Kim Beazley has defended the Australian War Memorial\u2019s decision to not award a prestigious literary prize to journalist Chris Masters for a book about alleged war criminal Ben Roberts-Smith, insisting the rules prevent established authors from being considered.<\/p>\n
The memorial chair told Guardian Australia the prize is \u201cexplicitly for emerging authors\u201d and not for those who have previously published major titles.<\/p>\n
Beazley \u2013 a former Labor leader, defence minister and ambassador to Washington \u2013 said he was not present at a meeting of the memorial\u2019s governing council when the issue was discussed, but his input was sought.<\/p>\n
\u201cThat view was reaffirmed by the council at its last meeting,\u201d the former Labor leader and defence minister said.<\/p>\n
Guardian Australia revealed last week the memorial had overruled a decision<\/a> by its appointed judges to name Chris Masters\u2019 book, Flawed Hero: Truth, Lies and War Crimes, as the 2024 winner of the Les Carlyon literary award for military history.<\/p>\n A panel comprising memorial employees had included the book in a shortlist of six for the award, inaugurated in 2020 in honour of Carlyon, the celebrated journalist and military historian and a former member of the memorial\u2019s council.<\/p>\n External judges for the award, including Carlyon\u2019s widow, Denise, selected Masters\u2019 book. But the council decided in June 2024 to reverse the judging panel\u2019s move, citing previous narrower eligibility rules which called for entries from emerging authors. The move effectively disqualified Masters, the author of four previous books.<\/p>\n Eligibility for the 2022 award was broadened by the judging panel to include established authors.<\/p>\n Correspondence seen by Guardian Australia suggests the council decided in June 2024 to reverse the judging panel\u2019s move and recommit to the pre-2022 \u201cemerging author\u201d guidelines \u2013 although sources insist the judging panels were not informed of this decision.<\/p>\n Council member and RSL national president, Greg Melick, told Guardian Australia the council was unaware that Masters had been awarded the prize before it intervened in the process.<\/p>\n \u201cAt the time that decision was made by council, we had no idea who had won the prize or who\u2019d been nominated for the prize,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n \u201cWe hadn\u2019t even seen the shortlist, and to suggest that council decided not to go ahead because of the book or the subject was rubbish.\u201d<\/p>\n Flawed Hero is a detailed account of investigations by Masters and the award-winning journalist Nick McKenzie into alleged war crimes committed in Afghanistan by Roberts-Smith, whose final appeal bid in his failed defamation action against the journalists was rejected by the high court<\/a> this month.<\/p>\n The book details the institutional and political support given to Roberts-Smith, including by the memorial<\/a> and prominent figures associated with it.<\/p>\n skip past newsletter promotion<\/a><\/p>\n Sign up to Breaking News Australia<\/p>\n Get the most important news as it breaks<\/p>\n Privacy Notice: Newsletters may contain information about charities, online ads, and content funded by outside parties. If you do not have an account, we will create a guest account for you on theguardian.com<\/a> to send you this newsletter. You can complete full registration at any time. For more information about how we use your data see our Privacy Policy<\/a>. We use Google reCaptcha to protect our website and the Google Privacy Policy<\/a> and Terms of Service<\/a> apply.<\/p>\n after newsletter promotion<\/p>\n