{"id":820540,"date":"2026-07-24T09:18:17","date_gmt":"2026-07-24T09:18:17","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/820540\/"},"modified":"2026-07-24T09:18:17","modified_gmt":"2026-07-24T09:18:17","slug":"defence-minister-richard-marles-confirms-former-senior-naval-officer-faces-court-martial","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/820540\/","title":{"rendered":"Defence Minister Richard Marles confirms former senior naval officer faces court martial"},"content":{"rendered":"

Defence Minister Richard Marles has confirmed that a former senior naval officer is facing a court martial, although a military court has ordered their identity remain suppressed.<\/p>\n

Australian daily digital newspaper The Nightly reported earlier this week that the former officer is facing charges connected to “lucrative military contracts” awarded in Western Australia.<\/p>\n

It is not clear exactly when the alleged wrongdoing occurred, but The Nightly reported the matters under investigation took place before the Albanese government won power in 2022.<\/p>\n

The former officer will face eight charges in a military trial set down for up to six weeks from September 14 in front of Judge Advocate Major General Michael Cowen.<\/p>\n

\"A<\/p>\n

Michael Cowen will hear the case in the military court. (Facebook: Australian Honours and Rewards)<\/p>\n

One defence source confirmed to the ABC that the former officer held a senior position within the military hierarchy.<\/p>\n

But the judge advocate has issued a non-publication order suppressing their name, saying the accused should be referred to only under a pseudonym: “Star Ranked Officer in the Royal Australian Navy, Officer Brown”.<\/p>\n

A “star ranked officer” refers to the senior ranks of the navy, which includes vice-admirals, rear-admirals and commodores.<\/p>\n

The Department of Defence has also declined to provide details about the case because of legal and privacy obligations.<\/p>\n

Military tribunal ‘appropriate’ setting for case, minister says<\/p>\n

Mr Marles was asked this morning if it was appropriate for the matter to be handled by a military tribunal rather than a civilian court, which is more open to the public.<\/p>\n

“The answer \u2026 is that is appropriate,” he told reporters in Adelaide.<\/p>\n

“But because this is now in a legal process there’s not much I can really add to this, in a public way.<\/p>\n

“We now let those processes play out.”<\/p>\n

And when he was asked if he was alarmed by the development, Mr Marles repeated that the legal process should be allowed to “play out”.<\/p>\n

“A court martial is a legal process. So it’s important that play out,” he said.<\/p>\n

“And I think that should play out without commentary from me.”<\/p>\n

\"David<\/p>\n

David Shoebridge says the identity of the former officer should not be secret. (ABC News: Jerry Rickard)<\/p>\n

The Greens spokesperson on Defence, David Shoebridge, said there was “no credible reason to hide the identity of the accused senior naval officer or the details of alleged offences”.<\/p>\n

“This is a court martial, overseen by very senior officers who are certainly capable of seeing past, and not being deflected by, media reporting of the trial,” he said.<\/p>\n

“Secrecy works for the interests of the government and Defence, but not for the public who deserve transparency and accountability.<\/p>\n

“How are the public meant to have confidence in Defence’s massive spending when Defence does not have confidence in public institutions and instead pushes corruption cases into closed military courts?”<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Defence Minister Richard Marles has confirmed that a former senior naval officer is facing a court martial, although…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":820541,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[4],"tags":[64,63,395628,14042,180292,395626,395624,395627,395625,44,3406,377302,194365],"class_list":["post-820540","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-australia","tag-au","tag-australia","tag-court-martial","tag-david-shoebridge","tag-defence-department","tag-michael-cowen","tag-military-court","tag-military-trial","tag-military-tribunal","tag-news","tag-richard-marles","tag-secrecy","tag-suppression-order"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/820540","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=820540"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/820540\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/820541"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=820540"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=820540"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=820540"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}