Muddy boots ...

Last month, Prime Minister John Howard officiated at the launch of Peter Cosgrove’s biography, My Story.

As most Australians know, Peter Cosgrove is the former Chief of the Australian Defence Force, who retired last year, after a military career spanning 40 years.

There can be no argument with the fact that Peter Cosgrove was an outstanding Australian soldier. He was brave, professional and popular: a Duntroon graduate; recipient of the Military Cross in Vietnam in 1969. Cosgrove was appointed as Commander of the Interfet peacekeeping force in East Timor in 1999, subsequently became Chief of the Australian Army and was ultimately promoted to the role of Defence Force Chief in 2002.

According to Harper Collins Publishers Australia, his publisher:

“General Cosgrove is not a man who flinches from telling it how it was. In these highly anticipated memoirs, the former Australian of the Year looks back over his respected and decorated military career with wit and warmth on top of the steel that made him one of Australia's most popular and widely recognised military leaders … the General cemented his reputation as a modern-day warrior chieftain as he displayed those characteristics we value most as Australians - strength, determination, intelligence, compassion and humour.”

John Howard’s adulation was no less fulsome:

“There is no doubt, of course, that Peter Cosgrove's finest hour was the successful Interfet intervention in East Timor. This was, after all, Australia's largest military involvement by far since Vietnam. And it is easy now with the distance of time to feel as though there was never any real challenge and that it was all inevitably going to happen as it ultimately did. Of course that was never the case and the fact that it proved to be a superbly successful intervention was greatly to the credit of General Cosgrove and, of course, greatly to the credit again of the superb training that our young officers received.”

And still on East Timor, Howard said:

“It was a superbly successful operation, it was an operation that had the overwhelming support of the Australian people and it's an operation which reflected the best qualities in the modern Australian Defence Force, a mixture of military skill and commonsense and compassion and an understanding that winning the hearts and minds of people in those situations is just as important as maintaining the peace and winning the military conflict.”

In the face of such praise, the success of Peter Cosgrove’s book is doubtless guaranteed.

And that’s not all. Having made a smooth transition from the military to the corporate world as a Director of Qantas, Peter Cosgrove has also been mooted as a possible future Governor-General.

Unfortunately there remains a potential blemish to this dazzling success story that will simply not go away: unresolved allegations of torture and possible murder by members of the Australian Army in East Timor in 1999.

Correspondence with the Prime Minister, the former Defence Minister, Robert Hill, as well as Generals Cosgrove and Leahy, over the past two and a half years, has elicited repeated assurances that such serious allegations remain under investigation, even though it is now seven years since the alleged incidents occurred.

A year ago this week, I wrote a background piece on these allegations called In search of Yani Ndun, wherein I detailed the failure of the Howard Government, the then Minister for Defence, Robert Hill, the Defence establishment and the Australian Army to effectively address the allegations.

In March of this year, following his appointment as Minister for Defence, I wrote to Dr Brendan Nelson, asking him to confirm the status of the investigations.

Last month I received a reply to my most recent inquiry to Dr Brendan Nelson, from his Principal Adviser, Aldo Borgu, informing me, “The matters you have raised are currently being examined, and I will write to you again when I have further information”.

Over the course of the past seven years, Peter Cosgrove rose from the Commander of Interfet forces in East Timor to Chief of the Australian Army and then to Chief of the Australian Defence Force, before retiring from active service last year. Since then he has written a book on his life and launched a second successful career in the corporate world.

For the past three years, Australia has participated in a war against Iraq; a war that gave us, among other things, the obscene experience of Abu Ghraib.

When interviewed by Andrew Denton on the ABC’s Enough Rope in August last year, Peter Cosgrove was invited to share his thoughts on Abu Ghraib …

PETER COSGROVE: Yep. Ah … Abu Ghraib was a real, that was a low point, a low point. I think THE low point is the men and women who lost their lives in the Sea King tragedy. But a low point was the Abu Ghraib thing. I couldn't believe that … an element of the US armed forces would be involved in an improper way like that looking after detainees. I can understand that you don't … mollycoddle people who are detained for one reason or another. But that's light years away from maltreating them. And simply, as that emerged … it sent ripples … through all of the US armed forces, through the United States, through the whole alliance and understandably here in Australia. And … to that degree we were surprised, caught by surprise.

ANDREW DENTON: In war, is torture a legitimate …

PETER COSGROVE: No, absolutely not.

ANDREW DENTON: Never?

PETER COSGROVE: No, you don't descend to that level. You've lost if you maltreat people. Whatever we do, whatever we gain from people, we've got to do so in a way which leaves our morality, our integrity, intact.

How is it then that the US Government managed to investigate Abu Ghraib and charge and convict some members of its Armed Forces for the torture of detainees, while similar, much older allegations against members of the Australian Army are still being “examined”?

The failure of the Howard Government to energetically and openly investigate the sordid allegations against members of the ADF is hardly surprising, given its track record.

Sadly however, that failure can only add credence to the allegations, while further damaging the reputation and credibility of the ADF, its past and present leadership, the Defence establishment and Australia’s international reputation.

Harper Collins claims that Peter Cosgrove has displayed characteristics that “we value most as Australians - strength, determination, intelligence, compassion and humour”.

While such “characteristics” are highly commendable, surely Australians, including Peter Cosgrove, believe that the fundamental values of truth, integrity and justice are far more critical to the maintenance of our nation’s health?

Australians know the stories of John Howard, Robert Hill and now Peter Cosgrove.

In the shadow of Remembrance Day, surely it’s time for them to hear the story of the still missing Yani Ndun?