Following the collapse of Afghanistan’s military and the Taliban’s takeover of Kabul, the US and its allies are accelerating efforts to evacuate their citizens and Afghan refugees. Brendan Nicholson speaks to Peter Jennings about how the security situation deteriorated so rapidly, the short- and long-term security risks for the country, as well as how China might look to engage with the Taliban.

Governments across the globe are grappling with how to deal with disinformation-for-hire operations and cyber-enabled foreign interference. The challenges posed by disinformation are explored in a new ASPI report, Influence for hire: the Asia–Pacific’s online shadow economy. Jake Wallis, Ariel Bogle and Albert Zhang discuss the dangers of a manipulated information environment in the region and how policymakers should respond.

Teagan Westendorf speaks to Ariel Bogle about her new report, Buying and selling extremism: new funding opportunities in the right-wing extremist online ecosystem. They discuss the de-platforming of extremists and the different ways the far right is raising money.

Last week, with little fanfare, Australia’s last six soldiers departed Kabul on a RAAF aircraft. Australia shut up its intelligence and diplomatic presence in Afghanistan. Incredibly, it’s now been reported that Foreign Affairs Minister Marise Payne is inclined to stage a careful return of diplomatic and intelligence officers to Afghanistan.

The minister’s spokesperson went further by stating the withdrawal was ‘always expected to be temporary, with the intention of resuming a permanent presence once circumstances permit’.

If our commitment to the two-decade war in Afghanistan was about preventing the country from becoming a terrorist base, then the re-establishment of a diplomatic and intelligence post in Kabul is all but inevitable. But how did we end up in this situation so soon?

Americans had become increasingly unhappy with the expenditure of US blood and treasure in Afghanistan. Osama bin Laden was no more, and al-Qaeda had quietly slipped from the media and the front of mind of Americans and Australians alike. For the broader American population, the painful memory of the 9/11 attacks had been obscured behind the fresher memory of what operations in Afghanistan have cost them.

For years, the thread connecting Afghanistan with the global threat of terrorism has been increasingly difficult to maintain.

President Joe Biden’s July announcement that US military operations would cease was hardly a surprise. However, the 31 August deadline was probably a bolt from the blue requiring rapid decisions by US allies, Australia included.

Biden justified the speedy drawdown by arguing ‘the United States did what we went to do in Afghanistan’. That was to destroy the 9/11 terrorists, leadership and supporting networks, and to ‘degrade the terrorist threat’ so Afghanistan wouldn’t be a base from which attacks on the US could be organised.

Not to ‘nation-build’.

But he also said there’d be no ‘mission accomplished’ celebration. That belies the truth that nation-building in Afghanistan is fundamental to reducing the conditions in this profoundly broken country that terrorists have historically exploited to organise, train and mobilise their ranks.

Fifty years of experience suggests that a return to these conditions will see Afghanistan again hosting groups such as the Islamic State in the north, which are reportedly growing and which threaten to destabilise the region.

China and Russia may seek to use Afghanistan to further their geostrategic interests. All of this will ensure that Afghanistan remains broken.

So, how could the factors encouraging terrorism be removed if nation-building wasn’t central to the US and allies’ mission? With Biden’s decision, Australia faced a tough decision. Could we protect our diplomats and intelligence officers as the US departed and the Taliban advanced? Clearly, no.

What a difference a week can make.

That 650 US troops remain in Kabul to protect their embassy may have contributed to Australia’s change of heart.

We are unlikely ever to know the full reason Australia is planning to return as fast as it left, but the clear thing that has changed in the past week has been the Chinese Communist Party’s commitment to be involved in Afghanistan. China’s foreign affairs minister, Wang Yi, said as much at a press conference on 13 July and in a Ministry of Foreign Affairs story posted online that day, when he pledged China’s support for all parties in Afghanistan.

China has shown interest in filling some of the economic and diplomatic void left by the US departure. The CCP has an interest in developing diplomatic ties with Afghanistan to lessen the likelihood of the Taliban supporting Muslim Uyghurs in Xinjiang. It would also be keen to ensure that a resurgent Taliban doesn’t disrupt its Belt and Road initiatives in Pakistan.

These economic and security concerns will both be served if a Taliban-led government is able to suppress the growing Islamic State elements in the nation’s north. Russian officials say Islamic State is focused on destabilising central Asia rather than agitating for domestic change. If it gathers strength, it could spell trouble for a new Taliban administration trying to secure the state.

