Feuding journo and veteran stare down over taped call
Adelaide Lang |
A decorated journalist says he was “utterly surprised” when a recording of a secret call emerged amid his legal battle with alleged war criminal Ben Roberts-Smith.
Nick McKenzie portrayed the former elite soldier as a war criminal in reports he penned for Nine newspapers in 2018 – a claim which a judge later found was true on the balance of probabilities.
But a secretly recorded call in which the journalist claims he “breached my f***ing ethics” sparked a fresh bid by Roberts-Smith to overturn the war criminal finding.
In the call, McKenzie tells a former lover of Roberts-Smith that the soldier’s ex-wife and her best friend Danielle Scott were “actively briefing” him on the former soldier’s legal strategy.
“I was utterly surprised,” McKenzie on Friday said about the secret recording that emerged in March.
Yet he accepted the ex-lover had raised concerns about his ethics and claimed he had shared privileged information with her when she threatened to sue him and Nine over their conduct in the case.
The award-winning journalist accepted that receiving legally privileged information would be wrong but maintained he had never possessed such information.
He said he had shared all relevant information with his lawyers, who did not advise him the information was privileged or that he had acted improperly.
Roberts-Smith’s lawyer Arthur Moses SC asked whether McKenzie had considered how Ms Scott knew about Roberts-Smith’s legal tactics.
The journalist replied it was a natural conclusion the information was “hearsay” that had arisen when the soldier’s ex-wife was “gossiping” to her best friend, who in turn told him.
McKenzie resisted suggestions from Mr Moses that he was lying or trying to deceive the Federal Court.
As he strode out of the courtroom in Sydney after five long hours of cross-examination, the journalist locked eyes with Roberts-Smith and the pair exchanged a cold look.
Roberts-Smith rose to prominence in 2011 after he was awarded Australia’s highest military honour, the Victoria Cross, for single-handedly taking out machine-gun posts to protect pinned-down colleagues in Afghanistan.
But his reputation was tarnished in 2018 when McKenzie wrote explosive reports alleging the special forces veteran was complicit in the murder of four unarmed men during his deployment in Afghanistan.
In June 2023, Justice Anthony Besanko found the reports had been proven on the balance of probabilities – a lower standard than in a criminal proceeding.
An appeal against those findings was heard in early-2024.
But Roberts-Smith has claimed this week McKenzie’s alleged use of unlawfully obtained details should also be considered before the court decides on the appeal.
Audio of part of the call was sent anonymously to Roberts-Smith’s lawyers in an email titled “Secret McKenzie recording” after the hearing concluded.
“We’re not learning like we anticipated most of it. One or two things now we know, which is helpful,” McKenzie is recorded saying.
“I shouldn’t tell you. I’ve just breached my f***ing ethics in doing that, like this has put me in a s*** position now.”
McKenzie, who has won 16 Walkley Awards, admitted in evidence on Thursday that he had “on occasion” used deceptive methods to obtain information in his role as a journalist if the matter was in the public interest.
“I try to act within the law. There (are) occasion(s) where as a journalist there can be things that you might do that conflict with the law,” the journalist said.
Closing submissions on the bid to re-open the appeal were heard on Friday afternoon.
A decision is expected at a later date.
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