The Chris Voss Show - The Chris Voss Show Podcast – Warrior Soldier Brigand: Institutional Abuse within the Australian Defence Force by Ben Wadham, James Connor

Episode Date: March 21, 2025

Warrior Soldier Brigand: Institutional Abuse within the Australian Defence Force by Ben Wadham, James Connor Amazon.com Flinders.edu.au Questions of institutional abuse have been at the centre of numerous royal commissions, inquiries and reviews of the clergy, the police and defence forces over the past decade. This scrutiny has highlighted how those organisations foster forms of violence and violation. One of their principal characteristics is that the culture of abuse and its perpetration is largely the work of men. In Warrior Soldier Brigand, Ben Wadham and James Connor argue that three pillars shape the patterns of abuse in the Australian Defence Force: martial masculinities, military exceptionalism and fraternity. Historically, the military has been an almost exclusively male domain, but since the Vietnam War it has become an all-volunteer force and more culturally diverse, a change that has proven to be profoundly challenging, and one the ADF has not always readily welcomed nor sufficiently addressed. While the ADF may train and accommodate some of the best military personnel in the world, it has not resolved the use of that violent potential against its own. Exploring the fundamental paradox that underpins abuse in the military, Wadham and Connor report on the shifting landscape of the ADF since 1969.

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Ben Wadham joins us on the show today. Ben, did I get your last name correctly. Ben Wadham joins us on the show today. Ben, did I get your last name correctly? Ben Wadham Yeah, brilliant, Chris. That's spot on. Chris Bounds I know plenty of people in Australia, so that's probably why. And we're going to be talking about him, about his insights, his research, et cetera, et cetera, and everything that went into it. Welcome to the show, Ben. How are you? Ben Wadham Yeah, I'm really good, thanks.

It's a nice hot day down here in South Australia. I'm heading to 38 on the weekend. Pete Liesveld It's a hot day. That always kills me down there. I saw somebody in Australia saying recently, it's gonna get winter soon. And I'm like, it's winter now. But, you know, you guys do the opposite of us. I should learn to live in Sydney during our winters here, when it's summer there, and vice versa. I need

to learn to move between hemispheres, if you will. David Morgan Yeah, hemispheres. Pete Slauson So, give us a 30,000 overview. What's inside this book? Warrior-Soldier Brigade. David Morgan Yeah, sure. Australia recently had a Royal Commission into Defense and Veterans Suicide that was 21 to 24. And what they focused on was deployment trauma.

And that's kind of the common understanding that deployment trauma can create mental health issues for veterans. But the work that we've done is around how the culture and the systems of any military, particularly I look at the Five Eyes nations, that's the UK, US, Canada, Australia and New Zealand, to see how just the everyday kind of being

part of a military can also have dramatic effects on people. And so that's the institutional abuse side of things. We've done a historical piece here. So it goes back to 1969. Research goes a bit further. And I guess the fundamental point we're making is that militaries are institutions of and for violence, you know, for good reason. But if you don't manage that potential for violence effectively, then it can be turned inside and back on its own people. And that's what we've been

illuminating. And the book is the first historical record of that in Australia, and I'd say internationally, yeah. Any sort of organization big enough is definitely a penchant to abuse and issues. What led you to the story? What drew you to the story in writing about it? Yeah, I served myself in the, I'm an Army veteran. And so I saw a little bit of it in the infantry and then as a military policeman. I left the service, I went to study, I did my PhD on other things completely, and then I started researching military justice reform in Australia, which was quite hot around the

early 2000s. That became public, and people started approaching me with their stories, and I've been collecting those accounts for the last 20 years. Oh, wow. And what are some of the abuses that you see institutionally going on? Are these abuses that aren't even really specific too much to the Australian military, but to other militaries around the world? John Yeah, I think, you know, the unique element

of any military is it has a very strong command and control character to it. It's highly regimented and it has its own military justice system, its own health system and people are very locked into that, into the military. You know, I mean, in the US, for example, have families growing up on bases. We have a little bit of that in Australia, but what I'm getting at is that military life can be really immersive. When you lock that in with an institution that's about bringing civilians, running them through 12 weeks to 12 months of really intense training, it totally changes who you are.

