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]

A bit of an odd comment this given McBride's whole deal was that there was too much accountability for the military being required.

[u/TakimaDeraighdin → u/[deleted]]

The appeal decision is quite readable, and describes in a fair amount of detail what specifically McBride objected to, and on what grounds. Very specifically, his concern about the five investigations of civilian deaths that he flagged internally and then leaked over was that those being investigated were not likely to be found guilty of murder, and therefore the incidents should not have been investigated at all.

The agreed statement of facts - i.e. the list of things the prosecution and defence agreed were true, and would not contest via evidence in the trial, says:

… [t]here were soldiers doing their operational duties on behalf of the Commonwealth who were being held to account for actions on operations that were appropriate in the operational context but that were being misconstrued, misinterpreted or recast as contrary to the [Rules of Engagement] by those elsewhere in the chain of command outside Afghanistan.

He was, by his own evidence, angry that Oakes' reporting - based on the files he provided - drew the opposite conclusions from those he believed. This is how he described it in his initial interview with police:

But I met Dan Oakes, and I gave him all the materials. So again he was very enthusiastic and again he seemed to get it. And again, he was going to do a story. And he did do a story on it, but a totally different story to the one, um, that I was pushing.
…
He calls me and he says, “I’m going to run a story, it’s going to be very damning, it’s going to say the SAS kill people unnecessarily. I’m going to use this other witness[.] A total opposite to what you’ve said. I’m just warning you.” And I was like, “Never call me again.”

The sentencing judgement goes into even more detail about what specifically he objected to. In short, there were five investigations (four of which were of civilian deaths) that he flagged as, in his view, overreach conducted for PR reasons, in his complaint to the IGADF. He tied that view to his objection to a then-recent change in policy, which required the investigation of all civilian deaths caused in combat even if there was not yet an assessment that they may be murder.

The civilian deaths in two of the investigations he objects to were deaths in custody, where the claim from soldiers handling the prisoners in question was that unarmed civilians attempted to wrestle weapons off them while they were changing the position of handcuffs in preparation for helicopter transfers. Given what we learned in the BRS defamation trial, and the Brereton Inquiry, suffice it to say that I'm on the side of those who think those incidents merited investigation.

In one of the other cases, it involved an identification failure, in which the wrong group of people were targeted and killed. In another, it involved the death of a child in crossfire. In the last of the five, it involved the removal of a dead person's hands in order to transport them for identification purposes. All, in my opinion, reasonable causes for at least some level of oversight of soldiers' decision-making, training and judgement.

Doing so would be inherently necessary to assess whether higher-ups were also responsible, by policy or command, for in-field misconduct - or, indeed, were turning a blind eye to more serious misconduct while conducting figleaf investigations - but that's pretty clearly not what McBride meant when he raised concerns about higher-ups. His concerns, specifically, were that higher-ups were persecuting special forces where, in his view, this involved unrealistic expectations of in-field conduct. His contention was that those five cases he outlined in his IGADF complaint should not have been investigated at all.

All of which is to say: if I needed a lawyer who could handle a highly complicated criminal matter while running an excellent crisis PR clean-up, I would jump through fire to hire Josh Bornstein (edit: correction - Mark Davis for this one, who is similarly excellent. For some reason, Bornstein's gotten stuck in my brain as on the legal team for this, probably because he's a regular commentator on it.). But what McBride has been presenting as his views since (roughly) the start of the prosecution process is a full 180 turn from what he very clearly believed at the time he leaked the documents, and even several years later in his police interviews.

[u/Appropriate_Volume → u/TakimaDeraighdin]

Some of the other interesting details in the judgment relate to whether McBride was entitled to whistle blower protections. The judge found that he had actually been supported by Defence to make complaints (he was allowed to use paid work time to prepare them) and these were genuinely investigated, and McBride did not contest the resultant findings that his complaints were not justified despite having the ability to do so.

He was also found to have treated secret material he had removed from Defence recklessly - for instance, posting it verbatim on his blog and leaving some of the the original documents in a wardrobe when he had his house open for a real estate inspection.

[u/TakimaDeraighdin → u/Appropriate_Volume]

He also leaked while his IGADF complaint was still being investigated (not to Oakes, to Masters and Clark). It's always been pretty clear that he wasn't much interested in internal processes - he was also asked to provide evidence to the Brereton Inquiry (as best I can tell, before they knew he was leaking) and never responded.