Federal Court Justice Anthony Besanko has found the articles at the centre of SAS veteran Ben Roberts-Smith’s defamation case conveyed almost every defamatory imputation alleged by him.

Besanko has dismissed the proceedings, after finding The Age, The Sydney Morning Herald and The Canberra Times have proven some allegations of war crimes against Roberts-Smith.

Journalist Nick McKenzie, who wrote the articles with fellow award-winning investigative journalist Chris Masters, took to social media moments after the court’s decision, tweeting simply: “Justice.”

Besanko found the news outlets had established the substantial truth of the key allegation in the case: that Roberts-Smith was involved in the unlawful killing of unarmed Afghan prisoners.

While not every murder allegation was established by the newspapers, the judge found they had proven some of those alleged killings had taken place. It was sufficient for Besanko to dismiss Roberts-Smith’s lawsuit.

Karen Percy, who is media president of the Media, Entertainment and Arts Alliance, described the ruling as a “big and important win for journalism and press freedom in Australia”.

“It upholds the media’s important role in undertaking public interest investigations [and] in the public’s right to know.”

The Medical Board of Australia’s chair has warned health start-ups not to look for loopholes in its crackdown on prescribing drugs via online quizzes and forms, citing a series of cases where patients have got the wrong medicine or dose after a digital consultation.

Some start-ups privately view the rules, revealed by this masthead on Wednesday, as allowing them to keep prescribing via a quiz or form if one of their doctors has previously spoken to a patient over the phone or via video call.

Board chair Dr Anne Tonkin said that approach may not even be a “minimal standard of compliance” and urged doctors to comply with the spirit of the rules, as well as the letter.

“We are in the process over the last few years really of dealing with ... groups of doctors involved with businesses that are looking for loopholes,” said Tonkin, without naming any companies. “That’s not been the case so much in the past. We’ve been able to rely on doctors to behave ethically and to want to behave ethically, not to want to find loopholes.”

A host of start-ups have opened their doors in the last five years that let patients get popular drugs, such as Viagra equivalents and weight loss injections, via an online quiz or form that is checked off by a doctor who can ask the patient written questions.

Read the full story here.

James Chessell, Nine’s managing director of publishing, has welcomed the Federal Court’s decision to throw out the defamation case brought by SAS veteran Ben Roberts-Smith as a vindication of award-winning investigative journalists Nick McKenzie and Chris Masters.

The court had found The Age and The Sydney Morning Herald were “correct in their reporting that Ben Roberts-Smith committed war crimes”.

Speaking outside court, Chessell said publishing a story of such magnitude was “never easy, but high-quality investigative journalism is vital to a thriving democracy”.

“The findings by Justice Anthony Besanko today that Roberts-Smith participated in the execution of [unarmed] Afghans confirms our reports that the Victoria Cross recipient breached the Geneva Convention and is critical step towards justice for the families of the murder victims,” Chessell said.

Chessell said the decision was also a vindication of the brave soldiers of the Special Air Service “who served their country with distinction and then had the courage to speak the truth about what happened in Afghanistan”.

“Today’s judgment exemplifies how the exhaustive public interest journalism of The Age and The Sydney Morning Herald serves our community and serves our country”.

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The stories at the centre of the case would have a lasting impact on the Australian Defence Force, he said.

“While today is a pivotal moment in this story ... the story goes on. We will continue to hold people involved in war crimes to account.”

McKenzie said it was “a day of justice” including for the “brave men of the SAS who stood up and told the truth about who Ben Roberts-Smith is: a war criminal, a bully and a liar”.

“None of the SAS witnesses wanted to go to court. Ben Roberts-Smith brought this case, he came almost every day. But he did not come today. He’s in Bali, doing whatever he’s doing.”

Masters said the newspapers made “a great call” in June 2018 to run the first of the stories in the series, and “I think it will go down in the history of the news business as one of the great calls”.

Turning to the inquiry into the abandoned rape trial for Bruce Lehrmann, the ACT’s Victims of Crime Commissioner Heidi Yates says she would have reconsidered standing next to Brittany Higgins during a televised speech after the trial was aborted if she’d known what she was going to say.

Yates, who has been publicly accused of damaging the presumption of innocence of Lehrmann, a former Coalition staffer, by her actions in the high–profile case, has told a public inquiry she was instead thinking of the possibility of his accuser collapsing while addressing the media shortly after the mistrial.

“She was clearly not okay,” Yates told the inquiry into the handling of the case on Thursday, explaining Higgins had suffered a panic attack when ACT Supreme Court Chief Justice Lucy McCallum cut short the trial on the morning of October 27, 2022, due to the misconduct of a single juror.

“I was extremely concerned for her welfare ... she was still not looking well. I was concerned that should she pause outside the court and make a kind of statement that she would have another panic attack or indeed collapse,” Yates said.

Yates said Higgins had to be hospitalised due to acute mental health episodes at multiple points throughout the investigative and trial process.

Read the full story here.

Federal Court Justice Anthony Besanko has found the articles at the centre of SAS veteran Ben Roberts-Smith’s defamation case conveyed almost every defamatory imputation alleged by him.

