ALL BETS ARE OFF

Back in May it was a helluva story. Had everything. Sex, betting, and men in uniform. You’ll remember it. The story first broke on Channel Seven and was picked up by the newspapers and talkback radio. Sailors on board our biggest ship, HMAS Supply, were running a contest called The Ledger, in which they bet money on who could get have sex with the most female sailors. And you got more points if you scored with an officer or a lesbian. And if you did it on a pool table.

What a sex scandal. And, for once it didn’t involve drunken football players and gang rape.

Three of the crew of the Navy flagship were off-loaded in Singapore and sent home. The ship’s commander told his crew that ‘a rotten core’ had been removed from the ship.

The Navy said: ‘The individuals were removed from the ship after an equity and diversity health check, which led to a formal inquiry being initiated.

During the equity and diversity health check a number of concerns were raised by female crew members. These concerns are now subject to formal inquiry.’

So, six months later what’s happened? Nothing much even though it now turns out nothing much happened on the HMAS Supply either.

Apparently the Navy knew with days of that story breaking about the sexual sweepstakes that the story wasn’t true. That the allegations were made by an aggrieved crew mate of the now humiliated trio.

A Navy lawyer appointed to represent the accused men apparently raised questions as to why his clients had been landed and sent home before the allegations were tested. He received no reply for months and was then pulled aside by his superiors and told to remember he worked for Navy Command and not to refer to the accused sailors as his ‘clients’.

That lawyer has now been posted to Western Australian even though his wife works in New South Wales.

Meanwhile no official report has been released and those sailors remain land-locked. Their careers in limbo and probably in tatters. Opposition Defence spokesman David Johnson says

‘These men love being in the Navy and they love their jobs, and this whole sorry business has illustrated that Defence has a long way to go in the administration of military justice.’

Senator Johnson is right. Even if it puts egg on their faces rather than more scrambled eggs on their caps the Navy brass must come clean.

Tuesday, October 27, 2009

© Copyright Derryn Hinch 2009