{"id":590967,"date":"2026-04-07T09:45:07","date_gmt":"2026-04-07T09:45:07","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/590967\/"},"modified":"2026-04-07T09:45:07","modified_gmt":"2026-04-07T09:45:07","slug":"pauline-hanson-says-she-wont-abandon-ben-roberts-smith-as-greens-argue-no-one-should-be-above-the-law-ben-roberts-smith","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/590967\/","title":{"rendered":"Pauline Hanson says she won\u2019t \u2018abandon\u2019 Ben Roberts-Smith as Greens argue \u2018no one should be above the law\u2019 | Ben Roberts-Smith"},"content":{"rendered":"

The One Nation leader, Pauline Hanson, says she will not \u201cabandon\u201d Ben Roberts-Smith<\/a> despite his arrest over war crimes, as the Greens declare \u201cno one should be above the law\u201d.<\/p>\n

As the prime minister, Anthony Albanese, refused to weigh into Roberts-Smith\u2019s arrest at Sydney airport<\/a> on Tuesday morning, Hanson reaffirmed her long-held support for Australia\u2019s most decorated living soldier.<\/p>\n

\u201cI remain steadfast in my support of Ben Roberts-Smith despite news of his arrest today,\u201d the Queensland senator, whose party is surging in the polls, posted on social media.<\/p>\n

\u201cBen, his immediate and broader defence family need the Australian people\u2019s support right now and I will not abandon him like so many other politicians.\u201d<\/p>\n

Roberts-Smith was charged<\/a> late on Tuesday with five counts of war crime \u2013 murder, in relation to three incidents. The maximum penalty for the offence is life imprisonment.<\/p>\n

The Victoria Cross recipient was previously accused in a defamation suit of murdering unarmed civilians while serving in the Australian Special Air Service Regiment (SAS) in Afghanistan<\/a>. He has denied any wrongdoing.<\/p>\n

Hanson has been among Roberts-Smith\u2019s political and corporate defenders, along with the mining billionaire Gina Rinehart<\/a> and media mogul Kerry Stokes.<\/p>\n

Sign up for the Breaking News Australia email<\/a><\/p>\n

The former Liberal prime minister Tony Abbott<\/a> issued a statement of support for the special forces on Tuesday afternoon, which criticised the process that resulted in Roberts-Smith\u2019s arrest.<\/p>\n

\u201cOf course, there are rules that have to be observed and enforced, even against soldiers in times of war. Still, it\u2019s wrong to judge the actions of men in mortal combat by the standards of ordinary civilian life,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n

\u201cIf Ben Roberts-Smith transgressed, why wasn\u2019t this picked up prior to his gallantry awards and why wasn\u2019t any culture of brutality towards prisoners detected by his more senior officers, and dealt with quickly, rather than being allowed to fester, as has been alleged, for over a decade?\u201d he said.<\/p>\n

Ross Barnett, the director of investigations at the Office of the Special Investigator, said the five-year investigation faced \u201ca lot of practical challenges\u201d, given the alleged crimes were committed in Afghanistan.<\/p>\n

\u201cAll of the things that we would normally get at a crime scene. There\u2019s no postmortem. Therefore, there\u2019s no official cause of death. So there are a lot of practical challenges that confront the investigators,\u201d Barnett said.<\/p>\n

The Greens defence spokesperson, David Shoebridge, said the arrest was a \u201cmoment of accountability and highlights the appalling cost of war on all sides\u201d.<\/p>\n

\u201cNo one should be above the law,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n

\u201cThese charges relate to killings that happened in Afghanistan between 2009 and 2012, for victims and survivors that is far too long to wait for justice. Deployments of troops in overseas conflicts always come at enormous cost to people on the ground who face the horror and brutality of war.\u201d<\/p>\n

Shoebridge criticised what he described as a \u201cgaping hole\u201d in the accountability for what happened in Afghanistan, particularly the apparent lack of scrutiny of the role of senior officers who oversaw the deployment of troops to the Middle East.<\/p>\n

\u201cGold braid on your shoulder is not meant to be legal protection from complicity in war crimes,\u201d he said, reiterating calls for a dedicated war crimes investigation unit within the Australian federal police.<\/p>\n

Appearing at a press conference shortly after the Nine papers broke news of Roberts-Smith\u2019s arrest, Albanese said he would not comment on the development.<\/p>\n

\u201cI have no intention of commenting on a matter that\u2019s clearly before the courts,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n

Asked for a second time about the arrest of Roberts-Smith, the prime minister said: \u201cI have no intention of prejudicing a matter that clearly is a legal matter and that\u2019s before the courts and any comment would do so.\u201d<\/p>\n

The opposition leader, Angus Taylor, would not comment directly on the arrest but said it \u201cshould not detract from the respect we show for our special forces in this country\u201d.<\/p>\n

\u201cIt is important that we know that our special forces are doing the right thing but the one thing I do know is the vast majority of our special forces do do the right thing and they deserve, as do all our veterans, the respect of our nation,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n

A subsequent statement from Taylor and senior Coalition<\/a> frontbenchers James Paterson, Michael McCormack and Phil Thompson reiterated their \u201cunwavering commitment\u201d to defence personnel and veterans.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe cannot allow this generation of veterans to be treated like many who returned from Vietnam, left to carry stigma for decades. Today\u2019s charges do not diminish in any way the service of the vast majority of our men and women in uniform,\u201d the joint statement said.<\/p>\n

Support for veterans and their families is available 24 hours a day from Open Arms<\/a> on 1800 011 046 and Safe Zone Support<\/a> on 1800 142 072. Hayat Line<\/a> is a free and confidential crisis support line for Muslims on 1300 993 398<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"The One Nation leader, Pauline Hanson, says she will not \u201cabandon\u201d Ben Roberts-Smith despite his arrest over war…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":590968,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[23],"tags":[64,63,128,285],"class_list":{"0":"post-590967","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-space","8":"tag-au","9":"tag-australia","10":"tag-science","11":"tag-space"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/590967","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=590967"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/590967\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/590968"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=590967"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=590967"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=590967"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}