Ben Roberts-Smith was back in Sydney's Downing Centre Local Court on Tuesday. Judge Susan Horan cleared him to attend the opening of the new Anzac Hall and Atrium at the Australian War Memorial in Canberra on 23 June. She refused his application to attend a graduation parade at the Singleton Military Area on 26 June. And she reserved her decision on whether his three weekly police reporting visits can shift from a NSW station to one in Brisbane.
The parade refusal came down to one name: Oliver Schulz, the only other Afghanistan veteran charged with a war crime, who was expected at both the parade and the after party. Roberts-Smith's bail bars him from contact with Schulz. The prosecution actually didn't oppose the parade itself, only the Newcastle after party. Judge Horan went further and knocked back both.
Outside court, Channel 9's chief court reporter Tiffiny Genders asked him whether he thought it was appropriate that he attend the War Memorial ceremony.
His answer was short and sharp, as it should be.
"Absolutely. I'm a Victoria Cross recipient."
Why The Anzac Hall Invitation Isn't Unusual
Roberts-Smith is one of four living Australian Victoria Cross recipients. The Victoria Cross for Australia is the nation's highest military honour, awarded for the most conspicuous gallantry in the presence of the enemy, and only a handful have ever been awarded, all for actions in Afghanistan. All four living recipients were invited to the opening of the new Anzac Hall and Atrium. It's the largest expansion of the War Memorial in a generation, and it's dedicated to Australia's service men and women.
Roberts-Smith's own SAS uniform, medals and equipment are part of the Memorial's permanent Hall of Valour display, which sits separately from the Anzac Hall. He didn't put himself on the guest list. He was sent an invitation in the same way the other three living VC holders were.
That's the context the question outside court didn't acknowledge.
The Channel 9 Question Outside Court
The exchange was filmed and broadcast by 9News, then picked up by the Daily Mail. It didn't go unnoticed. Within hours, Kobie Thatcher had posted the footage on X, describing the question as "disgusting" and saying our war heroes deserve better. By the time we published, the post had cleared 65,000 views.
Channel 9 is the network whose newspapers, the Sydney Morning Herald and The Age, ran the original 2018 reporting on Roberts-Smith. He sued over it and lost. Federal Court Justice Anthony Besanko ruled in 2023 that the substance of the articles was substantially true, and his appeals to the Full Federal Court and the High Court were both knocked back.
And there's the arrest itself. When Roberts-Smith was arrested at Sydney Airport on 7 April, a single media crew was there to film it when no other outlet had been told. How that crew came to be standing in a restricted federal zone is now the subject of a referral to the National Anti-Corruption Commission, after the Office of the Special Investigator and the AFP flagged a suspected unauthorised disclosure. AFP Commissioner Krissy Barrett told Senate estimates she's "determined to find out how they knew of the arrest". No outlet has been identified as the crew that filmed the arrest, and the NACC has named no source.
It's Not The First Gotcha This Month
This isn't a one off. A week earlier, Pauline Hanson stepped off a Virgin flight at Perth Airport and a Channel Nine reporter read questions off her phone asking why she hadn't flown on Gina Rinehart's private jet and whether she'd flown "cattle class". Hanson had just walked through the domestic terminal with the rest of the travelling public, so the question answered itself. She declined to engage, told the reporter to get some credibility, and posted the footage herself. By the time the network ran anything, 19,000 people had already watched her version on her own page.
That makes two doorstops in two weeks from the same network, and in both the reporter arrived with a gotcha, the subject answered it in a sentence, and the clip the public actually watched was the one the subject posted themselves. Hanson stepped off a commercial Virgin flight, while Roberts-Smith was attending as one of four living holders of the Victoria Cross.
On the evidence of the last fortnight, Channel Nine has a question problem.
The $700,000 Nine Paid To Keep A Witness Quiet
The Person 17 payment isn't a footnote. In January 2025, Nine paid $700,000 to a confidential witness in the Roberts-Smith case, known only as Person 17, a week before his defamation appeal was due to be heard. Nine then tried to keep the payment secret for 50 years. Federal Court judge Nye Perram lifted that suppression order in February 2026.
Person 17, who was in a relationship with Roberts-Smith, had sent a series of emails to Nine executives alleging that the network's lead reporter Nick McKenzie had treated her poorly and had wrongfully obtained parts of Roberts-Smith's privileged legal strategy during the case. That's her allegation, set out in correspondence reported by The Nightly and others. McKenzie has not been found by any court to have done what she alleges.
A secret recording of a conversation between Person 17 and McKenzie was later aired by Sky News. After it aired, Nine demanded the $700,000 back, accusing her of leaking the audio and breaching her confidentiality agreement. She denies leaking it.
It's also the network whose chair Catherine West refused to answer questions last year, when confronted by 7News, about the payment.
What The Court Actually Decided
Judge Horan barred Roberts-Smith from discussing the criminal cases against himself or against fellow accused Oliver Schulz at the Anzac Hall event. Federal prosecutor Simon Buchen SC didn't oppose his attendance at the opening, and didn't oppose his attendance at the Singleton graduation parade either. The parade was for Henry Diddams, the son of Roberts-Smith's late SAS colleague Sergeant Blaine Diddams, who was killed fighting the Taliban in 2012. Roberts-Smith has mentored Henry since his father's death.
The judge overruled the prosecution on the parade. She said there was a risk Roberts-Smith would come into contact with Schulz, who has pleaded not guilty to a separate war crime murder charge and whose trial is scheduled for early 2027.
Roberts-Smith's barrister Slade Howell told the court his client's bail bars him from contact with anyone who served in Afghanistan at the same time he did. Howell said that condition could cover thousands of people, including non-combat staff like mechanics and lawyers, and that Roberts-Smith "could not possibly know every person potentially covered". Buchen replied that the risk wasn't theoretical, and that if Roberts-Smith had to limit his communication at the ceremony, so be it.
The Brisbane Reporting Question Still Sits With The Court
Roberts-Smith is currently required to live at a registered address on the Gold Coast and report to a NSW police station three times a week. His lawyers want him to move to Brisbane to be closer to his twin teenage daughters and his partner Sarah Matulin, whose parents want to move back into the property they had been lending the couple. The address change wasn't opposed.
What's still on the table is whether the police reporting station can also move to Brisbane. Queensland police have agreed to take it on. Federal prosecutor Buchen opposed the change, saying only the NSW Police Force could enforce the bail conditions imposed. Judge Horan pointed out Roberts-Smith already reports to a station in Perth when he travels there to see his lawyer and parents, and floated cutting the three visits a week to two, which the prosecution rejected. She asked both sides to return next Tuesday to argue it out.
His original bail was granted in April after his father, former Western Australia Supreme Court judge Len Roberts-Smith, put up a $250,000 surety.
Where The Criminal Matter Sits
Roberts-Smith is yet to enter pleas to any of the five war crime murder charges laid against him in April. The presumption of innocence applies. His matter is expected to be relisted later this year as the prosecution works through National Security Information Act delays.
As Roberts-Smith left court for the lunch break, surrounded by camera crews, someone in the scrum called out: "Leave him alone."
