Australian Greens Peace spokesperson Senator Jordon Steele-John has called for General’s Campbell and Burr to resign to enable the recommendations of the Afghan Inquiry to be implemented free from any actual or perceived conflicts of interest, and facilitate ongoing investigations by the Australian Federal Police.
\nGeneral Campbell was the Commander of Joint Task Force 633 responsible for all Australian forces deployed in the Middle East, including Afghanistan, between January 2011 and January 2012. Lt. General Burr was a Commander of SASR on two separate deployments during the Afghanistan War.
\n“Since this report was first released, I have been clear in questioning how appropriate it is for General Campbell and General Burr to initiate the disciplinary action against commanding officers who served during the Afghanistan War,” Steele-John said.
\n“If this level of alleged systemic failure had occurred within a financial institution, it would be totally inappropriate for the reform of that institution to be led by an individual who hel a senior executive position during the time that alleged criminal activity occurred.
\n“Both General Campbell and General\u00a0Burr\u00a0have\u00a0irresolvable conflicts of interest; it is\u00a0impossible for the public to trust that\u00a0commanding officers\u00a0will be held to account when the process is led by the\u00a0top brass who themselves held commanding roles during the period of time when many of these alleged crimes were committed.
\n“I’m not saying that General Campbell or General Burr were involved in any of the alleged incidents or even that they knew about them prior to the release of the Afghan Inquiry report, but\u00a0that perception is undermining the process.
\n“Veterans who did the right thing expect that the commanders\u00a0who either turned\u00a0a blind eye to sanitised reporting, or failed to engage with what was happening on the ground\u00a0should be held to account\u00a0and so does the Australian public.
\n“We cannot allow defence leadership to apply one set of\u00a0rules to their subordinates in the lower ranks and a different set of rules to themselves in secret.
\n“If General’s Campbell and Burr will not do the right thing by the Australian Defence Force, and the Australian public, and\u00a0resign\u00a0then Prime Minister Morrison should sack them.”<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Australian Greens Peace spokesperson Senator Jordon Steele-John has called for General’s Campbell and Burr to resign to enable the recommendations of the Afghan Inquiry to be implemented free from any actual or perceived conflicts of interest, and facilitate ongoing investigations by the Australian Federal Police. General Campbell was the Commander of Joint Task Force 633 … Continue reading “General's Campbell & Burr must resign to preserve the integrity of Afghan War Crimes process”<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-9444","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-aussie"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.16news.com.au\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9444","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.16news.com.au\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.16news.com.au\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.16news.com.au\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.16news.com.au\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=9444"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"http:\/\/www.16news.com.au\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9444\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.16news.com.au\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=9444"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.16news.com.au\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=9444"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.16news.com.au\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=9444"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}