EDITORIAL: Angus Campbell’s plum posting a betrayal of diggers

When Angus Campbell stepped down as Australian Defence Force chief in July, morale among members was at its lowest ebb in decades.

A trust crisis had spread like a cancer during General Campbell’s six years at the helm.

Allegations of war crimes made against the ADF’s most elite soldiers had tarnished the force’s reputation.

Maj-Gen. Paul Brereton’s bombshell 2020 report found “credible information” that current or former personnel were involved in 39 unlawful killings of civilians or prisoners in Afghanistan between 2005 and 2016.

General Campbell called those allegations “the most serious breaches of military conduct and professional values”.

“It’s my duty and that of my fellow chiefs to set things right. ­Accountability rests with those who allegedly broke the law and with the chain-of-command responsible for the systemic failures, which enabled alleged breaches to occur and go undetected,” he said at the time.

“Setting things right” included a move by General Campbell to strip the unit of its meritorious citation, meaning 3000 soldiers would have to hand back medals received for their service under the toughest of conditions.

That move, sensibly, was shut down by then-defence minister Peter Dutton.

Instead, medals were eventually stripped from a small group of troop, squadron and task group commanders found by Maj-Gen. Brereton to “bear moral command responsibility and accountability for what happened under their command and control”.

That group didn’t include the man who was ultimately in charge of the unit’s operation — General Campbell, whose role as Commander of Joint Task Force 633 in 2011 meant he was responsible for Australia’s Middle East operations in 2011.

Instead, that indignity was borne a handful of lower-ranked Diggers — despite the fact that no Australian has been found guilty of a crime.

Then came the Royal Commission into Defence and Veteran Suicide, which heard disturbing evidence about the deaths of at least 1677 servicemen and women who took their own lives between 1997 and 2021. The true suicide toll is now estimated to be about twice that.

Handing down his final report in September after three years of harrowing testimony, Royal Commissioner Nick Kaldas said veterans had endured “a catastrophic failure of leadership at all levels to prioritise the health and wellbeing” of servicemen and women.

It’s little wonder that the force has been haemorrhaging personnel for years. Not even generous retention bonuses have been enough to entice burnt-out and underappreciated soldiers, sailors and aviators to stick around, meaning the force remains thousands of troops below strength.

And yet, for all of these failures, General Campbell has been rewarded with a plum diplomatic posting as Australia’s ambassador to the EU, NATO, Belgium and Luxembourg.

It’s a kick in the guts to the many thousands of ADF personnel who served under his leadership.

Yet again, it’s they who suffer, while those at the top get away scot-free.