Ben Roberts-Smith, frontier wars and the Balibo Five: inside the revamped war memorial

April 19, 2026 — 3:00am

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Matt Anderson is the director of the Australian War Memorial, which is about to open its new galleries, once derided as a “Disneyland theme park”.

Fitz: Matt, I do want to explore this week’s opening, as well as the issue of continuing to have the Ben Roberts-Smith Victoria Cross display, but let’s start with your recruitment. Your predecessor in the role, Brendan Nelson, told me that you first came to his attention as a great candidate when, as our ambassador to Afghanistan after a successful career in the army, you’d apply – when home on leave – to come with your son and quietly wash the Tomb of the Unknown Australian Soldier, as part of the regular cleaning program that usually was open to parliamentarians?

MA: That is true, though I had known Brendan previously a little through the diplomatic corps. And as a matter of fact, I remember when I was deputy high commissioner in London, Brendan came through as director of the AWM, and made the pitch for the memorial’s expansion. And I said to him, “Why? Mate, I think the war memorial is perfect.” And his response was, “No, mate, it’s unfinished.” And then he spoke about the need for the expansion of space to tell more stories.

Fitz: Fast forward to 2020, and Brendan successfully pushes for you – despite having no experience of running cultural institutions of any kind – to take over as director of the AWM and be his successor.

MA: I was quite stunned at the opportunity, but yes, Brendan and the then chair, Kerry Stokes, convinced me to apply and it all went from there.

Fitz: That joint background as ambassador to Afghanistan and a former captain in the Australian Army certainly gives you some good credentials to cope with the current controversy over the continued display of Ben Roberts-Smith and his VC, despite him being already judged on a balance of probabilities to have committed murder, and now facing formal charges of being a war criminal. This must be, for you, an absolute minefield?

MA: [Quietly.] You’re talking to a former combat engineer who was a mine warfare instructor and a demolition supervisor, so for me, it’s not a minefield. But it is a case in which the Australian War Memorial has found itself sitting right on a fault line of a very strong national conversation. So it is something that we need to treat as a minefield, where we need to tread very, very carefully, thoughtfully and precisely through.

MA: Ben Robert-Smith’s VC has a date engraved on the back of it, and that’s June 11, 2010. Now, beyond that, a legal process is underway, and in my mind,........

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