The CCP is also eager to increase Chinese economic investment in Afghanistan, especially if it can secure access to its unexploited reserves of copper, coal, iron, gas, cobalt, mercury, gold, lithium and thorium.

With Australia’s increased focus on the Indo-Pacific, neither the intelligence nor diplomatic community can afford to have a blind spot in Afghanistan that crosses both geopolitical and terrorist threats.

Technical intelligence collection, including signals intelligence, will likely remain valuable. However, nothing beats having boots on the ground, especially in a country where little makes sense from afar.

Originally published 19 November 2020.

After a four-year-long investigation into allegation that members of Australian special forces committed war crimes in Afghanistan, 25 soldiers stand accused of murdering 39 unarmed Afghan civilians or prisoners and cruelly treating two others.

Some of the soldiers are still serving in the Australian Defence Force.

The inquiry led by New South Wales Supreme Court judge Paul Brereton, a major general in the Army Reserve, found credible information about 23 incidents in which one or more non-combatants or prisoners were unlawfully killed by or at the direction of Australian soldiers in circumstances which, if accepted by a jury, would be the war crime of murder.

Some of these incidents involved a single victim, and some multiple victims.

The report, released by the chief of the ADF, General Angus Campbell, said a total of 25 current or former Australian Defence Force personnel were perpetrators, either as principals or accessories, some of them on a single occasion and a few on multiple occasions.

None of these incidents occurred under pressure in the heat of battle, the report said.

Campbell said the ADF was rightly held to account for allegations of grave misconduct by some members of its special forces community during operations in Afghanistan and the report detailed credible information regarding deeply disturbing allegations of unlawful killings by some.

‘To the people of Afghanistan, on behalf of the Australian Defence Force, I sincerely and unreservedly apologise for any wrongdoing by Australian soldiers. I have spoken directly to my Afghan counterpart, General Zia, to convey this message.’

Brereton’s report said that overwhelmingly, the special forces soldiers performed skilfully, effectively and courageously. Because of their role, they formed a disproportionately high percentage of ADF members killed or wounded in action in Afghanistan, and there is a long tail of consequential mental health issues which continue to emerge.

But in 2014, a number of issues emerged in Special Operations Command, including rumours that war crimes had been committed by some members of the Special Operations Task Group (SOTG).

In March 2016, Campbell, then chief of the army, asked the inspector-general of the ADF to inquire into ‘“unsubstantiated stories” of possible crimes (illegal killings and inhumane and unlawful treatment of detainees) over a lengthy period of time in the course of the Special Operations Task Group deployments in Afghanistan; the cultural normalisation of deviance from professional standards within Special Operations Command, including intentional inaccuracy in operational reporting related to possible crimes; a culture of silence within Special Operations Command; the deliberate undermining, isolation and removal from Special Operations Command units of some individuals who tried to address this rumoured conduct and culture; and a systemic failure, including of commanders and legal officers at multiple levels within the command, to report or investigate the stories as required by Defence policies’.

These issues were raised with Campbell by the then chief of Special Operations Command, Major General Jeff Sengelman, and civilian sociologist Dr Samantha Crompvoets.

This investigation was not a criminal trial and it could not find guilt in any individual case. But Brereton said in his report that if what the inquiry has found was taken collectively, the answer to the question of whether there was substance to rumours of war crimes by some special forces soldiers ‘must sadly be yes, there is’.

In a report that will be deeply troubling to the ADF, the army and the nation, some sections are profoundly chilling.

The inquiry found credible information that some patrol commanders ‘blooded’ junior soldiers by ordering them to achieve their first kill by shooting a prisoner.

This would happen after a target compound had been secured, and local people were ‘under control’. ‘Typically, the patrol commander would take a person under control and the junior member, who would then be directed to kill the person under control’, the report said.

That was combined with a practice adopted by some soldiers of carrying ‘throwdowns’—easily concealable foreign weapons or equipment such as pistols, small handheld radios, weapon magazines and grenades—which would be placed with the body when the person killed was found to be unarmed.

Then a cover story was created for operational reporting and to deflect scrutiny. ‘This was reinforced with a code of silence’, the report said. That meant the dead person could be identified as an ‘enemy killed in action’ and therefore a legitimate target.