Your civilian life is broken down, and you develop a loyalty, almost a principal loyalty, to the military as your family and your mates and camaraderie. The key bit, I guess, is that the military justice system gives commanders complete discretion for a disciplinary action. So that's both useful to maintain military justice, but it also is a point where it can be exploited and used inappropriately. And so the sorts of abuse that we see in the military, some of them are kind of what you would see in any large institution, physical sector. But the key, the unique piece we see here is administrative

violence. I don't know if you've heard of these terms, but things like painting rocks and sweeping away the rain. That's when a commander will mercilessly ask you to do very trivial and meaningless things for extended periods of time. Or they may lose your leave paperwork or they might not put you on deployment or they may lose your leave paperwork, or they may not put you on deployment, or they may not put you on courses, or you may not get promotions. And so because of that intense discretion and authority that a commander has is one of the principal forms of exploitation of all board members in any military. Oh, wow. Tell us about your journey through life. You grew up in the military, became

a professor. Is this your first book you've written and what others are you have or maybe you're working on? Yeah, I was I said from 1987 to 1995 in the regular army till 92 reserves after that. As I said, I was in the infantry, served in New Guinea and served around the northern parts of Australia. So mainly jungle warfare. Um, I had excellent time. Um, gave me a sense of security and stability after a bit of a rocky childhood. Um, and I learned a lot from it, but you know, as you're doing the military, you also have some traumatic experiences. Um, so that led me to discharge involuntarily or leave involuntarily, um, and pretty much reject, I guess, the military

for about a decade, 10 years while I was studying at uni and learning to be a bit more liberal than I was in the army. One of my experiences in the infantry is a hazing ritual. So I don't know if you've come across the term hazing. I think it is the US term. You get this in these institutions, you know, it's like initiation sort of ritual of rites and it's usually in group, either trying to weed someone out that they don't think should be there or strangely enough, welcome people in that are considered to be part of the team.

Yeah, it's abusing them in doing so. Yeah, I know it's a bit tight, isn't it? But yeah, there's so, I mean, people can love you and still do horrible things to you. And those sort of horrible things are like tying you up and basting you in all sorts of foul substances, taking all your clothes off and dropping you out in the bush and making your run back. Yeah, this is the other thing, Chris, isn't it? I mean, on the one hand, this stuff is really serious and horrible, but there's also a great

sense of humor on the one hand, there's this, this stuff is really serious and horrible, but you know, there's a great, also a great sense of humor in the army. And sometimes this stuff is funny, but then sometimes a little, it'll just be pushed too far and then it creates real issues for people. And you know, I can't understate it, you know, through the interviews we've done, people have lifelong sort of struggles after some of these experiences. So anyway, yeah, yeah, that's right. Or moral injuries, yeah, that's right. Or moral injury as well. Institutional betrayal. Anyway, so as I said before, when I finished my research studies at university

and I went on to do Gummy and academic and then I got to being a justice and multicultural reform for the last two decades. So has the Australian Terri looked into this sort of thing? Has this brought maybe the issue to a forefront for them? Yeah, look, without blowing our horn, my horn, we lifted the lid on this, I lifted the lid on this. We've done the media and raised the awareness. Our research or my research has contributed deeply to the Royal Commission, as I said, but you may not be surprised, the defence forces aren't always that open to the sort

of information or research that we're doing. Globally, as I said, Five-I nations, but globally, I think the US is probably leading the way in terms of reform around this sort of stuff. Although having said that, I think your rates are still rising. So it's just not straightforward. But in Australia, no, a bit of a head in the sand, same in the UK, a bit of a head in the sand. Canada, far more open and New Zealand more open too. But yeah, in my first 10 years, when I was really trying to raise the issue, I received blacklisting from defense and some nasty letters and then

from the sector, you know, some death threats and bad emails and things like that. You see, when you critique, I'm not critiquing the military, I'm saying how can we be a better military? Yeah. How can we do this better? How can we be more healthier mentally for everybody? Yeah, that's it. Yeah, there's a whole thing around retention, recruitment and personnel workplace safety. Yeah, especially nowadays because I mean, I don't know what's going on in Australia, but here in America, a lot of these new kids in the generation, they don't want to join the military. They want to sit home and play video games if they want to get close to the

war. Same here, bro, Chris. We're down by 5,000 in our forces, the British, British the same. And tension is people leaving in droves, retention is very poor. And young people don't want to join. Yeah. And if they don't want to join, then you got no military, you don't have a military. Good luck in this world. Particularly this time, eh? Things going on around the world. Especially nowadays, there's a couple things going on. But yeah, it's really important.

Do you, in the book, do you talk about things the military should do to resolve some of these issues or do you just profile the abuses? No, no, we put it in a policy. We look at it in terms of scandals and inquiries. So it's about organizational reform as well. So when these issues arise, how does the state, the military and civil society respond? And it usually happens through the scandal, so initiation or sexual assault or a physical assault or even outside of abuse, things like procurement and fraud and stuff. Then it hits the newspapers, the media are

usually the ones that act like the fourth estate to really to raise the issue civil society get involved and there's usually a government led inquiry and then from that you know a bunch of recommendations the broad commission just showed that we've had 57 inquiries since 1970 um and about 10 percent of those recommendations have been met. Militaries are not great at dealing with cultural reform. Their focus is usually on administrative responses. So just quickly, the sort of responses you want, the key one is independent scrutiny, which is a highly contentious issue for militaries.