Besanko has dismissed the proceedings, after finding The Age, The Sydney Morning Herald and The Canberra Times have proven some allegations of war crimes against Roberts-Smith.

Journalist Nick McKenzie, who wrote the articles with fellow award-winning investigative journalist Chris Masters, took to social media moments after the court’s decision, tweeting simply: “Justice.”

Besanko found the news outlets had established the substantial truth of the key allegation in the case: that Roberts-Smith was involved in the unlawful killing of unarmed Afghan prisoners.

While not every murder allegation was established by the newspapers, the judge found they had proven some of those alleged killings had taken place. It was sufficient for Besanko to dismiss Roberts-Smith’s lawsuit.

Karen Percy, who is media president of the Media, Entertainment and Arts Alliance, described the ruling as a “big and important win for journalism and press freedom in Australia”.

“It upholds the media’s important role in undertaking public interest investigations [and] in the public’s right to know.”

Hundreds of Woodside employees have been evacuated from the company’s headquarters in Perth after a faux gas leak organised by those campaigning against the $50 billion Burrup Hub project.

A dozen firefighters swarmed the building to investigate the smell about 10am on Thursday, understood to have been caused by non-toxic stench gas released by Disrupt Burrup Hub protester Kristen Morrissey.

The substance, typically used by mining companies in an emergency, forced Woodside’s workers to flee across a nearby pedestrian bridge and to an adjacent park.

Morrissey is understood to have used yellow smoke flares during the evacuation, in which she planted herself outside the building’s entry, to symbolise the emissions from Woodside’s mega gas-project.

Police officers arrived a short time later, escorting Morrissey away from the building and into a police car as she called on those around her to “act now”. No charges have been laid.

Good afternoon, it’s Megan Gorrey here to steer you through this afternoon’s developments. First, here’s a look at what’s happening today:

• The Federal Court is due to deliver its judgment in SAS veteran Ben Roberts-Smith’s multimillion-dollar defamation case from 2.15pm, five years after Australia’s most decorated living soldier filed the lawsuit. In a surprise development, the Commonwealth will ask Justice Anthony Besanko to delay releasing his full written decision so that the government can ensure there is no inadvertent disclosure of national security information. You can watch the proceedings and follow our live coverage of the proceedings here.

• Prime Minister Anthony Albanese’s visit to Singapore will still go ahead, despite the Asian nation’s leader testing positive to COVID-19.
• Federal Education Minister Jason Clare has shut down any possibility the government will end student HECS indexation in the future as current debts will rise by 7.1 per cent from today.
• Mining giant BHP is the latest Australian company to be hit by an employee pay scandal after it revealed it has underpaid 28,500 staff by nearly half a billion dollars.
• Inflation figures remain high in Australia and will force the Reserve Bank to consider another interest rate rise when it meets next week.
• The Tax Practitioners Board is demanding consulting giant PwC names the nine partners who were stood down as part of the investigation into the tax leak. Greens senator Barbara Pocock said there were penalties available that should have been used earlier. Attorney-General Mark Dreyfus says PWC should be held “fully accountable” for the tax scandal leak, as the Greens plan to refer the issue to the new National Anti-Corruption Commission which will start operating in July.
• Australia’s Defence Force Chief Angus Campbell was warned the report into war crimes could trigger a law that prevents the US military working with units linked to “gross violations of human rights.”
• In overseas news, the US House of Representatives voted to approve a bill to suspend the government’s $US31.4 trillion ($48.35 trillion) debt ceiling, five days before the deadline to avoid a crippling default.

Australia’s Trade Minister Don Farrell has spoken about Australia’s relationship with China at the National Press Club in Canberra.

He was asked about the stabilisation of the trade relationship, and whether the country was close to removing trade bans with Australia.

Farrell said the relationship was heading “in the right direction” but there was more work to do.

“Bit by bit, we are going to get back to a stabilised pre-COVID, pre-bans relationship with China and that is obviously going to be good for Australian wine and food producers but also good for Chinese consumers, who are looking to buy our products,” he told the audience in Canberra.

He also spoke about the ongoing dispute over Australian barley. In April, the government agreed suspend its World Trade Organisation dispute while China reviews the restrictions the grain.

Farrell said the government wanted China to comply with the free trade agreement provisions.

“That is our expectation and that is what we have asked for,” he said.

“If we find ourselves in a situation where having shown an act of goodwill to suspend our WTO application, and we don’t get the result we want, we have made it clear to the Chinese government that we will resume that application.”

For almost exactly a year, Australia watched as a parade of current and former special forces soldiers known only by their pseudonyms trooped into the Federal Court in Sydney to give evidence in the defamation trial of the century.

Claiming to have had his life ruined by six articles published by The Age, The Sydney Morning Herald and The Canberra Times, Australia’s most decorated living soldier, Victoria Cross and Medal of Gallantry winner Ben Roberts-Smith, was seeking to clear his reputation.

He said the stories wrongly accused him of unlawfully killing prisoners during the Afghan conflict. The newspapers sought to prove that the reports published between June and August 2018, were, in the legal phrase, substantially true.

Read the rest of the explainer on the case here.