In some cases, that practice also served to enable a unit to outscore other patrols in numbers of ‘enemy’ killed in action. The report says it ‘probably originated for the less egregious though still dishonest purpose of avoiding scrutiny where a person who was legitimately engaged turned out not to be armed. But it evolved to be used for the purpose of concealing deliberate unlawful killings.’

Subordinates complied for a number of reasons. To a junior SAS trooper, the patrol commander is a ‘demigod’, who can make or break their career. The trooper is trained to obey and to implement their commander’s intent. ‘To such a trooper, who has invested a great deal in gaining entry into the SASR, the prospect of being characterised as a “lemon” and not doing what was expected of them was a terrible one, which could jeopardise everything for which they had worked.’

Further, the report said, these men were in a foreign environment, far from the influence of the norms of ordinary Australian society, where the incident could be compartmentalised as something that happened outside the wire to stay outside the wire.

‘In that context, some individuals who would have believed themselves incapable of such behaviour were influenced to commit egregious crimes. It is clear to the Inquiry that at least some of them have regretted it, and have been struggling with the concomitant moral injury, ever since.’

On the issue of who knew about these atrocities, the report says: ‘There is no credible information that troop, squadron and task group commanders either knew or suspected that these things were happening, and that they did not fail to take reasonable steps which could have prevented or discovered them. However, what is described in this chapter is possibly the most disgraceful episode in Australia’s military history, and the commanders at troop, squadron and task group level bear moral command responsibility for what happened under their command, regardless of personal fault.’

The report said it was in soldiers’ parent units and subunits that the cultures and attitudes that enabled misconduct were bred, ‘and it is with the commanders of the domestic units who enabled that, rather than with the SOTG commanders, that greater responsibility rests’.

Of all the armed conflicts in which Australia has been involved, the war in Afghanistan was the longest.

The report said the position of the SASR troop commanders called for some sympathy as it was a difficult one.

‘Invariably, they were on their first SOTG deployment. They were in an environment in which the non-commissioned officers had achieved ascendancy, just as they had from their role as gatekeepers to SAS selection, and their extended role when new officers were “under training” and thus regularly subordinate to them. They were not well-mentored, but were rather left to swim or sink. Those who did try to wrestle back some control were ostracised, and often did not receive the support of superior officers.’

The report says a substantial indirect responsibility falls upon those in the SAS who embraced or fostered a ‘warrior culture’ and the clique of non-commissioned officers who propagated it.

‘Some domestic commanders of SASR bear significant responsibility for contributing to the environment in which war crimes were committed, most notably those who embraced or fostered the warrior culture and empowered, or did not restrain, the clique of non-commissioned officers who propagated it.

‘That responsibility is to some extent shared by those who, in misconceived loyalty to their Regiment, or their mates, have not been prepared to “call out” criminal conduct or, even to this day, decline to accept that it occurred in the face of incontrovertible evidence, or seek to offer obscure and unconvincing justifications and mitigations for it.’

Brereton has recommended that a significant number of cases be referred to the Australian Federal Police for formal investigation.

That has been accepted by General Campbell.

How could 39 alleged unlawful killings of Afghan people by members of Australia’s special forces have occurred over years while no officer in command of those soldiers knew about or had reasonable grounds to suspect the crimes?

The Afghanistan inquiry conducted by Major General Paul Brereton gives us four main answers. There’s the one we heard this week from Chief of Army Rick Burr on 60 Minutes: soldiers in the small teams operating ‘outside the wire’ concealed the crimes from everyone else. It’s this narrative that has caught the popular imagination, even as we sense that it is insufficient to explain what happened and why.

The Brereton report sets out three other big reasons why the crimes went undiscovered, with plenty of supporting material even in the redacted version. All three go well beyond the culpable soldiers and take us away from simply blaming the behaviour and acts of a few.

All three have consequences for how our military, the broader defence organisation, and the system of engagement with the members of our parliament operate.

Obviously, these events must be put in the context of a brutal conflict that only those who fought it can really appreciate. But that doesn’t excuse the rest of us from working to make future operations less likely to leave the same legacy.