We've had various inquiries at the time that said we need to take the redress of grievances out of the chain of command. That was recommended back in 2005. And the Prime Minister, the Defense Minister and the Chief of the Defense Force at the time vetoed 44 senators recommendation on that front. That recommendation has recently been made again by the Royal Commission. So that's that's the key one. The other one is, and you've got this in the US, but sexual misconduct prevention officers. So if people are exposed to this sort of behavior, they can go to a specialized office. That has had some challenges in Australia with issues of confidentiality that's not, I wouldn't say it's been intensely successful.

Yeah, then there were a bunch of other responses as well. I just don't want to keep on talking forever. Sure. Definitely, you know, I suppose in a military organization, in college, there's these things that go on and I think they just get out of hand. Like, colleges had a thing there where they were having people dying there for a while here in America overhazing events, you know, freshmen entering fraternities and things of that nature. And it really caused a lot of problems because people would send their kids to college to get, you know, tarred feathers and killed, you know, and they send them to go learn stuff and you're like, Oh, I thought

they were at school learning stuff and you know, they're tied up with goats or something. I don't know. Yeah, yeah. The, um, what was I going to say? Um, not sorry, it's gone. That's okay. Maybe it'll come back. The, you know, it's, it's, it's like I said, I'm citing some of the scenes from old school

with the goats. But animal house, that sort of stuff. Was it animal house? Yeah, animal house too. They did hazing in there, you know. Sounds like something that needs to be called out. You know, people, you know, it's hard enough joining the military and surviving that environment, especially when you enter the theater of war.

I mean, you don't need any more brain damage than you're already dealing with really, when it comes down to it, in my opinion. Yeah. I was going to say before, we joined, bright-eyed, bushy-tailed, ready to go, serving the nation, using 17 or 18, maybe 20, 22. Very eager. And we expect, we expect that we might have to put ourselves in harm's way. That's the cost of war. We expect that's the possibility. We don't expect what I call the cost of service, this sort of stuff. It's a bit of harassment or abuse or assault.

Pete Well, that's important and stuff. What haven't we covered that we should talk about in promoting your book or the services you offer. I think you have a website that you offer to help people with these sort of things. John Ligato We are solely a research entity. I established Open Door, improving the wellbeing of veterans, public safety personnel and their families in 2021, nearly four and a half years. We've led some significant national research projects. The way that it works, I guess, is that my aim is to try and build the research and then to work with others that can translate that research into suicide prevention or support for sexual assault

or other things too, though. It's not just, we don't just, you know, not just on this side of things, we do transition. Transition is like a massively important part of military service. It's like I said before, you spend that 12 weeks to 12 months getting socialized into the military. The military is highly scheduled, routinized, everything's covered for you. And then when you leave, at least in Australia, it can be a matter of signing on a dotted line and see you later. And, you know, so we do a lot of work around that, particularly around employment, recognition of prior learning, trying to translate those military skills into civilian skills, which is a difficult thing to do. I mean, you know, you're a gunslinger and then you want to go to the city street

to pick up some other work, you end up getting channeled into security or mining or whatever. So we're trying to create new pathways that allow people when they leave to ask, what do I want to do now? Not how do I do in City Street what I did in the army or in the military. Yeah. And that's really key. I mean, I imagine you guys have the same problems we do with war and the military.

We have a lot of military suicides. I think one, at least one veteran a day kills himself There's a lot they deal with with joblessness homelessness Which is really extraordinary to me because the leadership that we teach in the American military is an extraordinary a version of leadership and autonomy when it comes to If chain-of-command collapses, you know They can still go on their missions and do stuff.

You see the difference between the military and Russia compared to the military for like us. And, you know, these folks were handling multi-billion dollar machines, right? Yeah. You know, they're entrusted with multi-billion dollar machines, they're entrusted with leading and organizing, and they can't find a job when they come back that's just extraordinary to me with that level of leadership that they're taught they're great for organizations and I mean the leadership is trans transposable you know if you learn how

to be a good leader how to command a team how how to get shit done, because that's what the military does. You should be great for running a corporation or being a CEO. So it's a sad fact that this is going on and suicides are so high, et cetera, et cetera, in the military and the veterans. Kevin O'Rourke Yeah. As like I said a few times, we had the Royal commission into it defense and veteran suicide. We don't have a quite the rate of incidents of suicide that you do in the U S and there's a key difference to that. So you're, you have guns and you don't normally survive a gun attempt. Yeah.

