Introduction On 4 January 2021 the Australian Office of the Special Investigator officially commenced work (“OSI”). Its task is to conduct criminal investigations into Australian war crimes in Afghanistan, as revealed in the Brereton Report (discussed here). The report focusses on the killing of persons hors de combat or under Australian control by…

On Thursday 19 November Australia faced a reckoning with its recent past in Afghanistan.* Australian political culture approaches our armed forces with a great degree of deference and respect. Three of our last four Governors General have been, for example, senior military leaders. The Australian Defence Force support operations in respect of the January 2020 bushfires and the…

I have previously written on the Independent Expert Review (IER) of the International Criminal Court and its findings on questions of governance structure and culture. In this blog post I’d like to turn to two other running themes through the report: trust and tenure.* The problem of trust My previous post noted the…