The first factor is that operational reporting by the special operations task group in Uruzgan was not accurate. Tactical reports of raids on villagers and the events that involved killing of Afghans—combatants, non-combatants and prisoners—were sanitised and falsified to conform with the rules of engagement (ROE). Descriptions were added by legal officers that put key words and phrases into the mouths of those reporting the events to satisfy the ROE. The Brereton report says: ‘This became so routine that operational reporting had a “boilerplate” flavour, and was routinely embellished, and sometimes outright fabricated, although the authors of the reports did not necessarily know that to be so, because they were provided with false input.’

The authors did know what boilerplate language to use, though. As Brereton says, ‘It is apparent that legal officers have contributed to the embellishment of operational reporting so that it plainly demonstrated apparent compliance with the ROE.’

Sanitising operational reporting so that no inquiries would be ordered from above let the deployed personnel—including the soldiers raiding villages—know that it was okay, and even normal practice, to distort reporting to avoid scrutiny. That corrosive message enabled greater misconduct.

The second, perhaps bigger, issue is that the special forces command and legal officers frustrated and interfered with most—if not all—of Defence’s internal investigations, whether through the Australian Defence Force Investigative Service, inquiry officer inquiries or quick assessments. Brereton puts this politely in the report, observing, ‘A balance needs to be struck between the lawful rights of defence members and the support of the investigation of criminal and disciplinary offences.’ That balance was not struck within the command.

Part of this was the tendency to invoke secrecy requirements as preventing disclosure, even though they don’t extend to concealing potentially criminal conduct. The larger problem was that the report found a pattern when internal investigations were underway. Of one case Brereton says, ‘[T]here is little doubt that the [higher ADF] command intention to have an investigation was, if not frustrated, at least inhibited.’ More broadly, he observes that investigators’ ‘attempts were frustrated by outright deceit by those who knew the truth, and, not infrequently, misguided resistance to inquiries and investigations by their superiors’.

Frustrating the investigations led to the numerous inquiries and assessments responding to allegations by Afghan villagers, Afghan government officials and human rights groups not being substantiated. That’s not surprising, as the investigators were unable to gather and assess evidence that would do anything else. And the inconclusive outcomes of these frustrated inquiries were then used as a shield to deny problems in the command.

The Brereton report also shows the corroded standards widespread in the special forces task forces, captured in the word ‘throwdowns’. The term appears in the redacted report 60 times, which tells us a lot. It might well be the start of the trail of concealment that allowed misconduct culminating in murders. Perhaps it’s because the Brereton team was immersed in its work for four and a half years years that the term is used so unremarkably.

‘Throwdowns’ included pistols, assault rifles, grenades and radios of the types used by the Taliban that special forces soldiers carried to plant at the scenes of their operations as fabricated evidence to support false reporting. That allowed them to do things that the ROE did not permit.

Brereton says that the practice seems to have begun because deployed personnel thought the rules were unworkable, so instead of seeking changes they worked around them. On ‘throwdowns’, he observes that ‘interviews taken over a number of years build up a picture of their use gradually becoming an acceptable practice to solve this real problem on the ground’. The practice was fundamental to concealing unlawful killings, because photos and reports could include the (false) fact that a dead Afghan was armed or had a radio used to communicate with the Taliban. Placing ‘throwdowns’ was allowed to continue for years and was ‘widespread’.

So, these three factors—planting false evidence, sanitisation and fabrication of reporting, and frustration of and interference with inquiries by special forces command and its legal officers— explain why it has taken until now to get a body of evidence that will result in criminal charges against individuals.

It’s no doubt true that, as Andrew Hastie says, along with the small group of soldiers who committed crimes a parallel, more positive warrior culture persisted in the special forces, ‘it just wasn’t the prevailing one at the time’. It’s also no doubt true that ‘there were acts of command moral courage during the period investigated by the Brereton inquiry’. And, Hastie notes, ‘History won’t record these good deeds the way it will the battlefield criminality of a few, but there were junior leaders … who made hard decisions to uphold the sacred trust reposed in them by the Australian people.’

We can recognise this and yet we still need to understand what happened, not just in the villages and fields of Afghanistan, but ‘inside the wire’ and in the reporting chain, if we are to learn from the crimes and make future ones less likely.

Whether the motives of those involved in distorting reports and in frustrating internal investigations was anything more than protecting people they were intensely loyal to and trusted absolutely is important, but in a way, it doesn’t matter. The effect was to create cover for unlawful killings and other crimes for years.

