Why Isn’t Peter Dutton Talking About The War Crimes Reforms?
The Brereton Report found evidence of 39 alleged murders at the hands, or direction of ADF personnel.
Defence Minister Peter Dutton has six reports from the oversight panel for the Brereton war crimes reforms, but is still yet to actually speak about the reforms in Parliament.
In a statement released on Monday, a Defence spokesperson confirmed that six reports have been delivered since February 2021.
“The Afghanistan inquiry implementation oversight panel has provided six reports between February 2021 and May 2022,” the statement reads.
Released in November 2020, the Inspector-General of the Australian Defence Force Afghanistan Inquiry Report — also known as the Brereton Report — is a report into the alleged war crimes committed by the Australian Defence Force in Afghanistan between 2005 and 2016. The report found evidence of 39 alleged murders at the hands, or instruction, of ADF personnel, all of which were subsequently covered up.
After the report’s release in 2020, then-defence minister Linda Reynolds launched an oversight panel, promising the Australian public to report “regularly to the parliament on their reports to me”.
General Angus Campbell — the chief of the ADF — also made a point to stress the importance of transparency regarding what was actually being done for reforms.
“Transparency is key to this process,” said Campbell in November 2020.
However, Dutton — who took over the role in March 2021 — has not fulfilled this promise, and is still yet to talk about the reforms in parliament. The reports are delivered every three months, but “timing associated with release of the reports and related reporting is a matter for the minister”, according to the department of defence.
Dutton was quizzed last week on why he had failed to keep the public informed, where he quickly defended himself by asserting that the report was “not a plaything”. He claimed it would be wrong to comment “on whether a particular investigation is up to a certain stage” or “whether somebody is about to be arrested”.
Dutton hasn’t said the word “Brereton” in the chamber even once time since becoming the Defence Minister.
The news comes after the government’s handling of the Brereton report has repeatedly been criticised for a lack of transparency, with the reform plan being kept hidden for two months after it was first approved by Peter Dutton in 2021.