflicting that with his personal. And he doesn’t get that prerogative when he’s doing a podcast, because he’s not there as him, he’s there as the institution. He is not good enough to carry it off. And those individual damages himself and the institution.

So, I’m with you. Get real and get some NCOs in there. Same individual talked about warrior culture. That’s the problem. You’ve got sycophants and DEI technocrats who were raised up under the culture of ipso facto, the technocrat bureaucrat. We’ve got to break that and reform and get back to our martial war fighting.

You separate the scholars and the warriors, you get your fighting done by fools and your thinking done by cowards, mate. We’ve separated our warriors and our scholars. You’ve got this technocratic cohort of Canberra Rupertville who write these academic papers, but they don’t talk to their soldiers. They don’t talk to their diggers. The diggers don’t want to deal with it. They’re afraid, to some extent, it’s the ego defence. Now, and I’m generalising a lot because there’s a lot of brilliant officers. Better than ever I was. And I’m a huge fan. Best role models I have Chris Appleton, Hans Fleer, Commissioned Officers you know. My god! Superstars! But the current pretenders, I’m calling them out mate they’re just not good enough. Raise the bar. It’s too important.

These plaques back there that enlistment the one up there yeah yeah no not copping it I’ve got some I’ve got some backstory here and this platform is important so people like you and I with some, others might say, some competence or at least legitimacy. Calling out the institutions, too important that we just tolerate this mediocrity and this faddishness. No, no, no, no, not good enough. Hold up what good looks like and stay with it. It’s the recognition principle. Same army that supports the distinct, undermining the prestige in action. All the lessons from Ukraine. Proximity, being seen sharing danger means a lot. You trust, coming back to where you are. That’s what we, that’s you fight and die for.

So maybe pivot into what’s the growth? Some of it’s our principles and some of it’s being smart enough to know we didn’t do it well.

It’s important to pick up the lesson for the people that we sent to fight. It’s also important to the people that are going to be affected by our fight. It’s important for history, for how we’re going to be remembered in a place and also how we’re going to remember a place. It’s important for the future war that we fight. It’s important for who we want to be as a nation and as a war fighting force. All of that.

This is a metaphor of who we see at the War Memorial. You talked about, would you join up? I’ve been asked this question. I’ve had the chance to give about 30, 40 screenings from Townsville to Tasmania, the doco in its early road show versions. The sort of Alby Mangles, huge thrill to be sort of the third wheel to this. And the question always came, what would you do to join up? I would offer my answer to that and the unanimous answer from all the guys in the doco.

Look, join up and go on your quest. And of course, join the ADF now. And you wouldn’t want to deprive anyone that sense of adventure that you felt. And we had at that ADFA, that RMC, you know, the formative experience. It’s made you who you are in many ways. And you wouldn’t want to deprive anyone of that chance to be the next best self, right? And that’s our answer. However, break, I think there’s, to the parent and to the older, more cynical, cautious Australian, I think there’s an obligation to hold our senior leaders far more accountable and that’s our message to our politicians. The institutional leadership got a hand wave. Make them do what their responsibilities and obligations are and hold them accountable. And if we look at a systemic intolerance and remarkable contradiction, we’ve got the current NATO ambassador who’s described as a disgraced and failed CDF. How? Because of the Canberra club mate. It’s the cartel of the Canberra, DFAT, Miles, it’s the mates and no one believes it. And look what’s happening now with the revulsion and rejection of our national leadership because Aussies won’t cop it, we won’t tolerate it. It’s not who we are. So, there’s a lot in that, but you synthesize it back to where we are now. We’re calling it out.

And there’s a meta story that adds up and because we’re onto something like we’re onto it. It’s important. So recognition, we maybe finish with that or I don’t know how you’re going for time.

I agree. Yeah, yeah, I’ve got one other question I want to ask you.

Yeah, well you go and then I just because that’s something live and active.

And I think it’s an important one. And I just want to ask you from your experience and everything you’ve done, what wasn’t said in the documentary that you think still needs to be said?

Yeah, well and thanks for that because I know that there’d be a view that I think the magic of the doco is balance and we would never have gotten in the room.

Yeah. And it’s tailored for an audience and it’s done brilliantly. It hooks you emotionally, carries you emotionally, and then hits you with the truth, which I love. So from a producer perspective, amazing, Amazing.

Yeah, but I accept it’s a bit soft around the edges in terms of some the hard edge stuff that you want to go. I would have preferred to go hard and many of the guys wanted to go harder about pointed accountabilities and sort of putting people on the stand and having a go at them. And I accept that that’s a legitimate view from some within the Army and within the regiment still. And we’ve had to balance that so I owe it to the organisation and the people who put the doco together. We’ve got some arse we left with Parliament. So, what we want to do is have the Office of Special Investigator accountable and bring this to a conclusion and demonstrate that this, so we can move forward. Now there’s a range of reasons about, look at the simple resourcing and what doesn’t, I think Whitey said, it doesn’t pass the pub test. It utterly is, it’s a disgrace now that anyone would resource the AFP to do that work when there’s far more important issues to be done. I’ll leave it at that.