That wider operational and command environment is the subject of recommendations by Brereton; however, it’s hard to see these as sufficient. They may even be counterproductive. The recommendation to create a parallel reporting structure for soldiers with allegations sounds smart given the experience in Afghanistan. But that proposal accepts that reporting through the chain of command will be false and so a parallel channel is required. It also seems to accept that complicating  and frustrating investigations out of loyalty to colleagues and those you command is almost in the nature of the command chain and reporting process. Both assumptions, if true, cut to the heart of how command can be exercised in any meaningful way.

So, Lieutenant General Burr was right to say that tightly knit small groups concealed their unlawful acts. As Brereton says, ‘[T]he criminal behaviour of a few was commenced, committed, continued and concealed at the patrol commander level’. It’s also true that the reporting and the command that wrapped around them helped this go on for so long by protecting and enabling these acts.

Transparency in reporting is not a hindrance. As Hastie says, that can help deal with the nasty reality that people will do bad things when left unaccountable. Another lesson is that local workarounds to unworkable policies from on high can reach well beyond the original problem they seem to solve.

That’s a sobering message to many of us who have scratched our heads about head office directives in many fields of human endeavour. It’s a challenge to how higher-level instructions are formed, implemented and open to change through the experience of those doing the implementation.

Last, no command or even hierarchical relationships can work effectively without trust, but leadership requires more than blind trust in the team. Some dose of Reaganism—‘trust but verify’— is healthy both for the leaders and for those whom they trust and direct.

Brereton’s work goes well beyond the small group of soldiers who will face charges. It’s expecting too much of the report for it to not just do the forensic investigative work but to also come up with all the right solutions.

We have a shared responsibility to rethink the design of strategy, policy and operations and to bake in transparency and accountability in new ways that work to the benefit of those who bear the enormous responsibilities of serving our country in conflict.

It’s worth reading beyond the horrific descriptions, even in the redacted report, and looking for the deeper reasons that drove us to this point.

After a four-year-long investigation into allegation that members of Australian special forces committed war crimes in Afghanistan, 25 soldiers stand accused of murdering 39 unarmed Afghan civilians or prisoners and cruelly treating two others.

Some of the soldiers are still serving in the Australian Defence Force.

The inquiry led by New South Wales Supreme Court judge Paul Brereton, a major general in the Army Reserve, found credible information about 23 incidents in which one or more non-combatants or prisoners were unlawfully killed by or at the direction of Australian soldiers in circumstances which, if accepted by a jury, would be the war crime of murder.

Some of these incidents involved a single victim, and some multiple victims.

The report, released by the chief of the ADF, General Angus Campbell, said a total of 25 current or former Australian Defence Force personnel were perpetrators, either as principals or accessories, some of them on a single occasion and a few on multiple occasions.

None of these incidents occurred under pressure in the heat of battle, the report said.

Campbell said the ADF was rightly held to account for allegations of grave misconduct by some members of its special forces community during operations in Afghanistan and the report detailed credible information regarding deeply disturbing allegations of unlawful killings by some.

‘To the people of Afghanistan, on behalf of the Australian Defence Force, I sincerely and unreservedly apologise for any wrongdoing by Australian soldiers. I have spoken directly to my Afghan counterpart, General Zia, to convey this message.’

Brereton’s report said that overwhelmingly, the special forces soldiers performed skilfully, effectively and courageously. Because of their role, they formed a disproportionately high percentage of ADF members killed or wounded in action in Afghanistan, and there is a long tail of consequential mental health issues which continue to emerge.

But in 2014, a number of issues emerged in Special Operations Command, including rumours that war crimes had been committed by some members of the Special Operations Task Group (SOTG).

In March 2016, Campbell, then chief of the army, asked the inspector-general of the ADF to inquire into ‘“unsubstantiated stories” of possible crimes (illegal killings and inhumane and unlawful treatment of detainees) over a lengthy period of time in the course of the Special Operations Task Group deployments in Afghanistan; the cultural normalisation of deviance from professional standards within Special Operations Command, including intentional inaccuracy in operational reporting related to possible crimes; a culture of silence within Special Operations Command; the deliberate undermining, isolation and removal from Special Operations Command units of some individuals who tried to address this rumoured conduct and culture; and a systemic failure, including of commanders and legal officers at multiple levels within the command, to report or investigate the stories as required by Defence policies’.

