{"id":812872,"date":"2026-07-20T19:52:21","date_gmt":"2026-07-20T19:52:21","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/812872\/"},"modified":"2026-07-20T19:52:21","modified_gmt":"2026-07-20T19:52:21","slug":"brett-mcmaster-avoids-jail-for-trafficking-cocaine-while-australian-army-soldier","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/812872\/","title":{"rendered":"Brett McMaster avoids jail for trafficking cocaine while Australian Army soldier"},"content":{"rendered":"

A former army rifleman who purchased 45 grams of cocaine to traffic to fellow Australian Defence Force (ADF) soldiers has been spared jail.<\/p>\n

Brett McMaster, 24, appeared in the Supreme Court of Queensland in Townsville on Monday and pleaded guilty to trafficking cocaine in 2024.<\/p>\n

McMaster served in the Australian Army’s Townsville-based armoured infantry battalion, 3RAR, as a rifleman and field medic.<\/p>\n

The court heard that during his service he purchased 45 grams of cocaine over six weeks from fellow soldier Jack Alex Cullen.<\/p>\n

\"A<\/p>\n

Jack Alex Cullen, 25, was jailed for trafficking cocaine in May. (ABC News: Baz Ruddick)<\/p>\n

Cullen was jailed in May after pleading guilty to trafficking large quantities of cocaine<\/a> whilst serving as an army infantry soldier.<\/p>\n

The Supreme Court heard McMaster paid Cullen in cash, and at times placed the payments in Cullen’s army backpack at Lavarack Barracks in Townsville.<\/p>\n

Justice Christopher Johnstone KC, who has been deployed in active service for the Royal Australian Air Force, called McMaster’s conduct “offensive”.<\/p>\n

“You offended whilst you had the honour and the privilege of being a member of the Australian Defence Force,” he said.<\/p>\n

“An honour, a privilege and a trust which you abused grossly.”\"Sign<\/p>\n

Justice Christopher Johnstone KC called the conduct by McMaster “offensive”. (ABC News: Lily Nothling)<\/p>\n

The court heard that McMaster was discharged from the army due to his failure of a drug test in 2024, which coincided with him being charged.<\/p>\n

McMaster’s barrister, Ross Malcomson, provided a psychiatrist report which stated the former soldier self-medicated mental health challenges with cocaine.<\/p>\n

Justice Johnstone questioned why the former rifleman texted supplier Cullen stating he was “slowly getting more blokes onto my stuff”.<\/p>\n

“That statement is a little at odds with the submissions that have been made about your psychological wellbeing,” he said.<\/p>\n

Justice Johnstone accepted submissions from prosecutors that McMaster had ambitions to grow his business before he was caught.<\/p>\n

After pleading guilty to a total of two charges, McMaster was sentenced to a four-year prison term that will be suspended for five years so long as he does not reoffend.<\/p>\n

He was ordered to pay a $10,000 fine over 12 months for possessing a phone used for drug trafficking.<\/p>\n

He must repay the Commonwealth $36,000 from a $50,000 retention bonus he received from the ADF.<\/p>\n

He will continue to receive payments from the Department of Veterans Affairs due to injuries sustained in the army.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"A former army rifleman who purchased 45 grams of cocaine to traffic to fellow Australian Defence Force (ADF)…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":812873,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[387826,136727,23285,387825,42895,1108,3403,1730,43,387824,44,136724,1049,41,39,42,40,6649,54919],"class_list":["post-812872","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-headlines","tag-3-brigade","tag-3rar","tag-army","tag-barracks","tag-cocaine","tag-court","tag-defence","tag-drugs","tag-headlines","tag-lavarack","tag-news","tag-soldier","tag-supreme-court","tag-top-news","tag-top-stories","tag-topnews","tag-topstories","tag-townsville","tag-trafficking"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/812872","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=812872"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/812872\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/812873"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=812872"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=812872"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=812872"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}