THE ARMY WAY

On 3AW this afternoon I started my Drive program like this:

Before we get underway with our regular program some news just in: Five members of a well-known AFL club have been arrested in a major drug bust with Police claiming they have cracked an alleged ecstasy trafficking ring at the club.

Now that I’ve got your attention. If that story were true – and the way things are going one day it will be – it would be on Page one of the newspapers today.

But something like that did happen yesterday and it rated only six or seven paragraphs in The Age and the Herald Sun. The Australian put it in a news brief on Page Ten.

And you have to ask why.  It didn’t involve a footy club. It involved a different sort of club. The Army. Yesterday Police raided the Latchford Army Base, near Wodonga, and arrested five soldiers. A sixth man, a civilian, was also arrested. A quantity of drugs and cash were seized.

The men have variously been charged with trafficking a drug of dependence, possessing illegal drugs, and two were charged with harassing a witness.

All have been bailed to appear in Wodonga Magistrate’s Court on October 30.

The Army, typically, is not talking about it except to say the case is in Police hands and the Australian Defence Force is cooperating.

None of the men have been named. Presumably they have returned to duty at the base.

And you think how differently such cases are handled when military personnel are not involved. If this had been a drug bust in Carlton or Broadmeadows it would have been front page news. Police may have even invited TV camera crews along and the accused drug dealers’ names would certainly have been released. But this is the Army.

Remember, six months ago three off-duty members of the Special Operations Command from the SAS, tragically drowned when their car careered off the road at speed and plunged into deep water at Swan Island after a big night drinking at the Esplanade Hotel in Queenscliff.

It was like pulling teeth getting any information out of the military. And we still have not seen a Coroner’s report, or toxicology reports, on those deaths.

There may be two ways of doing things: the legal way and the Army way. But when they clash. The laws of the land must prevail. And transgressors should be treated no differently to anyone else.

Wednesday, October 10, 2007

©Copyright Derryn Hinch 2007