These issues were raised with Campbell by the then chief of Special Operations Command, Major General Jeff Sengelman, and civilian sociologist Dr Samantha Crompvoets.

This investigation was not a criminal trial and it could not find guilt in any individual case. But Brereton said in his report that if what the inquiry has found was taken collectively, the answer to the question of whether there was substance to rumours of war crimes by some special forces soldiers ‘must sadly be yes, there is’.

In a report that will be deeply troubling to the ADF, the army and the nation, some sections are profoundly chilling.

The inquiry found credible information that some patrol commanders ‘blooded’ junior soldiers by ordering them to achieve their first kill by shooting a prisoner.

This would happen after a target compound had been secured, and local people were ‘under control’. ‘Typically, the patrol commander would take a person under control and the junior member, who would then be directed to kill the person under control’, the report said.

That was combined with a practice adopted by some soldiers of carrying ‘throwdowns’—easily concealable foreign weapons or equipment such as pistols, small handheld radios, weapon magazines and grenades—which would be placed with the body when the person killed was found to be unarmed.

Then a cover story was created for operational reporting and to deflect scrutiny. ‘This was reinforced with a code of silence’, the report said. That meant the dead person could be identified as an ‘enemy killed in action’ and therefore a legitimate target.

In some cases, that practice also served to enable a unit to outscore other patrols in numbers of ‘enemy’ killed in action. The report says it ‘probably originated for the less egregious though still dishonest purpose of avoiding scrutiny where a person who was legitimately engaged turned out not to be armed. But it evolved to be used for the purpose of concealing deliberate unlawful killings.’

Subordinates complied for a number of reasons. To a junior SAS trooper, the patrol commander is a ‘demigod’, who can make or break their career. The trooper is trained to obey and to implement their commander’s intent. ‘To such a trooper, who has invested a great deal in gaining entry into the SASR, the prospect of being characterised as a “lemon” and not doing what was expected of them was a terrible one, which could jeopardise everything for which they had worked.’

Further, the report said, these men were in a foreign environment, far from the influence of the norms of ordinary Australian society, where the incident could be compartmentalised as something that happened outside the wire to stay outside the wire.

‘In that context, some individuals who would have believed themselves incapable of such behaviour were influenced to commit egregious crimes. It is clear to the Inquiry that at least some of them have regretted it, and have been struggling with the concomitant moral injury, ever since.’

On the issue of who knew about these atrocities, the report says: ‘There is no credible information that troop, squadron and task group commanders either knew or suspected that these things were happening, and that they did not fail to take reasonable steps which could have prevented or discovered them. However, what is described in this chapter is possibly the most disgraceful episode in Australia’s military history, and the commanders at troop, squadron and task group level bear moral command responsibility for what happened under their command, regardless of personal fault.’

The report said it was in soldiers’ parent units and subunits that the cultures and attitudes that enabled misconduct were bred, ‘and it is with the commanders of the domestic units who enabled that, rather than with the SOTG commanders, that greater responsibility rests’.

Of all the armed conflicts in which Australia has been involved, the war in Afghanistan was the longest.

The report said the position of the SASR troop commanders called for some sympathy as it was a difficult one.

‘Invariably, they were on their first SOTG deployment. They were in an environment in which the non-commissioned officers had achieved ascendancy, just as they had from their role as gatekeepers to SAS selection, and their extended role when new officers were “under training” and thus regularly subordinate to them. They were not well-mentored, but were rather left to swim or sink. Those who did try to wrestle back some control were ostracised, and often did not receive the support of superior officers.’

The report says a substantial indirect responsibility falls upon those in the SAS who embraced or fostered a ‘warrior culture’ and the clique of non-commissioned officers who propagated it.

‘Some domestic commanders of SASR bear significant responsibility for contributing to the environment in which war crimes were committed, most notably those who embraced or fostered the warrior culture and empowered, or did not restrain, the clique of non-commissioned officers who propagated it.

‘That responsibility is to some extent shared by those who, in misconceived loyalty to their Regiment, or their mates, have not been prepared to “call out” criminal conduct or, even to this day, decline to accept that it occurred in the face of incontrovertible evidence, or seek to offer obscure and unconvincing justifications and mitigations for it.’

Brereton has recommended that a significant number of cases be referred to the Australian Federal Police for formal investigation.

That has been accepted by General Campbell.