But what shouldn’t be done? Accountability in the ADF. The failures of senior generals when the issues occurred to counter and stand up for their soldiers, to shut down the ABC sensationalised reporting, to very quickly support the families and the men and women who fought the war and allow them to heal and get support while there was due process. We were abandoned. I had a two-star officer come and tell me to write him a letter. I was vilified publicly in the press by the minister, named and shamed while I hadn’t known I’d been cleared. I’d been cleared by the report. No one told me I’d been cleared until I read it. What’s on my tour?

I’m more into the, the, a further review within the ADF of the lessons learned. We didn’t nail that. Now, somewhat it’s overtaken by events and, and there’s much goodness going forward in the Army, in the ADF now. But that indignation of what’s been lost and the recognition that we shouldn’t do this way and calling out that was wrong. So apology, yeah, should be formal.

Revocation, revoke the findings that talk about removing distinguished service awards, that limit accountability. They were unfounded assertions. If you read the report now, it makes magic moves. You know the collective punishment paragraphs about five lines? That’s all that I was offered in the whole, to take an MUC off, about two paragraphs. It’s a breathtakingly sense of arrogance. Any inquiry officer over the war in Afghanistan

And I read this line so I could remember it. Consciously or unconsciously, we’re trying to refute the claims. That’s what the inquiry, Brereton said. So, he could read the minds of every inquiry officer and said, no, they all got it wrong. Everyone got it wrong, but he was right. So, yeah, mate.

It’s interesting about the meritorious unit citation piece. I remember when that happened, I was still in at the time and having discussions around the table with the mess about this.

I had a reflexive reaction.

Yeah, what I was saying to my peers at the time is if you’re to take any medal, let’s take all of ours, right? All of us. I’ll give you my Afghan medal now, right? If that’s if because we’re all part of it. Right.

If Angus Campbell had said, I’m resigning and every senior officer above the rank of 06 is gone, I would have copped it. I would have liked it. But yeah, because actually, I’m with you, mate. So, without getting into the deep dive of the medals, how do you withdraw recognition? Come on Australia, there’s a book called Terrence McSharrie here and he’s here. Yeah, this book. Come on Australia, one of the greatest commanders of the AIF.

Those guys set the legacy of recognition and decoration. That’s who built the War Memorial, their ethos, their standards. To have that vandalised, our national recognition system by the Ministry of Two Star staff wonk that is a disgraceful institutional negligent action that should be held as, we don’t do it like this. But we haven’t done that, we sort of hand-waved it.

So that’s what I think is where the work should continue in the doco. But you can argue you’re a single-issue zealot and where’s the goodness in looking back? So, it’s a pivot to what’s forward that we can help the next generation be better. And I think recognition and the work there; it gives us real opportunity. And the fiasco of the most recent fumbles on top of the injustices from Afghanistan, this is something that I want to carry forward and continue to advocate for.

And I’ll give you full credit for that because one of my, my fear is that the documentary is amazing, but at this point it’s still behind the paywall, which I, which I hate. It should be publicly; it should be available. The broadcasters should get it. should be. Yeah. Yeah. I mean, it should be the whole nation should see it because right now, unfortunately it’s still, you know, the interested. bystander that it’s going to go and pay to watch it. Right. And it’s a small, relatively small pool as much as it’s broadened the lens.

It’s still a narratively narrow pool of people who are somehow affected by service or service men and women who will then go and find it. It should be on for free at night on ABC on seven or nine or whoever. So that we have this discussion. My worry is that it’s an amazing documentary, but it’s going to get overtaken by events, by real life. And we’re not going to reflect. We’re not going to institute change. We’re not going to have this kind of redemption that you talked about.

And it’s just going to be lessons lost. And we’ll just go into the next war.

Well, there’s always a risk to that. You’re right, mate. And to some extent, yeah, I think that’s the way the world is, without being overly cynical or glad-handing you really good insight. So by responses, yeah, this becomes a canon of work, a platform to get into the room, to maintain the dialogue, to have the conversations that shift. For example, it gives me a platform now to continue to maybe motivate to do other similar storytelling. It’s a storytelling journey and it’s the Anzac story being retold. You know, I grew up under the Dam Busters and the Guns of Navarone and those movies, you ideated. There’s an appetite I’m hearing from Simon, the producer, in the middle Australia, as he calls it, where the doco is getting traction, albeit there’s distribution’s a challenge. But there is a, it’s resonating with middle Australia. And spoiler alert, Free to Air is coming in the new year.

