Mateship and Aussie Values

How the pending Ben Roberts-Smith trial has opened a new front in the culture wars.

Another front in the culture wars opened up this week with the arrest of Ben Roberts-Smith on five counts of war crime murder. I suppose you could say the pencil that drew the line on the map had been in the sharpener since the former SAS soldier calamitous defamation action. This piece is not a rumination about his guilt, innocence or otherwise. It’s concerns what it says about us.

Now, with his guilt to be tested to a higher standard, beyond reasonable doubt, what should be a legal matter for those who insistently preach about the virtues and fairness of our legal system, about the laughable notion that we are all equal before the law, are about to use their privilege and their clout to defend all that Robert’s-Smith represents, as an opportunity to push their version of Australia on the rest of us.

Their level of indignation and outrage accompanied by a coordinated attempt to control the narrative around the former corporal’s arrest from the very start. Endeavouring to throw the facts of the matter in a tumble dryer, along with the language of patriotism, honour and valour, until what’s left is a stain free version of history.

It seems, as one satirical news site put it, the trial of Ben Roberts-Smith is destined to become a left/right issue, or a woke versus anti-woke contest in the pages of our dailies, the ranting on our airwaves and the mindless fodder of social media. And that’s just the way some of Roberts-Smith’s backers want it.

It’s hardly a surprising response. Any disturbance that unsettles a layer of dust off the mythology the right has created for itself about the Australian story, particularly ideas of “mateship” and the Anzac spirit, is bound to rile up the same self-appointed protectors of national identity.

Within 24 hours of the arrest former prime minister John Howard tried to add to the emotional weight of the saga as described the accused as the “modern personification of the great Anzac tradition.” He emphasised Roberts-Smith was “entitled to the presumption of innocence,” designed to frame the sacredness of the accused at the heart of our most cherished national narrative, the Anzac Spirit.

When it comes to Howard, still a believer that Australia was right to enter the Vietnam war, the level of patriotism rings a little hollow when you account for the fact that he was 25, a prime age to join the armed, when Australia first sent combat troops to that blood-soaked quagmire.

But like his political spawn, the even more ardent Tony Abott, Howard never served in Australia’s military and therefore have never lived with the real risk that comes with it. But both willing to send others to fight in faraway places, in the spirit of Anzac and then define what that means, in part to defend their decisions and strategic failings. It was the same slight of hand that sent my dad to Vietnam and thousands of other sons of daughters to conflicts with no just cause or reasonable justification. Sent by performers.

For others like Gina Rinehart and her political operative Pauline Hanson, their assertion of what is and isn’t Australian, is a way to build on their anti-woke credentials, to poke a stick in the ribs of progressives. “I don’t understand how it can be justified to spend more than $300 million to try for years to bring SAS veterans, who have served our country, towards criminal proceedings, and most recently the arrest of Ben,” Rinehart said in a statement this week.

No one will ever know where the $300 million figure came from because it’s a myth in and of itself; as was pointed out to Hanson in a rare step outside the confines of breakfast TV and Sky News.

Rinehart went onto say, “Like many Australians, I hope that compassion and the Aussie spirit is extended to Ben and his family and his duty to our country in the hardship of war is never forgotten.” I wonder if she applies the Aussie spirit is extended to the other gallant soldiers who have come forward and given witness testimony on Roberts-Smith alleged actions. A form of moral courage as described to me by veteran journalist Chris Masters this week on 7am. Someone as familiar with this saga as anyone.

The reality is, that for these prominent Australians, the culture wars are a hobby. From high up in the upper vestiges of Australian wealth and power, the fallout from debates they stoke on immigration, race, identity and belonging rarely if ever impact them. They are entrenched in their privilege,

The relentlessness in which they pursue their ideological agenda, one manifested to shape the country in their own image, can be explained by the fact that the consequences of their actions will never be worn by them. They may cop criticism for their stance, but never consequence.

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When we look at the idea of mateship, the central tenant applied in this instance, is that mates don’t rat on other mates. Even if they witness one of their own commit atrocious acts, the code of mateship dictates that one must keep schtum. If this is the core elements of what some determine mateship to be, then it’s no wonder that those soldiers that testified against Roberts-Smith in the defamation are seen some as the true affront to “Aussie values.”

It’s at this point that mateship becomes toxic. A poison that can infiltrate all parts of society; from education systems, through to politics and of course the corporate world. It can be as exclusionary as it can be inclusionary.

The cultural warrior hobbyists use its ethos as a tool of exclusion on the rest of us, and at the same time as a method of vetting for membership for their own exclusive clubs.

The real nexus in the culture wars, the place of greatest tension is the contest between myth and history; myth as a form of national story stripped of all its ugly and inconvenient parts. It becomes so puritanical that its caused some to be affronted by the fact that the arrest occurred to close to Anzac Day, as though that should have been a consideration in the AFP’s pursuit for justice.

The cultural gamers who have rushed to frame this as an attack on Australian values misunderstand the nature of the moment. Accountability is not an assault on national identity. It is its maturation. The law applying evenly, even to the decorated, is not disrespect. It is the very thing that separates a mythologised society from a democratic one.

For those that will wield these debates from a distance, the outrage that ensues will be morbidly invigorating. It will animate screens everywhere and fuel the politics of grievance for political benefit, dialling in the contrast that makes the lines of division darker and sharper.

The pending court case is an opportunity to revarnish history, to move the us toward their myths and away from simple home truths. No matter which way the verdict goes, the true test for the rest of us is whether we are mature enough to deal with what comes next.

Unfortunately, the early signs aren’t good. It will be tedious, it will be damaging, but in the modern age any meaningful national discussion is one filled with friction and opportunism; it’s become the norm, the Australian way.

The fog of bore.