Australian War Memorial defends displaying image of Ben Roberts-Smith from which a dead man was cropped out

The picture of Roberts-Smith, who was awarded the Victoria Cross in 2011, shows the veteran standing in a field at Tizak, in the Kandahar Province of Afghanistan. It was taken about a year prior, on the day during which his actions meant he was awarded the Cross.

The image, which hangs in the War Memorial's Hall of Valour, has been edited to remove the dead body of, purportedly, an Afghan man in the foreground.

Shortly before the image was snapped, Roberts-Smith had gone mano a mano with an insurgent and won; an action for which his bravery was lauded.

But Greens senator David Shoebridge questioned the ethical considerations behind displaying the photo.

"Part of the issue with Ben Roberts-Smith is that he liked to have a body count," Senator Shoebridge said during Senate estimates.

"You chose that photo, a staged photo, taken in front of a dead Afghan, to put up in the Hall of Valour. How on earth did that get through any ethical decision-making?

"A staged photo of a bloke, who is famous for wanting his kill count, in front of a dead Afghan," Senator Shoebridge said.

The Federal Court found in a civil defamation case in June 2023 that allegations Roberts-Smith had committed war crimes during the Whiskey 108 mission in 2009 were substantially true.

War Memorial director Matt Anderson told Senator Shoebridge, who has undertaken a similar line of questioning in previous Senate estimates, that the image was "completely unrelated" to the findings against Roberts-Smith.

He said the image was likely cropped because it needed to be "PG-rated", given that children visited the exhibit, and not because of the Federal Court findings, for which Roberts-Smith has since lost a High Court application to challenge.

"[This] predates me, but I imagine they went through in the display of that image related to the fact we are seeking a contemporaneous image of him, and that was the image provided," Mr Anderson said.

"We are there to tell the causes, the consequences and the conduct of war.

There is no sense in the accompanying narrative [the citation] about horrific [Tizak] was for all who were there. I think that's probably why it has been [chosen]," he said.

It is understood that no other images of Victoria Cross recipients on the day of actions for which they received the cross are available in Australia for display.

A new plaque, providing context on Roberts-Smith's court rulings, was ordered by the War Memorial earlier this year.

A line will be added to say: "In September 2025, the High Court of Australia refused Ben Roberts-Smith's application to challenge the Federal Court's ruling. This was the final legal bid to overturn the defamation ruling."

The new plaque will replace the one installed after the Federal Court found in 2023 that there was substantial truth to the allegation that Roberts-Smith had been involved and complicit in unlawful killings in Afghanistan.