Wonderful, great, great. Wonderful news, wonderful news. Yeah, wonderful news.

So, I’m with you. But the doco’s one, it’s just one of itself. And I think like the canon, the body of work, more stories, the storytelling this. So yeah, I think that the public’s now starting to reflect and has got an appetite for the virtue and the heroism and the bravery and the goodness of what the nation was doing there, standing up for women injustice and trying to give everyone a fair go. That’s why we went there. And it’s important we should keep reminding ourselves.

No, at the individual level, at the individual level, absolutely, 100%. And that needs to be recognized. Yeah.

We’re there, albeit we’ve fumbled and it’s not the first time the nation’s fumbled. So that’s the counter-reformation, you know, counter-reformation and I think like I said in the doco, that’s where we’re heading but there’s some threads to coalesce around. You need to scaffold that, right? You need to build the framework so that that goodness can grow up onto. That’s my ideation and so there’s work to be done. It’s re-energized the community around the Special Forces. It’s re-energized our connections. The guys have grown out of it and have taken things forward in other related projects and the families are connected and I think it gives families and the wives and the dogs you know so there’s so much of that that it will become a seminal genesis of other things, but I think it’s a bit of a shift in the storytelling of the nation.

Yeah. And I think also there’s another aspect that. One of the challenges of the kind of special forces intelligence world in particular is you live behind this curtain, right? And everything’s on a need-to-know basis. You’re a clearance holder, et cetera. Right. But it’s never really that clear to anyone. Well, I mean, of course there are some things that, you know, you can’t talk about, but the further you get out, the line gets blurry. So, the tendency myself included is, well, I actually don’t know if I can on cannot talk about this, so I won’t talk about it. And that’s part of the culture of the special forces intelligence community for the right reasons. But that culture also keeps too much behind the curtain, things that should be out in the public, right? And I think it’s really, really important that we now have operators, you know, who are clearance holders, who were doing some sensitive stuff, talking about it within the scope of what they can talk about. But that aperture is now widening and it should be, because I know myself, you know it took me forever to admit even on the podcast that I was an intelligence officer let alone that I was a human intelligence officer

So, the doco has unmasked some of that and it’s given voice to others. And you’re right, it is countercultural. But I think it’s also more discerning because sadly, there has been some high-profile sort of random special forces stuff that’s been less credible. Let’s just say that. I’m generalising. But, you know, what the official history come out with Rhys Crawley that tells the details. So, in the Afghan SOTG, yeah, and we’re talking about a spot up project about whether SOTG, you know, my story because of Rady, Reginald Roy Rady, of the greatest raid. We’ve seen the book about Tisak, most recently. look I won’t comment on it, but there’s a book coming out about a battle and the narrative shifting around, there’s much focus on the valour of the soldiers in the battle although it’s a bit sort of beret coloured one might say. Whereas we want to build up the stories from the senior leaders who say well we did this job and we did it together and gee, but then guys involved in it might not be as cautious.

So, I’m with you, it is counter cultural. I’m more on the side of telling the story, and maybe that’s my personal bias too. And I’m in a position by myself with that unique lived journey to be able to illuminate things. And I’ve been overwhelmed with the feedback because you can make it real for someone who can’t quite make it real for themselves. And that’s just a gift, that’s a blessing and there’s an appetite for that. And I’ll try to fill that space because it’s a goodness. It’s not about, it’s only because the questions need to be continually asked, you know. And then I get into the, shine the light for others so you can see in the room.

Absolutely. It’s about being better. On that note, Dan, well, we’ve taken it well past our original kind of intention. I just want to, well, firstly, I want to say big thank you for everything you’ve done so far in speaking about both the documentary, but your lived experience. I want to thank you on behalf of my class for the impact you had on us, you know, back in 2007, because you were a key shaping influence on the officers we became.

And finally, I want to thank you for your service to this great nation and everything you’ve done and everything you keep doing over the, think it was 40 years of service. You know, you’ve done SAS selection three times. You are one of the most decorated…

What’s going on there?

Well, there’s a story there, but…

Watch me walk around, mate, you can tell.

Yeah, that big limp, that big limp gives it away. But no, on a serious note, I respect hugely what you’ve done.

The price you’ve paid personally is not insignificant, and the scars you carry are not insignificant. But I thank you very much for your moral courage as a one star to stand up and speak truth to power as it should be. And I really, really hope that it does have the effect that it ought to have on the institution, on the nation, and on the people who love it. So, thank you very much then. Really, really appreciate it.

Good on you Maz, and I right back at you mate, huge privilege to be part of this. Wonderful to be part of doco and to represent on your platform and join guys who I have huge respect for. And you; and huge thrill mate so thank you and to all the listeners and audience, I just hope there’s something useful in this for you.

I’m sure there is. Thanks, Dan. We’ll be in touch.