Yeah. In Australia, I mean, this is one of the really, we're doing a national study on veteran suicide at the moment and done a hundred interviews But we can do that with people who survive because they're not using the same lethal means that they do in some other places Wow, isn't that is this something? Yeah, that's right. You guys don't have guns over there. You guys said that horrific event I think in the 90s or the 80s. Yeah 96 Port Arthur massacre and you guys got wise. Oh, you think in the 90s or the 80s? Yeah, maybe in 1996, Port Arthur Massacre.

And you guys got wise. You're smarter than us, that's for sure. Anyway, final thoughts as we go out, pitch people on the book, how they can reach out to you on the social media, etc. Sarah? Yeah, sure. We titled the book Warrior Soldier Brigand, and the reason for that is to ask the question, can we have an ethical militarism? Or can an authoritarian institution liberalize? You know, can it not be so, given the nature of its work, obviously, hierarchy, command, authority are really important. But... Pete You can't all vote on who's going to take the hill in the military. John Larkin That's right. Yeah. We're just posing the

question, and not going to very deep into it, we're just posing the question, are you a warrior, a soldier, or a brigand? And what we mean by warrior is not this kind of hyper-masculine tough guy. I mean, this idea of probably more like Eastern philosophy, I suppose, you know, mercy, justice, judicious use of violence. Violence is a last resort. But still, when it comes down to having the capacity to resolve something. Yeah. I mean, it's a hard balance to balance the two because I mean, the pension to kill is a very masculine thing. I mean, it really is. It's, it's in our nature to kill.

We're, we're designed to be killers by nature. We're, we're, you know, we're designed to be protectors and providers. Protector has got to be able to kill. And so it's very easy for us compared to women, but it is a masculine trait. And while I love Eastern philosophy, I wonder if that's really the best way for us to go, because we don't need a bunch of flim flams in the military. And I'm using flim flam as emotionalism and feminist sort of thinking. You need masculine people who can kill and who can respect the meritocracy. So yeah, I don't know. I suppose there's got to be

a way to bridge the gap. Chris, I think all of the Firebys have had some issue with war crimes. It's not a dissimilar thing, right? We had just went through through this we have the Afghanistan war crimes and the Key figure in that Ben Robert Smith was created a defamation case against the news who were reporting, you know sort of trial by media and That you know when you listen to the transcripts of the legal court case for whatever eight weeks or whatever There's two sides to it and one is this the rogue

court case for whatever eight weeks or whatever, there's two sides to it. And one is this, the rogue, brigand, you know, the rape, the pillage. And then there's, there's still this, there's still these special forces guys that are saying, no, I'm here for principle. I didn't come over here to shoot a farmer in the back. I didn't come over here to rape and pillage. I can't, I can't, I have a principled approach to my military action. And I think that's what we're trying to do. And militaries recognize that because they're trying to teach some sort of ethics. So I don't think it has to tip

into everyone being a social worker, no offense to social workers, but you know, soldiers are better with guns than social workers. That's true. Plus most social workers are women. They're not going to shoot anybody. I mean, it's a wonderful thing that women aren't built that way. Thank God they aren't because if women could kill, they would. You ever had your girlfriend or a woman give you that look? She's like, I wish you could, I wish this guy was dead so I can move on. I know Chris Rock does a bit on that and bigger, better blacker.

Anyway, thank you very much for coming to the show. This is a real important aspect. I deal a lot with veterans and we talk about this in some of my gaming communities. I roll with a few veterans in the military and, and, you know, veteran suicide, all these issues are just for people to stand between us and the darkness. There's a lot of shit that goes on in this world. Most people never hear about between military special ops and operations. You know, there's lots of people at the FBI that's being disabled right now in January of 2025. between military special ops and operations.

There's lots of people at the FBI that's being disabled right now in January 2025, that they stop terrorist activities before they can trigger. And I don't think most people realize how much between the military and the Five Eyes, as you mentioned, stands between us and the most evil people on Earth. And they may have some to get through, like 9-11, things like that. There's a lot they stop. And we need to respect that.

Yeah, yeah, and I hope, given the current circumstances, the US retains institutions that do that. Huh? Ha ha, you're so funny. I don't know. We'll be lucky if we survive anything at this point. It's getting weird. Anyway, thank you very much for coming on board, Ben.

We really appreciate you being on the show and sharing the story. Let's all do better at respecting our veterans, everybody out there in the audience. Pick up his book where refined books are sold. Warrior Soldier Brigand. Institutional Abuse Within the Australian Defense Force out July 8th, 2024. Go to Goodreads.com, Fortress of Krisfaus, LinkedIn.com, Fortress of Krisfaus, Krisfaus 1 on the TikTok, you know all those crazy places in the net. Be good to each other. Stay safe. We'll see you next time. Great discussion there, Ben.