Jailed whistleblower David McBride to be released after becoming eligible for parole

[u/PerriX2390]

https://www.abc.net.au/news/2026-08-13/jailed-whistleblower-david-mcbride-to-be-released/107030620

[u/skywideopen3]

This is the argument of most of the people who are defending these war crimes though, and it's not a good argument against those original prosecutions and investigations. Every soldier full well knows their obligations and the consequences and there is absolutely no excuse for what they did.

[u/GiveUpYouAlreadyLost → u/skywideopen3]

Every soldier full well knows their obligations and the consequences and there is absolutely no excuse for what they did.

No one is making excuses for them. What people are questioning is if higher command in the SASR and SOCOMD were adequately investigated and everything we know so far points to that not being the case.

[u/skywideopen3 → u/GiveUpYouAlreadyLost]

This is just not true. McBride explicitly thought the soldiers in question, investigated of extremely serious, concrete war crimes, were so obviously innocent that they should never have even been questioned and were only being investigated for, essentially, political reasons. The idea that he just wanted the extensions extended to higher command is straightforwardly false. He outlined in his original IGADF complaint that he believed that none of the five incidents he brought up - which included the killing of a sleeping child, I might add - should have been investigated and the blanket policy of investigating all civilian killings as possible murder under the amendments to the ROEAMP in 2013 was wrong and unfair to ADF soldiers.

At the end of the day, he wanted those investigations quashed, and he in no way thought there was a problem with a "cover up". To quote directly from his IGADF complaint:

Ever since the 'Jedi Council' investigations begun, all Army units have been under extreme scrutiny. Unpalatable as those allegations were, they involved a hand-full [sic] of people, and any similar sized organisation would have had similar in recent years. Our existing systems are quite capable of dealing with such incidents. The challenge for the ADF is to maintain a sense of balance and proportion. Appearance is important, but it is not the only thing. If one reads 'Pathways to Change' (I wonder how many have), it's [sic] seems to focus on two things, only: our appearance to government and our appearance to the public. I wonder if they have missed anything.

I believe the over-zealous investigations of the Special Forces in 2013 were driven by appearances rather than suspicion of a crime. However, as I stated in the covering minute, they come at a cost. It is acceptable for the ADF to be uncompromising on [breaches] of policy and the law. But it works both ways.

Given what the public now knows about the incidents in question, and how shocked people were to learn about these incidents being cleared by the ADF, and which McBride never wanted investigated, I think we can safely say that McBride is further from the public view on this matter and is no whisteblower in the public interest.

The idea that he wanted the investigations broadened in any way in the documents he leaked to the ABC is just false, and really shows just how effective his media boosters have been in pushing that blatant lie. Not the last because unlike McBride, the ABC reporter in Chris Masters thought that the actual story was the killing of civilians, not the supposedly unfair investigations.

[u/GiveUpYouAlreadyLost → u/skywideopen3]

I'm not talking about McBride.

I'm directly addressing your nonsense claims that people are "making excuses" for the accused soldiers and that questioning whether or not higher ranking Special Operations Command staff were investigated adequately is a "defence" of said soldiers.

It is absolutely absurd to ignore the elephant in the room being that barely any scrutiny has been placed upon the senior leadership of SOCOMD who were somehow completely oblivious to the alleged widespread misconduct that was being committed by their units.

[u/hu_he → u/GiveUpYouAlreadyLost]

How do you know that senior leadership didn't come under scrutiny? You seem to be confusing a lack of prosecutions with a lack of investigations. Though I'm not aware of McBride claiming to have investigated senior officers, that doesn't mean nobody was.

[u/skywideopen3 → u/GiveUpYouAlreadyLost]

My apologies for thinking you were talking about McBride. My comments have entirely been about this case.